Teaching Anorexia

I'm still getting 1000-1400 hits a day looking for Lara Roxx; the article is still here.

Part of this was also posted at HNN:

I'm teaching a class this semester on "Beauty, the Body, and the Euro-American Tradition". It's a brand new course, and it's coming along well (we're heading into the home stretch). One of our many topics is the history of disordered eating and anorexia, and we're using Joan Brumberg's magisterial Fasting Girls as our main text. We've been having some thoughtful, lively discussions around it.

The class of thirty students is largely female. At least half a dozen of the women have shared some of their own experiences with food and anxiety; as they do so, most of their peers nod their heads in vigorous agreement. Two women have told me (separately, and during my office hours) that they are currently struggling with fairly serious eating disorders. Both are in treatment of one form or another; both took the class because they were intensely curious about the historical and cultural roots of their affliction. The problem (and I had been warned about this) is that an intense focus on food and the body -- even in an academic setting -- seems to be fueling rather than diminishing the problem for at least these two students! Brumberg's book is filled with descriptions of various extreme food-refusal techniques employed by women, past and present. One young woman told me recently that it "made (her) feel bad that (she) didn't have the willpower that some of these girls had... but now (she's) got some new ideas! She half-heartedly assured me that she was joking, but it has left me concerned.

Research has shown that attempts to discuss eating disorders (and other self-destructive behaviors, like cutting) often leads to an increase in the very behavior that the discussion was trying to prevent. In a body-obsessed culture, many students clearly find it liberating to hear about the historical origins of our contemporary body obsession. As part of that journey, it is natural and appropriate that they also share their own experiences and feelings. In gender studies, individual narratives, no matter how subjective, are intensely important! But for some of my students, I sense that there is a genuine danger in focusing so intently on the body. I am beginning to consider the possibility that the discussions that we are having and the texts that we are reading are "fueling the disease" for at least a few of my kids (yup, that's what I call 'em). I might well be "teaching anorexia" in more ways than one!

As a gender historian deeply concerned with the well-being of my students, I am convinced that a good course in body history needs to walk a fine line between the therapeutic and the academic. Too much of the former, and the class can degenerate into a talk-show. Too little of the former, and I am flagrantly disregarding the sine qua non of gender studies: that the historical is always personal.

UPDATE: Two historians at HNN take issue with my contention that "the historical is always personal" ought to be "the sine qua non of gender studies." If there's an issue I am willing to (as they say) "go to the mat for", it is precisely that one. But that's another post.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Wow, Hugo, that is extremely disturbing. Body image and our culture's continual obsession with it are very integral to any gender studies course, I would think. Your revelation has pretty much shocked me. Wow. I can't believe the course and discussion is giving these girls a sense of encouragement. Ack!

[Ralph Luker]

Elizabeth, I suspect that the point here isn't that students must necessarily be taking encouragement in what we think is unhealthy behavior from issues and alternatives made available to them in gender studies. They may. What is really important is Hugo's awareness of that possibility and that the teacher can never control how students use information and perspectives opened up to them by formal education.

[Elizabeth]

Ralph - I am afraid my post may have been confusing. I was trying to express my disappointment in what Hugo was realizing about his class, not in Hugo's teaching-style. That's what I get for writing comments as almost stream-of-consciousness, I guess.

[Hugo]

I knew what you meant, Elizabeth... no worries! :-)

[Elizabeth]

Good.