Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
“I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognese / And not feel bad about for days and days and days,” sings the British pop-star Lily Allen in her sarcastically named song “Everything’s Just Wonderful” (2006).
Allen’s song came to mind when I read this excerpt of the book How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. Moran wonders whether we have moral hang-ups about food:
Of all the overwhelming compulsions you can be ruined by, all of them have some potential for some perverted, self-destructive fascination—except eating.
Consider, for instance, Keith Richards, in his Glimmer Twins days—snorting, smoking, injecting, drinking. Everyone loves him! Even though, by any way we can calculate it, he would almost certainly have been a complete nightmare to be around—paranoid, shaky, unreliable and, a good part of the time, so deeply unconscious that the primary method of moving from one location to another would have been being dragged by the ankles—we still have a slight cultural frisson of “How cool!” when people get this messed up.
But imagine if instead he had started overeating and gotten really fat instead. If he’d really gotten into spaghetti Bolognese, say, or kept coming onstage holding foot-long meatball subs. Long, crazy, wired nights after gigs, in penthouses, nubile dollies scattered across the room, and Keith in the center, sprawled across a silk-draped emperor-size water bed, eating Doritos sandwiches.
If we’re talking about morality and food, we need to make a distinction between two trends. First, there is the new religion of food. Its adherents believe that eating vegan, vegetarian, organic, local, or insert your label of choice, is a morally good thing. It’s what Mary Eberstadt was talking about in her essay “Is Food the New Sex?”
Wavering in and out of vegetarianism, Jennifer is adamantly opposed to eating red meat or endangered fish. She is also opposed to industrialized breeding, genetically enhanced fruits and vegetables, and to pesticides and other artificial agents. She tries to minimize her dairy intake, and cooks tofu as much as possible. She also buys “organic” in the belief that it is better both for her and for the animals raised in that way, even though the products are markedly more expensive than those from the local grocery store. Her diet is heavy in all the ways that Betty’s was light: with fresh vegetables and fruits in particular. Jennifer has nothing but ice in her freezer, soymilk and various other items her grandmother wouldn’t have recognized in the refrigerator, and on the counter stands a vegetable juicer she feels she “ought” to use more.
Most important of all, however, is the difference in moral attitude separating Betty and Jennifer on the matter of food. Jennifer feels that there is a right and wrong about these options that transcends her exercise of choice as a consumer. She does not exactly condemn those who believe otherwise, but she doesn’t understand why they do, either. And she certainly thinks the world would be a better place if more people evaluated their food choices as she does. She even proselytizes on occasion when she can.
This is an interesting phenomenon, but I don’t think it’s what Moran is talking about in her book excerpt. Even though Moran uses Keith Richards as an example, she is discussing a trend that is unique to women: This strange guilt-complex that we have about eating too much:
Why will women happily boast-moan about spending too much (“…and then my bank manager took my credit card and cut it in half with a sword!”), about drinking too much (“…and then I took my shoe off and threw it over the bus stop!”), and about working too hard (“…so tired I fell asleep on the control panel, and when I woke up, I realized I’d pressed the nuclear launch button! Again!”) but never, ever about eating too much? Why is unhappy eating the most pointlessly secret of miseries? It’s not like you can hide a six-Kit-Kats-a-day habit for very long.
Why would a woman keep “unhappy eating” a secret? Because she is ashamed that she just ate that whole pint of ice cream, or those three slices of cake, or that entire box of chocolates. Shame.
People feel shame when they think they’ve done something wrong. So what, exactly, has that woman done wrong by overeating? Eating too much violates principles of moderation and self-control, but that would apply to both men and women. And yet, women experience the food-shame trigger more intensely than men, based on my anecdotal experience. When I see men overeat, they feel bad for a while and try not to make the same mistake next time. When women overeat, they fall into emotional turmoil. They’ll say something like “Now I have to go work out for an hour to burn that off” because they “feel fat.” Women also connect food and emotions when they say they talk about “eating their feelings,” which is really a surrender of will to the emotions.
Some women resort to unhealthy habits, like bulimia, to deal with overeating. Still others just try to avoid the problem altogether by not eating at all–i.e., anorexia, which takes self-control about food to an extreme. Ninety percent of people with eating disorders in this country are women.
The question is why–why do women have this peculiarly visceral reaction to food and overeating?
Here are the next verses of that Lily Allen song I quoted above:
In the magazines they talk about weight loss
If I buy those jeans I can look like Kate Moss
Oh no, that’s not the life that I chose
But I guess that’s just the way that things go.
