on eating in company

[harborshore]

Short meta on eating and the pressure women put on one another. As usual, I'm starting from myself, I make no claim to have all the answers, and I'm very open to be disagreed with. Warnings: mention of very severe eating disorder without discussing it in detail.

ETA: as unlurkster points out, this isn't even about weight, so I took the word out of the first sentence above.



There was a moment during the Israel trip that I particularly liked: Saturday night, when sitting down to dinner with four other women in all shapes and sizes and ordering food, I suddenly realized none of us had made a comment sounding anything like "I really want that, but I shouldn't--" or "Are you sure you want to eat that?" and fuck, it was such a relief. We just ordered! One of us had a tofu salad, one of us had lasagna, one of us had pasta, one of us had a goat cheese sandwich (ME, and it was EXCELLENT), and one of us had vegetable soup. It was done, just like that.

Because this isn't about what you eat. This is about judging someone else based on what they're eating or feeling like you're failing at something because you're on a diet or because you're not on a diet, because I just--every woman I know has some kind of body image issue. Every woman I know. They range in severity, but still. We really could stand to skip the part where we make each other feel guilty about what we eat (the lunches at my old job, for instance, were hell on earth), because the last thing we need is to make food more difficult.

I recognize the incredible privilege I've had of growing up in a house where food was a joyful thing, a healthy thing, something we loved and enjoyed. Dad's sister nearly died from anorexia when she was sixteen and mom was a dancer--those two things together made them try very hard to keep food being not scary. I wish I could give others that feeling. Barring empathy manifesting as a Heraldic power (yes, I read Mercedes Lackey at fourteen), I want to ask at least this much: is there a way that we can keep from making it worse for others? Accept people's food choices, let them eat without feeling guilty about it being a salad/a hamburger/a dessert? Maybe?

Comments

[x_dark_siren_x]

Oh, dude, seriously. How are you so eloquent?

I'm lucky, I guess. My friends are almost all curvy girls or guys who - while being built like rakes themselves, I swear - don't really seem to care about a girls' figure. (Okay, one of my skinny-ass guy friends once called me fat. Another skinny-ass guy friend called him the hell out on it, when he couldn't figure out why I was glaring and refused to talk to him for the rest of the night. But he apologised, and it wasn't that he meant to be mean - he just didn't think before he opened his mouth, which is a feature of him, actually, but he'd never, ever hurt you or do it on purpose, y'know? I chewed him out for a bit though, and he's never been that stupid again, so at least there's that?) We maybe occasionally moan that we shouldn't eat blah blah blah, but we always try talking each other out of that kind of talk.

On the other hand, my dad's family were always of the, just eat what you want, don't make yourself sick, philosophy, whereas my mother and her family were more, clear your plate, and everything that came with that - clear it, and get a sweetie. Clear it, or it's rude. Etc etc. I still feel conflicted about that, and even though I try to only eat till I'm full, often - unless I'm really not enjoying it - I'll fill myself to bursting, and still feel bad when I don't finish it, especially when my dad cooked it. Even if he didn't even finish his plate. >.<.

Um. I don't mean to make that all, woe is me. I agree with what you say, I do, and I really do feel lucky in that my current environments don't judge me for what I eat. (In fact, I think my dad's family are currently trying to feed me up. Which is silly.) So maybe there is progress happening out there?

I mean, I like to think so. :)

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

I don't think it makes a difference what size you are--as bexless and others have pointed out in the past, there's a certain amount of "If you diet, you're against us" going on in the Fat Acceptance movement, which is really sad, considering that it's a group that is ostracized that then judges others. I don't know. I'm glad you and your friends mostly don't do that--could you try just skipping that part of the conversation? Like, when you're going to eat and someone starts it, someone else can just go "We don't need to do that with each other, right? We don't need to have this conversation." Or something. Because even the shouldn'ts that are followed by support do weird things to us. Like you say, it's a thing we say because we expect support to follow, and if we just skip the whole thing and focus on food as a GOOD thing, maybe?

And I certainly do think there's progress going on, yes. ♥

[x_dark_siren_x]

I think that would be a good idea. :)

♥♥♥