Food: Friend or Foe
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but chocolate is never just chocolate.
It’s love. It’s guilt. It’s solace. It’s reward. And it shows that--when it comes to women and eating--nothing is quite what it seems.
“I use (chocolate) as a reward for a long day or a stressful situation that I’ve overcome. It adds a richness to my life that’s lacking when I starve myself with yogurt and an apple for lunch,” said Anya Harris, one of 69 respondents to a Baltimore Sun telephone poll on women’s relationships with food.
“All the women I know are obsessed with food,” Harris said. “When women go out, there’s such a pressure to appear uninterested in food. ‘I can’t eat another bite.’ They watch each other, and if someone eats too much, she has to say something like, ‘God, I can’t believe I’m such a pig.’ It’s terrible.”
Women seem to have a complex relationship with food: They might love it but hate the weight that comes with it. Or they may eat to feed a hunger that is not necessarily for food. Or they may eat and feel guilty, or not eat and feel deprived. Which, of course, leads to more eating, more guilt and on and on.
And it is the kind of relationship that, although not unknown among men, is much rarer, experts say.
“At some level, women are closer to food than men because we are food on a certain biological level,” said Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a Cornell University professor and author of “Fasting Girls,” a book about body image and anorexia. “Women in most cultures are the ones who prepare the food and nurture with food and love with food. But women’s relationship to food has changed because women are increasingly judged by their bodies. So now they have an ambivalent and complex relationship with food.
“Most women in America,” she concluded, “don’t know if they love or hate food.”
As one respondent to the poll, a Johns Hopkins University student, put it: “Food is my enemy; food is my best friend.”
A recovered bulimic, the 20-year-old said that food is like alcohol to her. “It makes me feel high,” she said, “and it scares me.”
While anorexia and bulimia are the most extreme cases, even women who do not suffer from those illnesses are prey to the pressure to deprive themselves of food in order to fit the current ideal of slenderness. An estimated 40% to 80% of all women will diet at some point in their lives, said David Roth, a psychologist who directs the eating disorders programs at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore.
“In our culture, the ideal of beauty and gender identity is different for men and women,” Roth said. “If women are to be seen as beautiful, they have to be thin, and to have an identity, they have to have a man. For men, to be seen as beautiful, they have to be seen as strong, and to have an identity they have to have a powerful position in the world.”
As a result, women seem always to be on a diet--or thinking they should be on one.
“I’ve probably attempted to diet more than 100 times in my lifetime,” said Susan Duvall, a 38-year-old actress and apartment leasing agent. “I’ve been on Stillman’s, Atkins, Diet Workshop, Weight Watchers, Pritikin . . . .”
“I’m on a diet; I’m not fat; I don’t know why I’m on a diet,” said Carol, a respondent who asked that her last name not be used. “I had breakfast today, Special K with skim milk, wheat toast and juice, then I gave my kids blueberry waffles and when I cleaned up the table, I actually licked their plates. I’m a pig. I’m so embarrassed. I actually licked their plates. I blew more calories licking my childrens’ plates than if I’d just gone ahead and had the blueberry waffles.”
Several women thought their food habits dated back to childhood.
“My mother gave me chocolate when we celebrated or to cheer me up if I was upset,” said Tammi Bryant. “And now that I think of it, my brother and sister and I have this same craving. We’ve gotten together on weekends and made brownies or chocolate chip cookies or just bought a bag of those little candy bars. I have eaten a whole bag of Baby Ruths by myself.”
“I’m obsessed with sweets,” one anonymous caller said. “When my husband is home, I hardly eat any, but when he’s gone, I just eat, eat, eat.”
If women eat less than they want because of the pressure to be slim, then perhaps the reverse is also true and some eat as empowerment.
“I find that whenever I want to show my independence,” one anonymous caller said defiantly, “I eat what I want to eat.”
