Hugo Schwyzer

In my Humanities class on “Beauty and the Body”, we’ve been comparing some of the various theories about the etiology of modern eating disorders. It’s a lot of ground to cover: medical models, cultural models, psychological models. (Today, we begin talking about Courtney Martin’s wonderful new book: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.) It’s a tough class to teach for many reasons, not the least of which is that so much of the material is automatically triggering for some who are already struggling with “body issues.”

Over the last two lectures, I’ve been talking about everything from Western mind/body dualism to the Mosaic law to Sigmund Freud. The basic case is simple: much of our culture, for a variety of historical reasons, teaches us the Gnostic notion that the soul, our truest self, is imprisoned in a corrupt and foul body. The “heavy beast” that is always with us is our flesh, but these voices tell us that the “real self” is somewhere deep inside, an ethereal spirit locked in a corporeal cage. The notion that the body, with all its effluvia and its frailties, is disgusting and offensive is deeply rooted in several strands of the Western tradition. And these strands all contribute to a contemporary culture in which self-denial becomes virtue. After all, to pick the anorectic example, a woman who starves herself to the point that her periods stop and her bowel movements become very infrequent has, in a very real sense, given herself an illusion of mastery and purity. If the body’s demands and emissions are dirty, then self-starvation becomes not only about self-denial but about ritualized cleansing and transcendence.

This is familiar stuff to anyone who does gender work, but it’s new to a lot of my students. The teaching of this material is tricky. Some students who have a history of disordered eating do report feeling “triggered”. As anyone who works with anorexics or bulimics will tell you, the “talking cure” is frequently not much of a cure at all. Group therapy with those suffering from eating disorders is notoriously problematic; empathy easily becomes imitation, and imitation becomes competition. Though my courses are not group therapy, I do invite students to connect their own experiences to the material they’re encountering in the texts and the lectures. For some students who come to college in the expectation that the class will be a refuge from the relentless cultural (and internal) focus on the body, it can be overwhelming to talk in such intense detail about the flesh — and the historical origins of our hatred for it.

For other students who don’t “identify” with what they’re reading or hearing, it can be easy to dismiss the material as irrelevant to their lives. But as I stress over and over again, every one of us is impacted by this epidemic of self-loathing and self-involvement, even if we ourselves live in a state of reasonable contentment with our flesh. Trying to be close to someone who spends much of their waking time thinking about their acne, or their “fat” hips, or how they look to others, is exhausting. How other people feel about their own bodies will often affect how they feel about ours; most women know the uncomfortable and familiar feeling of being on the receiving end of a critical gaze from another woman. Regardless of what our bodies look like, regardless of how we dress, regardless of our sex or race or age, we will either suffer from our own self-hatred or that of those with whom we share public and private space.

Well-meaning folks often advise young people who are anxious about their appearance to “not think about it so much.” It’s easier said than done. Indeed, as many cultural commenters (including Courtney Martin) have pointed out, many of those who suffer from the worst eating disorders are precisely those who give so much to others. Girls who volunteer and are heavily involved in extra-curricular activities may be more, rather than less likely, to have disordered eating patterns and body dysmorphia. Those who are already inclined to pursue success (and elusive perfection) are most at risk. And as any one who knows the first thing about teen girls with eating disorders will tell you, hard work and numerous volunteer commitments do not distract the mind from the body!

So talking about food and the body can trigger; not talking about it can trigger — what then is to be done? In a class as charged as this one, my job is to acknowledge (at least once a week) that many students will have a strong emotional response to the material. Whether we’re talking about erections or anorexia, one topic or another is likely to stir something up deep inside. As a professor, my job is to act as a clearinghouse for resources, pointing those students who are academically curious to particular books and pointing those students who may need therapeutic care towards the appropriate professionals. Sometimes, good teaching (like good youth ministry) is like being an effective triage nurse! And while talking about these taboo or painful topics can often exacerbate anxiety in the short run, in the long run a willingness to talk is the sine qua non of healing and transformation.