Stupid me. After writing about Skinny Girls, Big Sandwiches, now is the perfect time to link to my friend Melissa’s post “Eating on Camera: The Politics of Female Consumption and Cooking Shows“. I meant to link to it before, but got late and couldn’t find a good time. Now’s great because, in a manner far more articulate and smart than my post, she expresses the dynamics of the issue:
The suggestion is this: when fat women eat, it’s gluttonous, grotesque, overdone. It is something to feel guilty about, not glory in. When skinny girls eat, it’s sexy, seductive, excessive in a good way. It’s something to objectify, to fantasise about. If food shows=food porn, then skinny hosts are the nubile porn stars, and the fat hosts are the BBWs whom only a specific segment of the population have a preference for. Therefore, fat women either don’t get to eat on TV, or eat and get criticized for it. [emphasis mine]
Good stuff.
#1 by Tim on August 5, 2009 - 9:30 am
What about zaftig, luscious, momly beauties like Nigella Lawson? She seems to have found a way to split the difference between cook-as-mom and cook-as-hot-sex.
#2 by Melissa on August 5, 2009 - 11:16 am
I do address Nigella as a conspicuous exception; however, Nigella has gotten a ton of flack lately, especially since filming Nigella Bites, for being *too* voluptuous. There are still boundaries; she’s just pushed them a bit.
Nav, I was just about to compose a comment on your last post referencing mine, but you beat me to it. Thanks!
#3 by Melissa on August 5, 2009 - 11:22 am
PS–please excuse the typos! No time to go back and fix them right now, so “North American’s” it stands.
#4 by Nav on August 6, 2009 - 1:05 am
Nigella’s an interesting example. She does the ‘zaftig goddess’ schtick and relishes indulgence, which could be read in a ‘positive’ way or whatever. But the ‘meta-consumption’ at work may undercut it – it’s food, indulgently consumed, and the aestheticised female body, indulgently consumed.
That’s a hard one to parse. I’m not sure both of those actions can be condemned simply because of a parallel formulation that involves consumption. When that sort of erotic desire completely dehumanises an actual person, then it’s a serious problem. I don’t know if that’s happening to Lawson, as she’s also selling a lifestyle and an image that people clearly want. It’s late capitalist feminism, I suppose: indulge, enjoy, give in to your desires. It’s empowerment through consumption. On Nav’s scale of feminism, that rates a solid “eh”. It isn’t evil, it isn’t great. It just sorta’ is.
The question is: is there a politics of empowerment that can operate outside invoking desire – by not putting an image of ‘what you want to be’ up there in the public space and asking people to identify with and emulate it? It’s not just about feminism: it’s also about queer studies, assimilation and immigration, whole bunch of things. And I don’t have an answer for it. Ultimately, it’s the core of both feminism and post-colonial studies, because it’s a question of margin and centre. And it’s 1AM. Who wants to start talking about that now?
#5 by Melissa on August 7, 2009 - 10:58 pm
Clearly not me, as I respond to this a day and a bit later.
I think you’ve just asked the question of the century: can we, as a society, function outside of the notion of aspiration? Or does that sort of teleological thinking seem so inevitable simply because that’s what we’re immersed in? I do think that there is the potential for another solution–empowerment through acceptance–which in some ways Nigella embodies (literally). She knows that she’s not the model-thin social ideal, and she embraces it. Maybe “How to Look Good Naked” is where we need to be at: acceptance of difference. Which of course assumes that there is a norm; shit, now I’m stuck in some kind of swirling vortex of unending argument.
Getting back to the whole acceptance thing, then you get into issues of the fat acceptance movement and it’s compatriot, the body-positive movement. An interesting debate on that here: http://100lbs.typepad.com/the_next_hundred_pounds/2008/01/a-traitor-to-my.html Is refusing to be discriminated against because of weight equivalent to refusing to be discriminated against because of race? Or is the choice/changeability of the thing a deciding factor? How is that different from outdated views of homosexuality? Or mental illness? Now I’m getting into sticky territory, so I’ll just trail off….
#6 by Nav on August 9, 2009 - 1:51 pm
This is all so huge, so I’m going to fall back on a numbered list, b/c it’s what I do when I have too many thoughts:
1) I think aspiration and projections of identity in the public sphere are intimately tied to desire and ‘the external constitution of the internal’. So there might not be a way out of that, depressing as that may be.
2) How to look good naked isn’t a bad model, I think. I mean, it’s not ideal, I guess – it’s still about acceptance of one’s self through one’s ability to sexualise oneself, or make oneself the desired object – but then, what are the other options? It probably does posit the existence of a norm – but then, particularly in regards to the female body, the problem isn’t so much the assertion of a norm as it is the assertion of the abnormal as norm, right? Britney Spears on the MTV awards was ‘fat’? In what world? To me, this is about the overlap of health and late capitalism – to perform health is to occupy a body type, all of which is constructed around this weird ascetic/power/self-control thing that means ‘you worked hard to look good’. I’ve had a post kicking around in my head for a while on this – maybe you should write it instead.
3) I think the same issue of performing health is at the root of the fat acceptance movement and its opposite. One question is: why there is a need to aestheticise health, to make it visible? And why in those particular ways/forms? I mean, I don’t think there’s a cabal of skinny men and women in a room somewhere plotting everyone’s demise, but the overlap between economic concerns and the entire discourse of health is pretty fucking scary right?
This is all rambly ’cause it’s Sunday and I can’t think clearly now, so forgive me if this is stupid or abrupt.
#7 by Tim on August 9, 2009 - 2:15 pm
Yeah, to be honest with you, the “____ is too thin” stuff bothers me quite a bit more than “____ is fat,” exactly because under the guise of a concern about health or “proper” body image it asserts its right to control over the body.
I should say, control over the female body, because at least in the public discourse, unless you’re talking about athletes, male bodies just don’t get treated in quite the same ways.
There are exceptions – sooner or later, someone cracks a joke about Marlon Brando or Orson Welles, and there’s definitely a preferred body type in Hollywood, etc.; but for the most part, male weight is a subject of legit health concerns and ridicule that, however embarassing, is mostly private.
(Self-disclosure: I am a great big guy, and could lose about a hundred pounds and still be all right.)
#8 by Melissa on August 9, 2009 - 2:48 pm
I’m seriously going to have to think about this one a lot more, so don’t expect a post on it anytime soon. But I will get around to it.
Tim: I’m not a skinny girl with a big sandwich. So I’m coming at this from a particular perspective too. And I’d like to say that it’s really refreshing that there are at least two men out there who are thinking about these things–really makes the insane and disgusting way that society objectifies and attempts to control women seem like something that may change. Now if only us women could stop judging each other, we might get somewhere.