Politics of Female Depravity: anorexia and asceticism

A woman's quest for control through her body

Carly Campbell

Published on UC’s The gargoyle

At age 16, trapped in my room with nothing better to do than look into the mirror and overthink every curve of my adolescent body, I developed the beginnings of a restrictive habit that would spiral into anorexia

At age 18 I was forced to get an MRI to make sure that my bad habit had not had any adverse effects on my brain development.

I remember feeling embarrassed in the body which barely was there as I undressed to get into my hospital gown. The doctors all knew what put me there, I was no longer an intelligent girl, to them, another idiot teen with an eating disorder.

MRI’S are horrifying. I was told to not move, to stare at the dot and to pay no mind to the drilling noises that would surround me for the ten minutes while the machine scanned my brain.

How did I get here?

No one with an eating disorder pictures that it will get to the level it does. No one believes they have a problem until they are crying when forced to eat in front of others

It starts “healthy”. You begin calorie counting, hoping to drop a few pounds. Abs. Tone. Summer body. Women are no strangers to these words, this goal which hangs above our heads once we become conscious of our bodys as an object of observation.

Dieting is addictive.

Attention, Praise, “What's your secret?”

stepping on the scale and the number keeps getting smaller and smaller,

you feel good.

No one talks about how hunger itself becomes a comfort. No one tells you that your image in the mirror will always feel too big. You're smaller than what people would call appealing. It's not enough.

It isn't about them anymore.

Life is hard and it gets harder. Everyone goes away to university, loneliness. Grades are harder to achieve and your parents' marriage is falling apart. When the world is just too confusing and nothing makes sense anymore.

You can always make yourself smaller.

The next thing you know, the thing you controlled for so long controls you.

You can’t even stand without getting lightheaded, it's been a year since your last period and your doctor is telling you you may never be able to have kids.

But women have always done this.

Deprivation is beautiful, or so I had been taught in my catholic upbringing. Just look at the saints.

“Holy anorexia”: virtuous self abnegation and restriction to the point where women died in an effort to prove their devotion to Jesus christ. Amen.

I did a project in my first year on the beguine movement of the middle ages. The beguines were women who mimicked Jesus, the parts of his life which included poverty, care for the less fortunate- oh and extreme fasting. Reading the stories of them, I found a skewed image of the torture I was inflicting on myself.

The worst account was of Mary d’Oignes, a beguine who was in a constant fast. Mary’s only meals consisted of breadcrumbs and vegetables, a caution she took to prevent herself from enjoying food. Her stomach was described to have shrunk so immensely she could not handle most foods. I read how she once opted for bread so harsh it made her mouth bleed. I read how she once accidentally tasted wine and meat, and in the horror of enjoying it, Mary inflicted self harm upon herself until she could feel that her mistake was atoned for.

This was glorified in the text. Mary was strong. Mary was a handmaiden of christ.

Mary was respected.

St. Catherine of Siena was another like Mary. Born during the plague, at 16 she was told to marry her sister's widower. Her sister had died so she would serve as the replacement, she had no choice.

To avoid the marriage, she cut her hair to make herself unappealing in his eyes. She starved herself to rid her body of womanly appeal. She succeeded. Like the other women, her marriage was to Christ, of course she could not marry. She died at age 33 after weakening her body so much she could no longer use her legs. “a full belly does not make for a chaste spirit,” she said. She has a feast day now, how ironic.

But she took control of her life. She had a role in politics, established a monastery for women, and influenced Italian literature.

These texts create the impression that food was nothing more than a worldly desire, not a bodily requirement. Fasting was how these women rejected desire, worldly temptations, the sins of hunger, of sex.

I saw something else though, I saw women in a world with no autonomy finding a way to control something. I saw women looking for a way out.

I saw myself.

Asceticism and anorexia are one in the same coin. They come from a desire for autonomy, for control and from a want to transcend beyond our stifled roles as women. In my quest to be smaller I was moulding myself into some self constructed image of perfection, it was a journey of discipline. I was in control, Me.

In the lowest state I wanted to become nonexistent. I didn't want to appease anyone’s image anymore, fill out shirts, be the sex object men wanted to see my body as. I took my body away because I couldn't deal with the reality of being. I dont think it's beautiful, I think it's sick. I read these stories of saints now and I'm disgusted at the way women have continuously hurt themselves.

But I understand it.

Suicide is a sin but these women found a loophole. These women died smiling, they could not wait to go to heaven.

They could not wait to die.

Can we say they gave up? I don’t think that's fair. What was the life they had otherwise, marrying at 14 to whoever their parents picked, to childbirth and caretaking. To live their short life would be in service to others. Hope in these women's lives was nothing short of hoping that heaven would be better than the living hell they found themselves in. Eve ate the apple, women would forever have to atone.

We all feel that way sometimes. The world that we live in sucks, is waking up even worth it?

I think that they were strong for fasting. I think women are strong for choosing. We all seek to find control in whatever way we can manage.

But am I in control if I die?

Women bear a cross, our role, our expectations. You're born unaware and the comedown is hard. Life is hard and you grow to find that as a woman it's harder.

In the depth of my disorder I thought I was in control but I was wrong.

It's an unfair game but who was I helping by failing to play?

Starving is just starving. It's a slow way to die.

And I have never been more in control then when I chose recovery.