Eating Disorder Art - Bulimia
Attributions and artist statement for Eating Disorder Art - “Bulimia”
from the Groupie Feminism Art Series
Attributions
A bathroom, a refrigerator, food and beverages, toiletries, a radio cassette player, a journal with pen from American Girl accessories
Laxatives from a drugstore
A cake drum from a forgotten store
26 1/2" H, 40" W, 29" D
2021
Bathroom:
A radio and cassette player; Love's Baby Soft perfume; a butterfly-shaped bottle of body cream; body powder; soaps in a flowery box; two rolls of pink toilet paper; 4 cassette tapes with cassette covers; a toilet that makes a flushing sound when the handle is pushed, filled with vomit and diarrhea; a bath mat; a round plate of white laxative pills; toilet paper roll and a pack of toilet tissue; tissue box; a shower with floral-print shower curtain, gold rod and hooks; shampoo; a wastebasket with a butterfly graphic; a sink with mirror on a pink vanity with bright orange trim and an orange towel; toothpaste, toothbrush, and flower-shaped soap; a bath mat; a dark pink laundry hamper with daisy graphics; a dark pink towel wrap; a notebook and pen; and a bottle of orange soda.
Kitchen:
A coral-colored refrigerator with:
A box of ice pops; a blue bowl of ice cream topped with chocolate syrup, candy pieces, and whipped cream, with a metal spoon; an ice tray; one TV dinner; a Jell-O mold; a jar of strawberry jam; a jar of grape jam; two bars of butter; two bottles of milk; a casserole; a ham; seven eggs; three bottles orange soda; two sparkling water drinks with a green straw and a blue straw; a jar of relish; a jar of mustard; one fruit punch can with a blue straw atop two TV dinners.
A round gold scalloped cake drum with food and beverages, all ideally vegan but usually not, a devastating demonstration of the similarity between how girls and women are manipulated in patriarchy and how animals are manipulated in human-centric culture.
Four pink wedding cupcakes; a metal fork; a round plate of bacon and eggs; a milkshake; Hostess chocolate cupcake with wavy white stripe; a sandwich; a shish kebob; a hot dog with mustard on a bun; a lavendar soft-serve ice cream cone; a purple cupcake; pink champagne with fruit; a chocolate and vanilla soft-serve ice cream cone; a walnut brownie topped with whipped cream on a round plate; and a bottle of orange soda.
A pitcher of chocolate mousse.
A chocolate pie topped by cream and a berry on a square gold tray
A vanilla cake surrounded by pink laxative pills on a round gold tray
A pitcher of chocolate milkshake.
Pepperoni pizza in a cardboard box with two removable slices, a metal fork, and a plate
One bowl corn chips; one fruit punch can with a green straw
All objects from American Girl except for:
Twenty pink laxative pills, thirty white laxative pills, and the gold cake drum
Artist Statement
Sometimes I miss my bulimic days, head in the toilet. Bulimia was my friend, at first. It was fun and cozy and liberating. It helped me maintain or even lose weight, it gave me a project, and I could eat whatever I wanted without shame or guilt or panic. After two years it really had a hold on me. I spent my time terrified of food and obsessed with finding more food and somehow purging it. My moods and self-esteem were entirely based on what I weighed and whether or not I thoroughly purged. Bulimia took so much of my time and energy, and also nutrients and the ability to feel ok about eating at all. Which was already a struggle. Because I'd always been fat, and occasionally judged dismissively or cruelly for it, I never felt as though I had a right to eat.
A few names I've been called: "Fatty." "Fat and crazy." "Fat Slut." "Gordita." "Dog."
One day not long ago I made a list of all the times in my life strangers or people I barely knew insulted me for my weight, or advised me (without my asking for advice) on how to lose weight. It's a long list.
