Fat by Forth Christopher E Leitch Alison

Author:Forth, Christopher E,Leitch, Alison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2013-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

INTERLUDE: BETWEEN PLATE AND BODY/METONYMY AND SUBSTANCE

In the English eating disorders inpatient unit where I conducted fieldwork, boxes filled with hundreds of one-portion cubes of butter spoke of institutional life, individual struggle, and the need to “fatten” to save lives. But butter was also the subject of the most subversive stories about avoiding this clinical food-as-treatment paradigm. Butter was smeared into hair, under chairs, and on clothes—all activities aimed at avoiding both the ingestion of and any contact with fat. This avoidance was also clear in many other contexts on the unit. Cooking Group was held once a week in the fading light of Wednesday evenings. This was attended by a few patients nearing the end of their admissions, who had been directed by their care plans to come together with the occupational therapist to prepare meals under supervision. Each patient planned, shopped for, and cooked dinner, and then everyone participating in that week’s Cooking Group ate together in a room separate from the main dining room. The occupational therapist and participants generously let me join them on many Wednesday evenings, during which the usual atmosphere of Cooking Group was a mixture of chat, music, and gallows humor. Yet, in contrast to the free ebb and flow of laughter and words, participants often expressed anguish at touching food. Some would hold serving utensils by the tip, as far away as possible from the cooking food, and would jump back hastily if a drop of mashed potato or rice pudding slid off the spoon. Others would wash their hands frequently, not only after contact with food, but sometimes even after stirring the saucepan. During the cooking, utensils were continually placed in the sink and new ones got out for each stir. Some participants also held their noses and hid their faces from cooking smells. The constant resurrection of boundaries against food is part of the processual protection of anorexia, which keeps one’s friend and one’s personhood present in opposition to eating, as explored in Part One. However, what became particularly clear in Cooking Group was the specific positioning of fat in this process; fat was more frequently described as “contaminating” and “dangerous” and aroused more fear than other foods. Informants’ conceptualizations of this substance centered on two contrasting material properties; it was seen as static, engulfing, and cloying as well as mobile, sneaky, and uncontainable.

During one week’s Cooking Group Claudine and I made a risotto. Claudine found it difficult to place the “cleaner” food, which to her was the drier food, such as rice, in the pot with the oil. She described feeling that the oil sullied the rice but also, importantly, trapped it. Her horror focused on the way in which the oil entirely coated the rice, engulfing it with a threatening permanence. This sense of stifling stasis was also present in informants’ discussions of how oil, butter, and grease coated hands, lips, and the insides of their mouths. In conversation about the therapeutic enforcement of meals, which is inherent

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