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Experimenting with Final Ideas

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Carrying on from our previous experiment with food, we found ourselves very interested in the idea of the feeder fetish, and we wish to root our final performance around this concept. We all watched the documentary ‘Fat Girls and Feeders’ (2003), it explores the sub-culture of ‘feeders’ who get sexual gratification from feeding large women (the gainer), and encouraging them to gain weight to an extent where they become immobile and put their own lives at risk. It is thought that the stomach is seen as another ‘sexual organ’ and the bigger it got the sexier it appears. The feeders would document the obese women’s weight gain, and it was clear that the bigger they became, the more desperate they were for personal contact. The main aim for the feeder is to get them as big as possible, and for the gainer is to keep them happy.  For the couple “the experience of easting is intertwined with their experience of close human contact with the provider of the food-the bodily warmth, the touch of the other’s flesh, their smell, the sounds they make- and the emotions and sensations aroused by this experience”, while they found it sensual and sexual, their key focus was all about “enjoying filling the stomach” and watching it grow to an unsafe size (Lupton 1996, p. 7).

We found this feeder fetish lifestyle very strange, as none of us personally found it pleasurable. In the type of society we live in today it is all about being skinny and looking good and in doing so you need to keep count of the calories and eat the right food. We live in a society where “limiting one’s food intake is an effective way of both demonstrating self-discipline and of working towards the idealized slim, long-living, youthful body that is so valued in western societies” (Lupton 1996, p. 155). Whereas in this fetish lifestyle the feeder would feed the woman large quantities of calorific food, which would consequently make them gain a dangerous amount of weight over a long period of time, self-discipline and control for the consumer does not exist . I relate food with something that is meant to be seen as pleasurable, it is something social if you go out for a meal, something you enjoy, but where are the boundaries between pleasure and pain here? An average portion of food may be something enjoyable to consume, but what happens when that portion doubles or triples in size? It is no longer satisfying but instead becomes demanding on your body, pushing its limits. Because we as a group do not find this a sexual fetish, we were interested in how being fed would feel for us personally, and also what it would physiologically be like to be the feeder. We were interested by the fact that it was the feeder in the relationship that cooked and prepared all of the food, the control is in their hands, and the gainer would just eat it.

We had the opportunity to do our own individual experiments with the class so I took chance to not only experience being fed but also how someone would feel feeding me. I bought a packet of sweets, a packet of monster munch and a packet of chocolate fingers. Obviously I could not give the feeder complete control of what food they had as I had to buy it previously for the experiment, however I decided to blindfold myself so there would be some mystery out of the options I gave them. I did this experiment various times lasting only five minutes as it would be a one on one session with me and another member of the class. When entering the space I mentioned to each person that they could choose what items of food they wanted to feed me and that they had complete control over the quantity that was chosen. I left a feedback sheet in the room for each person to write down how they felt when feeding me; these are some of the responses:

“Felt like a mum feeding a kid – would be good to use different tastes, smells and temperatures”

“Nervous, a bit weird not going to lie. Could never do it as a sexual thing”

“Hungry and in control of everything, especially with the lack of sight”

photo

(Taken by Tiffany Thompson: 22. 11. 13)

I found that many people felt like they were a mother feeding a kid, as this is a relationship we have all experienced as a child. For me, personally, it was very strange being fed, especially the lack of control that I had.

For our final performance three of us will be the ‘feeders’ and the other three the ‘consumers’, they will be chosen at random by picking straws – something we have already done and can have documented in the video shown below. The feeders will be paired up with a consumer, and through a durational time of two hours, they will feed the consumer food. This food will be pre-bought and prepared before the performance; it will be presented luxuriously on a table in front of both feeder and consumer. It is important we show the “preparation, presentation, and consumption and its full range of sensory pleasures” so we will have a video projected in the background of the food being bought and prepared (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2007, p. 85). The idea is to explore our own personal relationship with food and the fetish. What happens if we were put into the feeder/consumer relationship? Our performance aims to push the boundaries of our bodies, and expose to the audience the act of eating – which is usually something private. It will be unpredictable, exciting and at the same time terrifying. I have no doubt that our performance will be anything but easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdqz0-Dl2IA

(LaurenWithTheDramaTattoo, 2013)


Works cited

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (2007) ‘Making sense of food in performance: the table and the stage’ in Senses in Performance, ed. Sally Banes and Andre Lepecki, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 71-91

LaurenWithTheDramaTattoo (2013) Feeder Contemporary Experimental: Drawing Straws [Online Video] Available from http://youtu.be/mdqz0-Dl2IA [Accessed 9 December 2013].

Lupton,Deborah (1996) Food, the body and the self. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

 

The Disorder in Control- Gainers vs Anorexics.

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Eating disorders are a part of many people’s lives. They are psychological disorders that affect the relationship individuals have with food and their own body image. According to online medical resources Anorexia-nervosa affects 1 in 20 teenagers in the UK, though teens are not the only sufferers of the illness. Symptoms of anorexia include starving oneself in order to lose weight and keep their weight as low as possible. One of the main symptoms that stand out for me is the body image distortion that sufferers tend to have. This causes the sufferer to perceive their body as different to how it actually looks; anorexics see themselves as fat or overweight when they are thin or even underweight, even though they can acknowledge others who are of a healthier size than themsevles to be “thin”.