Family members have insulted me, even when they think they are being loving or just stating facts. When I was in high school, my father told me I'd never win any beauty contests so I better focus on my mind. But I wasn't entering a beauty contest. His mother told me, when I was in my 30s, that when I ran around as a kid I was out of breath and couldn’t run fast because of my size. But people get out of breath when they run around. One of my uncles told me that breasts are made of fat and so smaller breasts are better. But fat is natural in any-sized breast. When I was in my late thirties, my father and I were discussing my childhood, and he mentioned picking me up after school one day when I was in 4th grade, commenting, "You were bigger than everybody." So? Just recently, out of the blue, one of my aunts told me how sorry she felt for me when I was young because "you were so much bigger than the other girls, and you couldn’t find clothes or shoes to fit. It was so sad." But I did find clothes and shoes that fit. I was nominated (and won) Best Dressed in 7th grade. That year, I was also nominated for Best Looking but I could only run for one, and I chose Best Dressed. Also that year, the co-owner of a popular restaurant tossed a dime to me and said, "Call me when you're eighteen." Then tossed a quarter for inflation. My best friend in high school stole clothes from me because she liked them. In 9th grade, a Slam Book voted me one of the top three most attractive students in high school. Another best friend won Best Looking in 12th grade, but she voted for me in that category. Those rankings I was relieved by then because I was approved of but they anger me now because there was a ranking at all. I make sure to dress with the flair and imagination of a rock star, groupie, or romantic no matter what I weigh or how little money I have, or how subtle that flair might be. Even if it's simply a sparkly hair clip, or a tiara.
From 1979 - 1982, I went to midnight movies. My sorrow when I watched the films that featured groupies was more immense than my body. The Song Remains the Same (1976), Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), Pink Floyd - The Wall (1982) - those movies devastated me because the bodies of girls and women were objectified, and because my body looked nothing like theirs.
A boy I kissed then said as we paused, "You're so big." When my childhood friend and I reunited in our fifties and discussed the past, she said, "You were big."
The summer before high school, when I was 14 years old in 1980, my father encouraged me to lose weight by following the Scarsdale Diet. I followed his advice, and lost thirty-four pounds. I had thirty-one pounds more to go, if I wanted to weigh what the doctor's chart told me to weigh.
But I struggled. I gained twelve pounds. High school began. I decided to go on a low-calorie diet of anything I wanted as long as I ate under seven hundred calories a day. That went great until one night I went off it. I called dad. "Dad, I just ate a sandwich and an apple and now I'm over my 700 calories." He said, "Why don't you try throwing it up?" I'd heard of anorexia, I knew those girls got skinny by vomiting and starving. I'd tried - once. In 7th grade, but it was hard to make myself throw up. But that night in ninth grade, I thought I'd try again. And it was so easy.
I figured if I had to vomit up my food, I might as well eat a lot to make the vomiting worth it. I hugged myself after an early episode, because I knew I was doing something dangerous. But I was ready. I wanted to be skinny.
I couldn't wait to be skinny. I wanted to be anorexic. I'd always been fat, and hated myself for it. I'd never heard of bulimia.
I was at Planned Parenthood later that year reading their pamphlets when I learned about bulimia. By then, I was bulimic.
I was bulimic from the time I was 14 until I was 23. I had a two-day relapse when I was 30, and a five-month relapse when I was 33. I've been abstinent since then (I'm 54 now).
When I was a girl, wearing a big blue shapeless floor-length gown (with tattered lace adding a cinematic glamour), eating and reading, watching old movies of beautiful dancers, staying in bed, staying in one place, helped me to ignore what was so painful to admit, that I would not be running around outside in some cute clothes like some carefree girl in the sunshine.
One party when I was in third grade promised grand illusion. My mom rented a hoop skirt for me to wear to a themed ball. It felt special, shopping for the trip I would take with my father and stepmother to the event. We were staying in a hotel, too. I had such fun imagining I was like the satiny women I admired in movies, getting ready the way they did for galas and glamour as I showered, and dressed. When I wiped the steam off the mirror I didn’t look beautiful, but I hoped the magic of my new peach-colored and lace gown would help. When my father saw me, he said, "You look like shit."
