Author Archives: Lizzy Hayes

Comfort Eating.

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For me the feeder/gainer relationship is rather confusing. Firstly, as a 20 year old girl in the 21st century I find that despite my better knowledge, I judge my own appearance against the appearance of other women. At what is apparently an “average” clothing size 12 I spend a lot of my time looking at myself and wishing I could be a bit thinner here, or a bit more toned there. Why? “Advertising and media play an enormous role in perpetuating women’s obsession with thinness. The media constructs idealized images of the thin and well-toned body and also promotes consumer products that help people, especially women, achieve this well-maintained body” (Allen and Sachs, 2007, p. 3).Not only that but  “quick fix” diets, fat burning pills and exercise DVDs are forever thrown in the paths of the self conscious under the pretense that buying their product and following their schemes will guarantee a happier “you”. As Lupton points out “given the current elision of sexual attractiveness with a slim body, many individuals make efforts to conform to this ideal” (Lupton, 1996, p. 137) because while”A slender/attractive body is understood as a healthy, normal body…an obese/ugly body is understood as unhealthy and deviant” (Lupton, 1996, p. 137). Though media and fashion image has changed drastically sinse the publication of Luptons Food, the Body and the Self (1996), it is arguable that opinions on female body image have not changed much. So for me, to see people who want to be fat is a massive contradiction to the social norm.

(Barcroft TV, 2013)

The video above shows a female gainer who is striving to gain weight on a daily basis. Like many other gainer women she feels more attractive in her overweight state than she did when she was a more healthy size. Not only that but she relishes the idea of other people seeing her putting on weight and is of course reaping the financial rewards that publishing her weight gaining gives her.

In a strange way I find myself envious of women like this. Yes, they are over weight, but they are more comfortable in their own skin than many women who strive to be thin. They have pride in their bodies and the confidence to sexualize it, knowing that there are people out there attracted to their fat. They use their weight to their advantage, gaining pleasure not just from eating, but from seeing others get pleasure from their eating; from feeding and having control over it. Some of these women even turn their diet into a business, advertising themselves to the market of punters who find these grandiose women sexy.

Secondly, and indeed predominantly, I find myself somewhat disgusted. Being as obese as many of these gainers are or aim to be goes against all medical knowledge and in my personal opinion common sense. Is it not greedy and unfair that they can eat so much, to the point of gluttony and not spare a thought for the people in the world that could live off of the food they consume in a day, for months? And how is it fair that these women push their bodies to the point that they need the care of others to function on a daily basis?  Why anyone would put their life at such a risk on purpose is beyond my comprehension. Can they not see that they are diminishing both their quality and quantity of life?

I am aware that being as uneducated as I am on the subject it is easy to pass judgement in ignorance. But even if I was knowledgeable on the subject, I am very aware that as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am looking at the feeder/gainer phenominon through the eyes of one particular type of person. It just so happens that while we may all take different things from exploring this topic, our performance group all fit a relatively similar demographic; we are all 20 year old, white, westernized women, who have been influenced through various means over our lives to believe that to be fat is to be unattractive. To understand how gainer women feel would be rewriting a life’s worth of understanding of ourselves, our appearance, and societies views on female appearance and attractiveness.

With that in mind, I am stil grappling with the questions of whether it is better to be fat and unhealthy but happy and live a shorter life, or be thinner and insecure, but be healthier and most likely live longer?

Works Cited

Allen, P., & Sachs, C. (2007). Women and food chains: The gendered politics of food. International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture.

Barcroft TV (2013) Big Women Funnel Feeder: BBW Wants To Be As Fat As Possible [Online Video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jfxPWK47eLg [Accessed 21 November 2013].

Lupton, D (1996) Food, the Body and the Self. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Tasks.

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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s article on Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium discusses the use of food as a performative medium and the various ways in which food has been used as art. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states that

“to perform is to do, to execute, to carry out to completion, to discharge a duty–in other words, all that governs the production, presentation, and disposal of food and their staging. To perform in this sense is to make food, to serve food. It is about materials, tools, techniques, procedures, actions. It is about getting something done.” (Gough, 2012, p. 1)

This definition rings true in our performance on a number of levels. Firstly the “task” of our performance is for the eaters/gainers to complete the task of eating as much food as they can in a given amount of time. The idea of fulfilling a task in our performance was one that our group decided to focus on from very early on in the devising process, having been influence by artists such as Melati Suryodarmo, who’s performance Exergie- Butter Dance might be considered an extreme example of how the act of completing a set task with rules or time restrictions can be a very entertaining spectacle.

(Carey Goodman, 2012)

In watching this performance I found myself going through stages of reaction. First I laughed, because the concept of dancing on butter was strange to me and entertaining to watch. Yet as she started to fall I became uncomfortable. I did not like to see her inflict pain on herself, yet I was mesmerised by the movement and music to the point where I could not look away. It struck me that in completing her set task she was also pushing herself physically to the point of pain but also mentally; knowing that in completing this task you are going to fall and hurt yourself multiple times when you could just as easily walk away would take will power.

While I do not think that the butter in Exergie-Butter Dance influenced our choice to use food in our performance, our aims to push the body to complete a task soon lead us to eating as a challenge.

While Abramovic and Mary Coble have created art using the human body as a canvas, artists such as Fiona Gregore in her piece Water # 1: Decent (2011) create their pieces by pushing their body’s physical and mental endurance without mutilating or putting their bodies in obvious pain or danger. Pushing yourself mentally is a challenge that others can see if you allow them to, but it can be purely internal and private. So what would happen if we pushed our internal body?
We decided to start with the taste buds.
In our original ideas on creating tasks with food we looked into forcing ourselves to eat food we didn’t like. I for example cannot stomach bananas, even the smell makes me feel ill, and so in this experiment I had to force myself to eat one. As you can see below my feelings towards the food had not changed.

Eating

Photo by Andrew Tinley, 2013

 

The experiment wasn’t pleasant for anyone, including our voluteer audience. But it was fascianting. One of the most disturbing things about this experiment was how interesting it was to see each others reactions to the food that they were eating. The discusted facial expressions and noises of protest coupled with a determination that each of us should complete our task made for a mesmerising experience.

 

Word Count

Gough, R (2012) Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium. Performance Reasearch. On Cooking, 4, 1.

Carey Goodman (2012) Melati Suryodarmo – Butterdance. [online video]. Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73MJxB7tCkk [Accessed 1 Novemeber 20213].