September 15th, 2006
An atrocious heartfelt poem to the proponents of Overeaters Anonymous in my community
At the Lesbian festival
the sign next to the kitchen door reads
“Overeaters Anonymous group meets every morning, 9:30.”
I am shocked to see it there
in what I’ve assumed to be lesbian feminist space
My friend and I discuss what action we could take
We post an adjacent sign
“It took a lot of willpower
but I finally gave up dieting.”
We decide this is enough
Mostly we are tired
and don’t want to spend this precious week
fighting battles
we’ve come here to escape
Despite my habitual avoidance
of workshops with “feeling” in the title
I go to “Feeling Different”
mostly because it’s in the same space as my breakfast
The women named on the OA sign straggle in
The discussion begins
I feel different everywhere
because I am different everywhere
Unlike the other mostly white
acceptably sized
passably feminine
women in the room
I talk about fat hatred
about visible difference
about assumptions
I mention the sign
While I am speaking
another woman says “For you.”
I say, “You can assume
anything I say is my opinion,”
I am the only person using
this larynx today
A self-proclaimed mixed race woman
says if a klan sign were posted
it would be taken down
because we agree that racism is wrong
Apparently we do not agree
that sanctioning
body hatred is wrong
Because the same woman
accuses me of “trying to control the group”
by bringing up the matter of the sign
A thin woman
says OA is not fat hating
it is not about the fat
it is not about dieting
My own history and experience
contradict these assertions
and I say so
She says she has a food addiction
I say I disagree
She says “for me”
I say I disagree
She says “I prefer to let women find their own paths”
Preferring to confront false consciousness
I say, “By disagreeing, how am I
keeping you from finding your path?”
I thought we were here
to talk about difference
We have a difference
You think food is an addiction
I do not
You think restricting intake is a way to cope
I do not
Some think porn is a great way
for women to explore our sexuality
Some think porn is violence
against women
We clash
What do we do?
That remains an unanswered question
For days I reflect upon my OA experience
on the insistence of these two
that OA is anti-dieting
that OA is not about fat hating
I think, well, I haven’t gone in 15 years
Things do change
Maybe they’re right
Maybe there is common ground
I go to a meeting
Just to see
In a christian church
13 women
12 anglo*
Sit in a circle
I open my newcomer’s packet
A pamphlet called “Dignity of Choice”
contains four “eating plans”
including information on “portion sizes”
And says,
“A plan of eating—our individual guide to nourishing foods in appropriate portions—is a tool that moves us toward achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight…We keep in mind that if we are not reaching a healthy body weight, we need to re-examine our plan of eating and question whether we are being honest with ourselves about our food…What is healthy for us is a matter we discuss with our health-care professional…”
(What doctor on this planet will agree
that I am at a “healthy body weight”?
Why not just say,
“If you’re not getting skinny,
you’re cheating”
and be done with it?
Oh, but this isn’t a diet group.
Right.)
There is a reading
“It is weakness, not strength, that binds us together”
“We are powerless”
“Our lives are unmanageable”
“God as we understand him”
They say
Not even
“God as we understand god”
“God as we understand him”
The second woman to speak says
Himynameismartha**i’macompulsiveovereater
(himartha)
“I’m maintaining a 120-pound weight loss”
An approving murmur rounds the circle
Then there is sharing
Greta cares for her sickly parent
“He’s a wonderful man” she says
“But I never was good enough for him.”
She berates herself for eating a bowl of cereal
“When I look in the mirror, or at a photo of myself,” she says
“I think, holy cow—literally, cow.”
Ruthie has just returned from a trip to her hometown
“I ate whatever I wanted, because all my favorite restaurants are there
and it wasn’t too bad, because I was surfing a lot and I was really busy
but that’s not abstinence, that’s just having something else to think about
for a while.”
Cheryl says, “My sponsor
eats the same thing three times a day
every day
I said to her, ‘Don’t you get bored?’
and she says, ‘No, I’m free.’”
Alison says
“That is freedom; only a compulsive overeater
would think it would be boring.”
Marla says, “I realize it’s been too long since I talked to god about my food
because today I ate a whole can of soup for lunch
with a package of crackers
I didn’t need all that
My body needs to get rid of this weight
When I’m abstinent
it’s not me doing it
god’s doing it”
Shauna says
“Abstinence is nothing like dieting.
With dieting, you go on the diet
You go off the diet.
With abstinence
With prayer
The compulsion to overeat is removed
I was abstinent
but then I relapsed.”
I have a disease (goes the refrain)
A killer disease
Maybe I’m born with it
(Maybe it’s maybelline)
But the why doesn’t matter
This disease wants to kill me
I have to work the program or die
I call in my food plan
to my sponsor’s answering machine
I keep a food diary
I write down the night before
what I’ll eat the next day
so I don’t have to think about it
I’m free
Do you want a 30-day chip?
A 60-day?
A 90-day?
A three-month?
A six-month?
A one-year?
If you know
how long it’s been
since you ate a cookie
you are on a diet
When self-hatred
permeates a room
full of women
and the rules require
that it go unchallenged
you participate
in misogyny
What would happen if you ate a cookie
or two
or ten
and shrugged?
Would the world split open?