We live in an image-centric culture where people are judged by how they look, especially if those people are women. For women in the West, eating is tied to image. Image is defined by the media. The power of the Western media in affecting the dieting patterns of girls was revealed by a fascinating study conducted in the mid-nineties:
The British Medical Association revealed that anthropologist Anne Becker of Harvard Medical School, who worked thoroughly with the Fiji population, “has shown that exposure to western ideals of beauty have led to a high percentage of adolescents dieting within the last decade. It is hard to prove that it is exposure to TV images which have caused this change, although it is reasonable to assume that this is the case” (Jade). An extensive look into this study revealed that two groups of Fijian schoolgirls were interviewed and tested within a few weeks of their introduction to television in 1995 and then again in 1998. According to the study, “in 1995, the number of girls who self-induced vomiting to control their weight was zero. But three years after the introduction of television, that figure reached 11%” (Television). The study indicated that dieting had become the norm and that girls living in houses with a television set were “three times more likely to show symptoms of eating disorders.” Researchers have concluded that the prevalence of eating disorders in non-Western countries is lower than that of Western countries, but it seems to be increasing due to media consumption.
The beauty ideal of the Western media has set an impossible standard of thinness and fitness for women to live up to. Because the media is so pervasive, women mistake the Kate Moss ideal for the norm, and try to adjust their habits accordingly. When they overeat, they’re not just consuming too much food, they actually feel like they’re failing to live up to a standard of identity that they want to achieve, just like Catholics who don’t do the right thing are failing to live up to a standard of goodness that they want to achieve.
When Catholics err, they have to confess their sins to a priest. When overeaters err, Moran thinks they should also confess:
Coming into the office looking frazzled, sighing, “Man, I was on the pot roast last night like you wouldn’t believe. I had, like, POTATOES in my EYEBROWS by 10 p.m.”
Then people would be able to address your dysfunction as openly as they do all the others. They could reply, “Whoa, maybe you should calm it down for a bit, my friend. I am the same. I did a three-hour session on the microwave lasagna last night. Perhaps we should go out to the country for a bit. Clean up our acts.”
Sin, confession, redemption. Mary Eberstadt thinks we’ve become puritanical about food. Maybe we’ve become papists about it too.
- Comment (14)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
Comments:
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Fascinating thoughts. I actually wonder if people should apply to their other instances of gluttony the shame they feel for eating more than they should.
It seems that gluttony of all stripes is praised these days -- perhaps the completely visible consequences of what happens with food is the only thing keeping the shame in play...
Aug '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Part of this is natural. A binge makes more of a physiological difference in a woman than it does in a man. The average man has more muscle mass and higher caloric needs than the average woman, and also a larger frame, so a binge of the same amount of food is likely to have a proportionally smaller effect on his appearance.
Feeling the need to exercise after overeating is reasonable. Even healthy, usually. Probably the biggest problem is that if you view exercise as only punishment, you're less likely to do as much as you need to feel good. Some people are serious masochists about exercise, but is exercise their problem, or masochism?
I think even more women are tempted to just give up when they realize they won't achieve that ideal, leading to fewer moderately "chubby" but nonetheless sleek, reasonably fit women, and more who let themselves go (and slouch like they're ashamed).
Edited on June 18, 2012 at 6:45pmJan '11
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
There are always zealots.
In ages past, they applied their zealotry to religion, or to the monarch, or to the state, or to science ... or just about anything. In the past, we blamed the zealotry on the topic; zealotry about religion was interpreted to say something about religion itself. Zealotry about patriotism, zealotry about science ... all were cast as evidence against patriotism or science.
Maybe the problem is with the zealotry.
When people get zealous about soymilk ... well, I think they're just looking for an outlet for all that pent-up zealous energy.
Time to get a hobby.
Aug '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
This reminds me of the recent "celebrity scandal" of "the world's most beautiful woman" Aishwarya Rai not immediately losing weight after having a baby. Apparently, she got far more criticism in her homeland than overseas.
Moran calls addiction a vice, so it sounds like she's not one of those folks who deny moral agency in people's choice of habits. In that light, I found the following remark of hers fairly accurate:
It's not true that all fat people are fully functional and never a burden, but certainly the dysfunction is less and any burden less immediate than a conspicuous drug habit.
Edited on June 18, 2012 at 7:11pmDec '11
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
GMO foods are probably one of the most perfect examples of the hand of god saving the world from starvation and famine. Personally, I think we should get our knees and thank god that we have more, larger, disease resistant, higher yield crops using less resources to produce than ever before.
If that isn't moral, than I am hard pressed to put my finger on what actually is moral then.
Apr '12
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
At least science is finally acknowledging overeating can be caused by a physical problem, not just a lack of willpower. I was put on my first diet at age SIX. Yet, by my mid-30's, I was morbidly obese. I had to admit my "failure" and get weight loss surgery.
Miraculously, my brain and stomach began communicating. I'd never experienced satiety in my life, yet somehow I thought it was my fault because fat people are seen as dumb and lazy (nevermind that I regularly worked out and was a member of MENSA).
