Pro-Choice and the Moral Language of Food

              My experience with body-hatred and eating disorders has been enduring, engulfing and expansive, consuming far more of my time, energy and life than I would like to admit.  I so vividly remember the immense joy and satisfaction of self denial, the light-headed ecstasy of feeling empty and pure… feeling that, amongst all the randomity and chaos of the world, my body and what I put in it was something I could control and have all to myself. It was my secret project that made everything else around me irrelevant. To revitalize and relive the feelings associated with self-denial can be triggering, to say the least.

            In Joan Brumberg’s “The Body Project”, it is mentioned that the 1920s - the same generation that introduced diet books, the sheath dress, and voluntary hunger - introduced the U.S. to the moral language of food; a language I speak all too fluently.  By “moral language of food”, I mean the assignment of value judgments such as “good” and “bad” to different foods and macronutrients based on their potential affect on one’s weight. This good food/bad food mentality is by no means exclusive to those with eating disorders or even exclusive to women. My boyfriend, bless his heart, constantly responds to ”how was your day?” by telling me exactly how good or bad he was with his food intake for the day, and insisting how much better he’ll do the following day or specifying how many hours he will spend at the gym to “make up the damage”. 

         I have been speaking this moral language of food fluently for six years now; after all, they do say that the best way to learn a language is to be thoroughly submerged in it. The past few years I have become conscious of the damaging dialogue and have refrained from verbalizing the values my mind “automatically” places on various foods.

         I was first introduced to the concept of the moralizing food choices at The Bella Vita. At this holistic treatment center, I learned an unbelievable amount about the psychology behind eating disorders and the use and abuse of food as a coping mechanism. While one-on-one therapy sessions welcomed all forms of feelings and word choices, there were quite a few ground rules at Bella Vita as to what we, the patients, were allowed to discuss in a group setting or during meal times.  To avoid triggering ourselves or our fellow residents, we were not allowed to discuss numbers (weights, inches, calories, etc), were not to evaluate each others’ situations or feelings, were not to wear revealing clothing, and were not to refer to foods as “good” or “bad”. Foods could be categorized as “eat more often” or “eat less often” (healthy fats versus trans fats) but we were not to ever consider a food to be intrinsically bad or good. At the time, this rule seemed ridiculous to me because I had so thoroughly placed a “Can’t-have” on so many foods, caloric-densities and macronutrients.

          Approaching food, or really anything in life, with a “can’t-have” mentality is the surest way to create failure. “Can’t-haves” create an inappropriate relationship between you, your desires and your freewill. In much the same as its impossible to  actively “not think about a pink elephant”, you similarly cannot easily focus all of your attention on what you are forbidden to have, without either creating a sense of unworthiness or “failing” and succumbing to temptation. One major factor in my recovery has been changing my mindset from one of deprivation to one of abundance.  Instead of focusing my energy on everything I could not have and everything I must lose, I consciously turned my thoughts toward everything I could gain: health, energy, joy, confidence, vitality, friendship. Positive thoughts and attract more positive energy and experiences, just as negative thoughts attract more negativity. I think anyone could agree that thoughts of abundance and havingness are infinitely more pleasurable and empowering than thoughts that set limitations on one’s joy and one’s ability to expand and flourish.

        In the past few years, I have become far more aware of the way I view and communicate about food, and am careful to never give someone the impression that they should feel shame or failure for having eaten something (however legitimately healthy or unhealthy the food may be). While I am very much a proponent of live, raw foods, I try to keep my views on certain food choices to myself and am learning to be more accepting of the way others choose to fuel their bodies.

          I have come to realize that women have just as much a right to choose what they put into their bodies as they do to choose their clothing, or choose how and when to have sex and give birth. I have no right to assert my values onto them, as they have no right to assert theirs onto me. Pro-choice goes beyond birth control. Pro-choice is about supporting the right of men and women to come to their own conclusions and make confident decisions about their own lives, without having to take into consideration whether or not others approve.