My earliest memory is of a doctor telling me I was too fat when I was five years old. That night, after my younger brother and I bathed, my mom took pictures. But before she did, I made sure to cover myself head to toe in towels. My brother stands gleefully naked beside me.
I hated getting my body dressed when I was a kid. But freedom when I picked out my own clothes the summer after fifth grade, freedom when I started dressing slutty in seventh, freedom when I became bulimic in ninth. Bulimia a way of talking. My vomit a language. My slutty clothes a tattoo articulating.
My eating disorder a way of talking, vomit a collapsing language, here's my pound of flesh. Spilling my guts.
Most of the time I stayed home from school when I was a kid, alone, reading comics and Nancy Drew mysteries, watching TV, and writing movie stars from the past for autographs. Eating. Laying out an entire loaf of bread, slice by neat slice, knifing mayonnaise or mustard onto each, putting them together like some sad assembly line, making several sandwiches and eating each and every one like it was a job to do. Even when I no longer wanted to do it. After the initial excitement of order was gone, replaced by the necessity of compulsion. The baby-sitter would show up at three pm. As if I had gone to school. When I did, I stared out the window in the backseat as Mom drove, marking time as if the seconds were gravestones. The funeral of school.
slug inside shell sliming out towards the skinny girls leaping into tomorrow
my vomit a retching of relief
wretched relief
rolling out a scroll of half-digested food
sometimes stuck in my throat
panicky and resolute, I’d choke the rest of it out
I usually used my finger to force myself to vomit, but if it was difficult, I'd use a toothbrush. Sometimes, I used Milk of Magnesia or Ex-Lax. I always stole the Ex-Lax. When I was in college, a naive professor gave an article to me as research for the paper about eating disorders that I was writing. The article discussed Syrup of Ipecac as a way to induce vomiting. I'd never heard of that syrup, so I tried it a few times. That stuff was scary, made the vomiting out of control, made my heart pound too fast and I could hear my heart beat.
I listened to music loud to drown out the sounds.
It made my brother cry, hearing me vomit, our family was so fucked up and sad.
Over the years my brother calls, we talk about the past, softly and with love “Remember? Remember?” his words curling around me like some sweet sugar a treat that is only bitter later, his words flowing floured sweet and so heavy down my throat opening to throw up puke as thick as mud silent sludge makes violent way volcano girl mouth
fat girl throwing up
after purges my hipbones
binge dreams and vomit hopes.
My childhood was all about folding in sweet dreams of princess with the most cake
a fat girl Pisces song
an adolescence I spent
reading magazines teen dreams
perfume packets promising sweet smells and no stains
reading skinny girl stories
chocolate and Cheetos on the page
my fingerprints
my sweet fat softening like dough my belly rose an unkempt goddess
throwing up was my salvation my permission
a toilet rim meditation
violent usurpation.
If I'd ever had a doubt that I was addicted to binging and purging, that last relapse convinced me. It was a nightmare. I'd usually never binged more than once a day, but during that last relapse I was binging and purging several times a day. The digital clock too slow as I waited in the dark, watching for its red numbers to tell me it was midnight so I could binge and purge again. I was trying to keep it at three times a day.
The smell of certain soaps reminds me of purging. I cleaned the toilet, the floor around the toilet, and the wall behind the toilet thoroughly after each purge. I washed my hands, my arms, my face, and brushed my teeth. That lingering smell of vomit.
Over the years, there were different things that helped me get and maintain abstinence. Consistent journal-writing from the time I was 14; a good counselor when I was 23; lack of money to buy much food when I moved out of my mom's apartment at 23; a stay at a hospital when I was 23 where I was monitored after each meal; a 12-step program when I was 32 that taught me I was allowed to eat; accepting my body; and sitting on my hands when I desperately wanted to relapse again at 37. Plus, I always remember what my mom told me Richard Burton, an actor who struggled with alcoholism, said: it's not that you fall down. It's that you get back up. Also, the realization that being this age and bulimic would be too hard on my body. Jane Fonda, an actor and fitness guru, talks about how much longer it took for her to recover from a bulimic episode in middle age than it did in her youth.
