Consuming Passions: Feminist Approaches to Weight Preoccupation and Eating Disorders

Susan Manningham teaches sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Catrina Brown and Karin Jasper, feminist psychotherapists and community
educators in Toronto, have assembled an important collection of the
writings of 22 Canadian women. The focus is on issues related to weight
preoccupation and eating disorders. The aim, through feminist analysis
and the development of a feminist aesthetic, is to empower women so that
they may disassociate eating from feelings of guilt, accept their
bodies, and address instead the real issues in their lives.

The collection begins with a historical overview in which the authors
examine how women’s bodies have reflected the politics of their time
through the centuries. The spread of weight preoccupation among women is
seen as a phenomenon of the last 20 years, peculiar to the Western world
and a source of distraction from the actual causes of women’s
discontent. Diverse perspectives on the impact of tyrannical beauty
ideals are then presented. In “Creating Beauty in Blackness,” Kim
Shayo Buchanan speaks from the perspective of black women, who feel
keenly the disparity between their appearance and the cultural
“ideal.” Beth MacInnes, in “Fat Oppression,” attacks the myth
that fat people are abnormal or unhealthy. Catrina Brown, too, views
anorexia and bulimia not as pathologies, but rather as part of a
continuum of weight-control practices that include “just dieting.”
Brown believes that the powerful dominant medical paradigm
decontextualizes women’s lives. Part 1 of this book explores these
lost contexts. Part 2 examines the impact of sexual abuse and family
alcoholism on body image and eating disorders. The book concludes with
writings about community education and initiatives undertaken to
challenge society’s obsession with weight.

Consuming Passions will open new avenues through which women may
experience and appreciate their bodies as sources of pleasure and
passion, not as a source of shame.