But that did not erase 30+ years of enculturation. After losing 200 lbs, I'm still shopping in the plus-size section, and society shames us for being bigger. The plus clothes are always hidden behind dividers or in the back, if they sell them at all (Old Navy, for instance, only sells them online). I regularly hear "Oh, this is the fat section!" as people sneak away.
Can obesity be a moral failure? Certainly. But just as many of us chubs are fighting an actual biological malfunction that has nothing to do with whether we choose salad over fries.
Edited on June 18, 2012 at 8:03pmOct '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Emily Esfahani Smith:
We live in an image-centric culture where people are judged by how they look, especially if those people are women. For women in the West, eating is tied to image. Image is defined by the media.
To what extent is this really the case in practice? I've lived outside the U.S. for the last twenty years and have rarely visited, but on those occasions the most striking thing is the ever-increasing extent that the people there are ellipsoidal, regardless of their gender, age, and class. Now I can't speak for image and guilt, and being odd parity have no insight into the female condition, but it would appear from observation that the impact of the image of slenderness is more upon aspiration and guilt than behaviour and outcome.
Mar '11
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Most of these food complexes are tied to the dominant Nature-Worship paganism.
Women have more food issues than men because women, much more than men, identify themselves by their appearance. So it is easy to get tied in loops about self-perception and reality.
Oct '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
It also seems to me that all kinds of food obsessions and fads are largely due to what I call the “fallacy of the controllable variable”. Unless we're willing to turn our lives upside-down and, in the process, disrupt our relationships and possibly harm others with whom we're close, we have relatively little flexibility to change our lives. But one thing we can change easily is what we eat, and so we're tempted to fasten upon that based on hoary myths such as “you are what you eat” or, one of its contemporary instantiations like “eating fat makes you fat”.
If one has the disposable income, it's easy to opt for local, non-GMO, heritage, sustainable, etc. products and not only feel noble but believe they make a difference in your health. And, given the placebo effect, they probably do.
Dec '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Separating women from men in this conversation makes no sense, at least not in middle and upper class America.
May '12
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
The observation about making food a religion is spot-on. We could perhaps substitute "religion" with "obsession" and get the same thing but that's beside the point. If you live in the West you likely have the money and time to make eating considerations that would just seem inconceivable to people living 100 years ago - or those in the developing world.
Having said that I'm going to dissent from the conclusion that we "live in an image-centric culture where people are judged by how they look" and that "[i]mage is defined by the media." The media may be feeding that image, magnifying it, but it is ultimately created by men's real-world preferences for women of certain physical characteristics and body proportions (other desirable qualities such as good humor etc. deliberately left for another discussion). The media could not change that even if they wanted to.
Nov '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
In that light, I found the following remark of hers fairly accurate:
This reminds me of how annoying I find the legal marginalization of smokers. I have never been a smoker, but I have to acknowledge that smoking too is a high-functioning addiction. No one blew their paycheck on a pack of smokes; no one ever beat up their spouse because of tobacco; no one lost their job because the nicotene got in the way of work; and no one crashed the car on a cigarette high.
Yet the professional college-educated class in which I work and live treats smokers as pariahs. I once worked at a company where the smokers would go to the back of the building, away from windows, so no one could see them. And in the municipalities where this class holds electoral sway, the number places in which one can legally smoke get fewer with time.
Shame is a powerful tool. Wish we employed it for soemthing useful.
Nov '11
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
All women are beautiful to me, but--everthing else being equal--plump ones are naturally more attractive to a man with a healthy psyche.
Some moralists do tell us that how we eat (not just what we eat, or how much we eat, but everything about our habits and rituals associated with eating) reflects spiritual longings, so if more modern men prefer boyish figures to womanly ones, maybe their corrupted preference is the cause of modern women's moral confusion about food.
Aug '10
Re: Our Moral Hang-Ups About Food
John Walker
... it would appear from observation that the impact of the image of slenderness is more upon aspiration and guilt than behaviour and outcome.
There is a natural relationship between perfectionism and underachievement. Perfectionists tend to give up trying when they don't succeed brilliantly. Here's a study on it. Don't know if it's a good study, but it confirms the obvious.
When the feminine ideal was more Aphrodite,
more fat-prone women could realistically expect a change in their behavior to get them close enough to that ideal to avoid shame. Now, if you look like that, you still risk being frequently shamed as overweight (some folks spare the grossly obese and only shame the Aphrodites).
It reminds me of the economics of crime. If there's no difference in punishment between theft and murder, a robber has an incentive to murder his victim. If a woman believes she'll be thought of as fat even if she manages to keep her weight down to Aphrodite's level, then the effort necessary for her to achieve even that seems less worthwhile.
If perfectionism were always useful, fewer people would try to overcome it.
Edited on June 19, 2012 at 1:32pm