Karen Carpenter's death from anorexia nervosa-related heart issues did not deter me, such was my desire to be skinny. But all these years later, as famous people increasingly and candidly share their experiences with what one writer friend calls "body panic" and eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating, I find strength in their stories, deepening my commitment to abstinence from bulimia. Paula Abdul, Fiona Apple, Russell Brand, Mel C (Sporty Spice) from The Spice Girls, Judy Collins, Susan Dey, Marianne Faithfull, Lady Gaga, Gerri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) from The Spice Girls, P.J. Harvey, Janet Jackson, Elton John, Kesha, Zoë Kravitz, Alanis Morissette, Dolly Parton, Nicole Scherzinger from The Pussycat Dolls, Ann Wilson from Heart, Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine, and Amy Winehouse have reportedly all struggled with eating disorders, most of whom experienced binge-eating and/or bulimia.
This assemblage artwork is groupie feminism because, as my mom pointed out, fat is a feminist issue, reminding me of Susie Orbach's 1978 book. I've interviewed several groupies for my mixtape zine about groupies, and a few have shared with me their experiences with wanting to be skinny, or with having an eating disorder.
When I've hung around groupies and groupie wannabes, some have commented on my large size, or have repeatedly mentioned their smaller size as though being smaller is desirable. Which it is, in our culture. It reminds me of why I never actually was a groupie, even though I wanted to be one: I suspected the rock star would not choose me because I was too fat. I remember the t-shirt that said, "No fat chicks." It's why I didn't go to the Bon Jovi after party even though the roadie who invited me did so while I was sunbathing in a swimsuit, poolside, at the hotel where the band was staying. I binged and purged that night instead.
A memoir by a rock star's girlfriend makes fun of groupies who wear a size 12. I watched one famous groupie repeatedly weigh herself after eating. A famous rock band told one notorious groupie they were worried about her because she had lost so much weight, and that she had to start eating again and gain weight to get healthy. My mom mused that some groupies are starving for attention and, referring to the feminist tract, Becoming Visible: Women in European History (eds., Bridenthal and Koonz, 1977), observed that groupies, like girls and women who aren't groupies, struggle to become visible, too.
Groupies are not just a piece of ass, my mom said, quoting me. Groupies are a piece of music history, representing feminism's trajectory.
Groupies have been maligned for expressing sexual appetite. Similarly, girls and women have been maligned for having an appetite to eat enough. People have judged me for my weight throughout my life. Internalized fatphobia. Some girls and women - including self-avowed feminist activists and musicians - have judged me for eating, whether I'm having just a bite or two servings, and have mentioned they wear smaller-sized dresses than I. When the chef at the restaurant where I worked as a host created an original dessert and named it after me, I was too self-conscious to even take a bite. I just stood at my host station, observing that it soon sold out. It was a beautiful dessert. One of the servers commented that it looked like sex. It was a torte of mocha dacquoise, white chocolate ganache, and amaretto.
Movies, TV programs, and books make fun of the larger actor or character, who tend to be the punchline or the gag. Or rhetorically: if anyone is eating, it's usually the larger actor or character. I'll never forget that classmate in graduate school who read from her soon-to-be-published book, and made almost everyone in the audience laugh uproariously when she described a character as a "fat loser." Or another classmate there who, when someone offered her a doughnut, said no, and gestured to me several rows back, saying "She'll eat it, give it to her." She'd never eaten with me, we'd rarely spoken to each other, she had no idea what I did or didn't eat.
Bulimia translates as ox-hunger. Even the word "bulimic" sounds fat. But fat really is a feminist issue. So is having a healthy appetite - for sex, and for food.
