I just read a great article in the Guardian about a formerly anorexic woman who is now pregnant and she discusses how being pregnant has changed her view of her own body.
'Pregnancy has been a release into a body that feels happily beyond my control. I've watched it grow and transform. I've looked at it in the mirror and been fascinated by it. I'm much more interested in nourishing my baby than caring about what dress size I am...'
Source: http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/wellbeing/story/0,,2192063,00.html
Also in more post-baby body news, according to Us magazine, Samantha Harris, co-host of America's Dancing With the Stars has returned back to work just three weeks after birth. Harris admits she started back into her fitness regimen just two and half weeks postbaby
"My doctor said it was OK," she said backstage at last night's show in L.A. "So I slowly went back to a yoga class one day, a sculpting class one day and a cardio-sculpting class another day. But I’m taking it easy. I’m not trying to drop the weight fast in any capacity."
Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/samantha_harris_0
Showing posts with label anorexia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anorexia. Show all posts
Pregorexia: eating for one?
We spend alot of time talking about the cultural pressure for women not to eat for two on this blog..but what about the pregnant women barely are able to eat for one?
I know it's not a quality (or even very reliable) publication, however, today in The Sun, two anorexic pregnant women are profiled and their stories are pretty horrifying. It bothers me that these anorexic women are treated like spectacles or even 'freak shows' in this particular tabloid. However this article highlights that when it comes to pregnancy, neither anorexia nor obesity is accepted as an appropriate response to motherhood. Yet, in both cases, overeating or undereating, desire (the desire to eat or not eat) is at the root of both problems.
Although most people who have never had an eating disorder cannot imagine not eating whilst growing a baby, the women in the article are represented as though they are proud of their abilities to transcend their hunger on one hand, but on the other hand, they are both extremely concerned for the safety of their future children and even their own health. As their bodies seem to be out of control in pregnancy, anorexia is the only way they can be in control. In fact, historically, anorexia has been theorised as feminine protest; a means by which women resist the limitations of the ideal of female domesticity and separate themselves from their mothers.
In Unbearable Weight, feminist scholar Susan Bordo (1993:160) argues:
Women may feel themselves deeply attracted by the aura of freedom and independence suggested by the boyish body ideal of today. Yet, each hour, each minute spent in anxious pursuit of that ideal (for it does not come naturally to most mature women) is in fact time and energy taken from inner development and social achievement. As a feminine protest, the obsession with slenderness is hopelessly counterproductive.
In pregnancy, women take up more space (literally). The anorexic is always convinced she is taking up too much space. Pregorexia is perhaps the most extreme cultural example of the fear of motherhood and the fear of bodily bigness played out on the body through a sort of internal self-mutilation.
Sources: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article314257.ece
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993.
I know it's not a quality (or even very reliable) publication, however, today in The Sun, two anorexic pregnant women are profiled and their stories are pretty horrifying. It bothers me that these anorexic women are treated like spectacles or even 'freak shows' in this particular tabloid. However this article highlights that when it comes to pregnancy, neither anorexia nor obesity is accepted as an appropriate response to motherhood. Yet, in both cases, overeating or undereating, desire (the desire to eat or not eat) is at the root of both problems.
Although most people who have never had an eating disorder cannot imagine not eating whilst growing a baby, the women in the article are represented as though they are proud of their abilities to transcend their hunger on one hand, but on the other hand, they are both extremely concerned for the safety of their future children and even their own health. As their bodies seem to be out of control in pregnancy, anorexia is the only way they can be in control. In fact, historically, anorexia has been theorised as feminine protest; a means by which women resist the limitations of the ideal of female domesticity and separate themselves from their mothers.
In Unbearable Weight, feminist scholar Susan Bordo (1993:160) argues:
Women may feel themselves deeply attracted by the aura of freedom and independence suggested by the boyish body ideal of today. Yet, each hour, each minute spent in anxious pursuit of that ideal (for it does not come naturally to most mature women) is in fact time and energy taken from inner development and social achievement. As a feminine protest, the obsession with slenderness is hopelessly counterproductive.
In pregnancy, women take up more space (literally). The anorexic is always convinced she is taking up too much space. Pregorexia is perhaps the most extreme cultural example of the fear of motherhood and the fear of bodily bigness played out on the body through a sort of internal self-mutilation.
Sources: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article314257.ece
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993.
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