When I studied psychology at A-level the module on eating disorders was an eye opener. It made me aware of how body image and our opinions of body image are altered and affected by many things. There are multiple theories about eating behaviour and eating disorders within the psychological and medical community. As I have mentioned briefly in other blog posts the most obvious cause of eating disorders stems from how “Contemporary culture is obsessed with bodies” (Di Benedetto, 2007, p. 127), as can be seen in the media on a daily basis. However, of the many theories associated with eating disorders the theory that sprang to my mind when we started looking into feeders and gainers were the psychodynamic theories. According to Hilde Bruch’s Psychodynamic theory, anorexics are engaged in a struggle for their own identity and are in conflict with their parents, especially their mothers for personal control. Bruch claimed that the origins of Anorexia can be found in early childhood where parents failed to respond to their child’s needs effectively. This leads to the child becoming confused about what its own internal needs really are, causing them to become over reliant on the mother or primary carer to tell them what they need and when. Bruch’s theory suggests that during adolescents the over reliant teen seeks to establish autonomy and find a way of having some control over their own life. A person may have limited control to what they look like, but they can have control over their weight and how thin they look, as only they can determin how much of what food they consume. Limiting the food they eat, sometimes to the point of starvation not only gives them control, but creates a visual representation of that control. It has also been suggested that over protective parents or “pushy” parents can also cause teens to take drastic measures to achieve autonomy. Interestingly a statement from a patient in a study on the causes of adolescent onset anorexia nervosa a supports this theory;

“I was the first child of very young parents that overprotected me” (Nilsson, 2008, p 128).

In the feeder/gainer relationship however the gainers appear happy to relinquish control over their body and allow another human being to have power over various aspects of their life, including the food they consume; the polar opposite of anorexics.

Another theory on anorexia that suggests that gainers have polar opposite mentalities to anorexics is Freud’s psychodynamic theory. Interestingly, though unsurprisingly, in Freudian psychology eating is a substitute for sexual behaviour. Freud suggested that refusal to eat can be interpreted as a means to repress sexuality. He stated that starvation was a means of a person retaining their child like body, both visually in that the “skinny” body looks childlike and therefore less sexually attractive, and biologically, in that in girls being underweight can cause Amenorrhoea (defined by the absence of periods for three of more months in girls who have already started menstruation) and could therefore be seen as prepubescent and therefore not sexually desirable. Gainers on the other hand seek to put on weight to make their bodies more attractive and in a way promote their sexuality. They state that having more fat on the body makes them feel more attractive and say that it makes them feel more comfortable or confident in themselves. I personally find it hard to believe that such a self destructive way of living could make anyone lead a happier life, yet the phenominon is not limited to a few individuals, there are many gainers out there who all claim the same thing.

While it is easy to argue that on a psychodynamic, non chemical level, the reasoning behind the act of starvation in anorexics and gorging in gainers are very much opposite it could also be argued that they are very much the same. The aim of both being to reshape and retrain their body to make themselves into what they perceive to be a more attractive figure.

 

 Works Cited

Brawner, L (2008) ‘Linda Montano, Anorexia nervosa and an art of hunger’, Women & Performance, 18, 2, pp. 127-132.

Di Benedetto, S (2007) Contemporary Live Art and Sensoral Perception. In: Sally Banes and Andre Lepecki (eds.) The Senses in Performance. London: Routledge.

Newton, L (2012) Anorexia Nervosa. [Online] Available from: http://www.patient.co.uk/health/anorexia-nervosa-leaflet# [Accessed 4 December 2013].

Nilsson, K, Abrahamsson, E, Torbiornsson, A, & Hägglöf, B (2007) ‘Causes of adolescent onset anorexia nervosa: patient perspectives’, Eating Disorders, 15, 2, pp. 125-133.

Skarderud, F (2009) ‘Bruch Revisited and Revised’, European Eating Disorders Review, 17, 2, pp. 83-88.

 

 

Man vs Food

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Food is the main energy supply for growth, movement and repairing the body. From birth, living things start growing, gaining weight and changing.  (BBC, 2013)

But what happens when we challenge our bodies into eating large quantities of food or even the food that our bodies/taste-buds disagree with? This experiment is not only physically demanding its experimenting with the concept of ‘mind over matter’. Pushing our bodies until we physically cannot eat anymore, this may be shown through gagging, being sick or to the point where we cannot physically eat anymore.

Our initial was to experiment with was foods we didn’t like. This involved foods such as sardines, soup, tomatoes, bananas (these things were things which each individual brought to the experiment)  We started with putting foods out on a table, non of the foods weren’t particularly presented in the way you would usually eat them, this made me question the effect in which the presentation of the food effects us individually.  A item of food I brought to the experimental was soup which was in a tin this was then poured into a bowl in front of us and the sound which it made being poured in a bowl, was quite deafening, which  heightened the effect of the experimental  making it an intimate experience for myself. The use of hearing the food, crunching, slopping, popping, chewing draws people to watch and engage with that particular food, which is something we are looking at to explore in our future experimental.

Once we had established the different types of food, all of us waited nervously awaiting to see if we would get the food which we didn’t like. This particular part of the experimental was challenging as we were anticipating what was to come, not knowing the unknown was a big part of this experimental. A member of third year drama assisted us in our experimental, who made the decision to what each of us should eat, and this was to experiment with the audience and our interaction with one another. The use of having assistance allowed us to not have any influence in picking foods that people like or dislike.  The highlight of this experimental for all of us was to challenge our bodies to eat sardines. This personally was very challenging as I was nearly sick, this concept of pushing my body to eat something that I do not enjoy and necessary created a response. Although the concept of this experimental was not to be sick, but to push ourselves the awfulness of this experimental creates impact when something bad is happening. Most people associate food as pleasure, something we enjoy doing and when someone is not enjoying or reacting in a way that doesn’t seem the ‘norm’ people tend to be interested and engage with the content, how much is too much?

Work Cited

-BBC – Learning Zone Class Clips – Why do we need to eat? – Science Video. 2013. BBC – Learning Zone Class Clips – Why do we need to eat? – Science Video. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/why-do-we-need-to-eat/2288.html. [Accessed 22 October 2013].