Tag Archives: Abbi Dawson

Force Fed Till Sick

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The aim of ‘Feeder’ was to be a task based performance where 3 feeders would feed 3 gainers for a durational time of 2 hours. This is precisely what happened on Wednesday 11th December at 7:30pm – though I shall not forget to mention we were stopped at 1 hour 40 minutes for ethical reasons.

photo      (Staging of Performance. Taken by Abigail Dawson: 11.12.13)

Even though the outcome of the task was so unpredictable we all knew how much of a challenge it was going to be. What a challenge it was. The 3 gainers were fed calorific food such as cheesy pasta, cake, chicken korma and lasagne. It took approximately 1 hour until the first gainer vomited – me. From a gainer’s point of view, the task appeared relatively easy at the beginning for the first 20 minutes. The food was fairly warm and enjoyable, no struggle eating the forkfuls just yet. All the different foods were being mixed, and at first this seemed like a brilliant idea as each food was a different taste and you weren’t going to get bored of it. Then as time went on those foods were being mixed inside the stomach, and with the mix of acidic orange juice and full fat Pepsi, the stomach started to churn and consequently there was a battle with our bodies to keep that food inside the stomach. It was no longer an easy task, and the food no longer appeared appetising to us. The forks filled with food would stay in front of our 3 faces until we were able to eat it. Because the forks were kept in front of us, there was a feeling of pressure and need to eat, like we had to finish everything we were given, something that I was taught when younger otherwise I was not allowed to leave the table. There was complete silence other than the sound of us eating and the noise of the feeders clattering the serving spoons, serving up more food. When we did feel sick there was no real way of communicating with our feeder, maybe a look of plead, but we couldn’t talk. The feeders had all the control, while we were tied to our chairs so we didn’t even have the use of our arms. The feeders had to be so in control that they could tell when we were going to be sick, maybe by the look on our faces, they then went to get a sick bag and placed it in front of us – just like the fork – until we were sick. Unfortunately for me, this happened and I vomited. My feeder then proceeded to serve more food on to a plate and carry on feeding me – which is why our performance was stopped. Now it must be noted that all 3 of us gainers could has refused to eat, the fork would have just stayed there in front of us, but we were able to keep our mouths shut. The pressure we felt, especially in front of an audience kept us eating, we were in no mind set to think of our own safety and when to stop, so someone else had to do it for us. Something we were all grateful for. Normally you’d think that “the act of swallowing is voluntary” (Fisher and Bender 1979, p. 93), however under such pressure in a public performance it feels like that power is taken away from you and you have no choice but to swallow what is in your mouth, whether you feel like it is going to make you vomit or not.

Here are two video blogs I made on the day of ‘Feeder’ to show how I was feeling, one before the performance and one after:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4D3JyKpzAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgCgpuiiUUk

(Abigail Dawson, 2013)

This performance was so much more than showing the feeder/gainer relationship though. It was very personal to each of us, and how we all view food and our bodies. For a 20 year old woman living in a western society in the twenty first century, there is a pressure to keep our bodies looking good. We all love eating food, but we make sure we eat the right things so we don’t put weight on. This feeder fetish to us appears very confusing, a lifestyle none of us can relate to as we don’t personally believe that the bigger we get in size the sexier and more comfortable we feel. I certainly don’t believe that anyone that large could be happy with themselves, especially if they are at a size where they are immobile.  Through this lifestyle, they appear to learn that if they are to be loved (the gainers) – and this is what they seek for the most in life – they must eat/be fed. Their daily life is not about nutrition and keeping their body healthy, as they certainly do not eat the right foods. As stated in The Value of Food, “some foods are not essential for the functioning of the body but we do enjoy eating them” (Fisher and Bender 1979, p. 31), this fetish is about pleasure and gratification so the only foods that are consumed are those which satisfy.

“Rituals…help people deal with difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, hierarchies, and desires that trouble, exceed, or violate the norms of daily life” (Schechner 2002, p. 52)

Looking back to earlier readings and blog posts, we kept to the notion of rituals. The act of eating is a daily ritual, something we do since we are born. We put this ritual to play in performance, it “gives people a chance to temporarily experience the taboo, the excessive, and the risky” (Schechner 2002, p. 52) as a group we were able to experience the fetish momentarily, not sexually, but what it would be like to put in the roles in the feeder relationship. Feeding and being fed is ritual linked to a parent and child relationship – one that is created from a very early age. The feeder and gainer take these roles on. It was our aim to explore this daily ritual – eating – delve into our own eating habbits, our personal relationship to food, and how it changes for those involved in such a fetish.

Work Cited

Abigail Dawson (2013) Vlog 1 (before) [Online Video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4D3JyKpzAc [Accessed 13 December 2013]

Abigail Dawson (2013) Vlog 2 (after) [Online Video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgCgpuiiUUk [Accessed 13 December 2013]

Fisher, P. and Bender, A. (1979) The Value of Food (3rd Ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press

Schechner, R. (2002) Performance Studies: an Introduction (2nd Ed.), London and New York: Routledge

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.

 

Who draws the short straw? Work in Progress.

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We met as a group to discuss finalisations for our work in progress performance on the 21.11.13. The first thing we want to test with an audience is what we should be wearing. We decided each feeder and gainer will wear something different for us to see what works most effectively. Secondly, we needed to decide on the high calorie foods we will be bringing in. For our work in progress we chose a few foods known for being treats so we can get the most out of the experiment. Having already planned our set up i.e. where the table of food will be presented and audience sat, it was now time to discover who would be a feeder and who would be a gainer. We wanted to leave this decision until as late as possible, so chose the afternoon before. Below, I will place a video of the straw drawing process where we discovered our fate.

After establishing the roles we will take tomorrow and planning our experiment, hopefully now with an audience to test we can discover what elements to our performance will work most effectively.