(But I can’t ask this
because you “request no feedback
crosstalk or criticism of one another”)
I know what would happen
if you talked about it in those rooms
Because at age 20
never more than days from a diet
since elementary school
unwilling to face a whole life
with so much life out of bounds
I asked those questions
and my so-called friends
stopped talking to me
Or they told me
I wasn’t “working my program”
Because the program simply
cannot tolerate
questioning
doubt
and exploration
And though I left then
I still agonized
until one therapist
(likely tired of my whining)
Said “You know?
There’s lots of ways people cope.
Yours isn’t so bad.
You should stop worrying about it.”
Shocking
but the best advice I ever got
though it took years to put into practice
I learned that cravings
go away
when they know they will be satisfied
Once I was convinced
the years of denial and deprivation were over
whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it
if it was available
I could have it
because I love myself
because my body is my partner
my sacred home
not my enemy
because I am beautiful
just the way I am
What I wanted
changed
I think of the time I spend
in the company of proud fat women
the way we take up space
talk in torrents and laugh out loud
joined in joyful chaos
exuberantly focused on enjoying life
on having everything
this culture denies us
and then some
Expanding into our world
with the stunning range of our interests and activities
J the sculptor, O the musician
K the tarot reader
E who wishes
everyone could read
C the activist
D sewing big beautiful clothes
Funnywoman M
The other K who loves ideas
How proud I am to be with them
To be one of them
Unlike these women
women patriarchy has hunched
trying to make themselves smaller
focused on their pain
(I do not doubt their pain is real)
calling restriction “freedom”
calling control “recovery”
asking the god of men for help
relinquishing their will
their desires
their autonomy
their right to question
and self-determination
the gaunt faces and prominent collarbones
of the “sponsors”
evidence of their “success”
successful at “the program”
and at patriarchal womanhood
These are the values
you want to bring to the Lesbian space we share?
These are the beliefs
you want to convince me
do not involve hatred of me
and women who look like me?
This is the program
you offer to other Lesbians
in our own space?
This program lies to women
tells us we can (and should) control our body size
by controlling what we put in our mouths
with god as some kind of diet coach
And if we fail, it’s because we’re not “working our program”
And our “disease” will kill us
(the data and our life experience notwithstanding)
It’s always the dieter’s fault, never the diet
Ooops, but this isn’t a diet group
As the days pass though
my feelings toward you shift
from rage
to pity
You, in a beautiful place
surrounded by friends
with healthy, wholesome meals
prepared for you
Not a man, a TV, a 7-11, or a can of coke
for miles
“can’t make it”
through the week
without a meeting?
Your ideal
Lesbian community
is somewhere “as accepting”
as rooms of hurting, fearful, self-despising, self-denying
women
not allowed to address each other directly
unaware of their beauty
denying their own strength
believing in their eternal brokenness
prohibited from challenging fear and naming abuse
all their problems personal
awareness of the sexism that twists women’s lives under patriarchy
not even a glint in their eye?
I am sorry for the social, emotional, and political
impoverishment
I imagine must characterize your life
if OA seems like solace to you
I realize
I don’t belong in those rooms
(if I ever did)
because I know
that freedom from food obsession
means freedom from food obsession
Means never thinking about what I ate yesterday
or what I might eat tomorrow
(because I’m privileged enough that
food will be there when I want it)
I have no chips to remind me
how long it’s been since I ate a particular food
I have no sponsor to call
with my abstinent eating plan
Freedom means eating food
any food I want
and enjoying it
and forgetting about it
until next time
Sometimes eating more than I’d like, sometimes less
but knowing that it all evens out
knowing that I am no eternally flawed “compulsive overeater”
no different from other women under patriarchy
who struggle with body hatred
and the diet-binge cycle
Freedom
means refusing OA’s image of myself diseased
believing myself whole
healthy
beautiful
expanding into my vibrant passionate life
loving women’s bodies in all their variety
reflecting women’s beauty and strength back to them
bonding in strength
not weakness
living well with problems
knowing women are strong enough to disagree
Knowing I want a community
(a world, really, but baby steps)
that recognizes patriarchal bullshit
when it tries to pass our threshold
that says “Whoa Nelly! Throw that load back
to the mainstream where it belongs!”
A community that wants an end to oppression
based on sex
race
class
age
ability
and
body size and type
I have held my tongue
on this program
for 15 years
but when you
bring fat-hating misogyny
to one of the few places
where I can openly be
my proud fat feminist lesbian self
you make it my business
Spare me your arrogant assumptions
that you know what constitutes sizeism
better than I do
(when you get thrown off an airplane
for your “food addiction”
we’ll talk)
Do me the honor
of believing
I know
whereof I speak
when it comes to fat hatred
Years of living in this body
in this anorexic culture
have given me knowledge
of oppression
that is not available to you
I’m not interested
in “controlling the group”
I am interested
in creating a space
as free of oppression as we can make it
I thought that’s what we were here for
Highlighted text reads, “A plan of eating that helps us achieve a healthy body weight is an essential part of our recovery.”
____________
*The population of New Mexico is approximately 50% female, 43% white, 43% Hispanic, and 10% native. If the attendance at this meeting were representative, there should have been 6 men, 5 people of Hispanic ancestry, and 1 native person there. Hmm.
**All names have been changed.