It's interesting to me that bulimia happened after I went on long-term diets or restrictive food plans. I started bulimia after dieting for about seven months and losing thirty-four pounds when I was 14, and had the worst bulimic relapse ever when I was 33, after being on a 12-step food plan for about eight months during which I lost fifty-three pounds, the only time in my life I ever reached goal weight.
I made this assemblage artwork to discuss eating and eating disorders. Especially bulimia, because usually it's the skinny girls who get the attention. Most of the movies and books are about anorexics. So my art is about the bulimic, too.
Attributions and Artist Statement
Food for Thought
34” x 25” x 16”
1 Mrs. Butterworth syrup brown grass bottle
1 Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Parmesan yellow can
1 Chicken of the Sea tuna fish green can, small
1 Chicken of the Sea tuna fish green can, large
1 Uncle Ben’s white rice orange box
1 Uncle Ben’s long grain rice orange box
1 Aunt Jemina syrup clear bottle, full
1 Aunt Jemima syrup clear bottle, empty
1 Land O Lakes butter green, yellow and white box
1 Land O Lakes butter green, yellow and white box folded and modified
1 oilcloth, turquoise with red cherry and green leaf print
8 paper advertisements, vintage circa 1970s, five for Chicken of the Sea and three for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee
2024
This assemblage is about imagery that’s been updated or banned because it’s original depiction represented racial stereotyping. I chose only items I actually remember in the kitchen from when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. I chose advertisements for some of the food from vintage magazines from around the 1970s.
Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima and Mia were updated in 2020 by dropping or altering the imagery of the people and the brand names. Uncle Ben, a 70-year-old brand in 2020, and Aunt Jemima, a 131-year-old brand in 2020, originally used imagery based on slaves. Mia, an indigenous woman pictured on the Land O Lakes package, was the imagery for almost 92 years in 2020.
I remember as though it were yesterday when my uncle showed me the trick with the Land O Lakes packaging: cut out the butter Mia holds so it’s a flap that can open, fold her legs up so her knees can be seen through the flap, and suddenly her knees are her breasts. I didn’t like it. Sure, I was a curious eight-year old who was interested in what bodies looked like, and I appreciated that it was like a magic trick, but I felt somehow that it was a creepy violation of a female’s body. Which was something I was distantly aware of as I watched TV shows and movies and read comics and books and adult magazines: that girls and women were sneaked upon and that female bodies were unwillingly ravished.
The item whose imagery hasn’t been banned is the mermaid for Chicken of the Sea tuna fish. I wonder why she hasn’t been, considering her idealized traits of being blonde and thin and white. I’ve also never liked when female genitalia is compared to fish.
Plans were made to update the Mrs. Butterworth bottle but it hasn’t been done yet. Mrs. Butterworth began in 1961. Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, founded in 1928, has an image that hasn’t been banned. He could be considered a stereotype. I wonder if these two examples reflect the racial and gender stereotyping of the perceiver rather than actual prejudice; Mrs. Butterworth’s body could be any body, and Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee really was founded by a man. Both examples point to the interaction of the individual, the culture in which that individual lives, and the stereotype that is formed. It’s food for thought.
I chose the oil cloth because although we never had one in our family, it reminds me of the 1970s, updated.
Bibliography
McEvoy, Jemina. “Mrs. Butterworth’s To Undergo A ‘Complete Brand And Packaging Review’ Along With Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s.” Forbes. June 17, 2020. Updated April 14, 2022.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/17/mrs-butterworths-to-undergo-a-complete-brand-and-packaging-review-along-with-aunt-jemima-uncle-bens/ Accessed online 7.6.24.
Olson, Alexandra. “Mars drops Uncle Ben’s, reveals new name for rice brand.” AP News. September 23, 2020.
Accessed online 7.6.24.
Wu, Katherine J. “Land O’ Lakes Drops the Iconic Logo of an Indigenous Woman From Its Branding.” Smithsonian Magazine. April 28, 2020.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mia-land-olakes-iconic-indigenous-woman-departs-packaging-mixed-reactions-180974760/ Accessed online 7.6.24.
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