MeMe Roth: Fat Shaming, Victim Blaming.

"The defence has been made in the case of sex criminals that there is pleasure on the part of the victim. The same is true with what we're doing with food. We may abuse our bodies with food, but it's incredibly pleasurable. From a food marketer's point of view, when your quote unquote victim is so willing and enjoying of the process, who's fighting back?"
-MeMe Roth speaking to reporter Gaby Wood from The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/24/meme-roth-obesity-nutrition

Through The F-Word, an excellent blog that I follow, I learned about MeMe Roth’s interview with a reporter from the Guardian where, among other outrageous statements, Roth compared rape to “overeating”. I use quotes because “overeating” is entirely subjective. In “The Woman Who Hates Food.” reporter Gaby Wood sits down for an “after lunch” meeting with Ms. Roth and is treated to a dizzying array of facts and statistics mingled in with incomprehensible analogies. Upon hearing these, Wood comments in her article that Roth’s “formulations are of such questionable sanity that they can't possibly help her cause.” One can only hope. Though many points have already been made by eloquent bloggers, I feel compelled to add my own analysis regarding Roth’s incoherent and offensive rape analogy. As a survivor of domestic violence and someone with eating issues, the quote strikes me as troublesome on many levels. Roth makes many egregious parallels between rape and “food abuse” or “abuse by food that are not only illogical but that also manage to uphold many hurtful myths and beliefs about rape/abuse and victims.

In the first part of her comment, Roth conflates “pleasure” with a physical reaction. The body may react physically even when the victim’s reaction is terror and revulsion. Lubrication is the body’s way of preparing for the man to physically enter and continuous contact with the man’s penis will stimulate the body to become wet. If the vagina didn’t become wet prior to penetration, the tissues can be ripped. Child rape victims can often be torn up inside by the penis or object used to penetrate them and require years of surgery to repair the damage, provided that it can be fixed. The emotional and psychological effects of the rape can take many years to recover from and come to terms with. Many survivors experience tremendous guilt and confusion for having sexually responded to their rapists or experiencing pleasurable sensations during the assault. The body cannot differentiate between unwanted and wanted sexual stimulation. Sometimes the body can become sexually aroused against the person’s will. Every man probably has a story of trying to hide an erection or emission that came at an inopportune time. People can become physically aroused in times of stress or emotional strain. A person can become aroused and wet while engaging in sports or vigorous physical exercise. Conversely some people are unable to become aroused of physically respond to sexual stimulation and contact even when they want to.

People who struggle with emotional eating often are able to differentiate between food they wished to or intended to eat and food they gorged on when an urge to binge took over. Bulimic individuals , especially pregnant women who aren’t able to stop their behaviors for the duration of the pregnancy, often use a system of “markers” wherein they eat a normal meal or snack and then eat a “marker” such as carrots before beginning to binge and purge. When they’ve purged the carrots they know that they’ve gotten rid of the excess food they binged on. It seems to be a very systematic process but in reality, these men and women have no control over their behavior and want to stop but cannot. Many women who overeat or binge and purge take no pleasure in the foods they are consuming and do not even taste them as they go down. The frenetic pace that often accompanies a binge or binge and purge session doesn’t allow for one to savor the taste of a food or enjoy eating it. They are “abusing” food, meaning using it to act out in disordered ways and using it as a means of expressing emotional pain or a feeling of loss of control (or attempt to regain control in some cases of bulimia) but they are not finding it pleasurable. Instead they are scared and disgusted by their behavior and work very hard to hide it from others. A compulsion or compulsive behavior, while it might bring about a short-term relief or feeling of emotional release, is inherently unpleasant and any tiny bit of respite depends wholly on satisfying the compulsion, or at least holding off the obsessive feelings for the moment.

Abuse is one-sided violence if viewed in the context of coercive control (While the use of violence during couple fights is troublesome, I do not use the term “abuse” to describe it if the violence is outside the context of coercive control. If the violence is not accompanied by attempts by one partner to control the other financially, emotionally, and physically and to prevent them from leaving if they want to, I will not refer to it as “abuse”). Abuse implies that a person is being controlled by an external force and that their attempts to assert their own will are thwarted by use of physical/emotional violence, isolation, financial control, stalking, and threats to children/pets/family/friends, to name a few popular tactics. I have never heard of any food that could do these things (and a person dressed in a hot dog or chicken costume doesn’t count). I don’t recall ever hearing about a person filing a complaint against an orange that wouldn’t quit following them around and leaving notes on their car, or a mutton chop that suddenly came to life and barred someone from exiting the house, or a hamburger that controlled the family finances and or a hamburger that threatened to kill someone’s pet or children if she dared leave.

Roth describes the “food abuse” abuse process as internal and external. We “abuse ourselves with food” and we are abused by food via the food marketer. In the context of talking about eating disordered behavior and dynamics, a sufferer could be seen to be abusing themselves through their self destructive behavior, as all of their anger, fear, and guilt is turned inward. But Roth is not referring to those who suffer from eating disorders or disordered eating. Roth conflates “abuse” with “use”. It is the type of and quantity of food that matters here, not one’s control over it or emotional issues surrounding it. I don’t believe she would classify someone who is eating a small salad as “abusing themselves with food”. Rather the person who “abuses themselves with food” is the person who is eating the “wrong” foods, “unhealthy foods”, or eating “too much.”. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, eating disordered people, especially persons with anorexia use these terms to justify their eating habits and beliefs about food. They rationalize their behavior as “normal” or “healthy” because they are refusing to eat foods that are viewed to be high in calories or fattening and claim they feel full even after meals of the “safe” foods they do allow themselves to eat, albeit in tiny amounts. I doubt that Roth would categorize these sufferers as “food abusers”.

As for the issue of food abuse via the food marketer, I find it problematic for several reasons; the first reason being that there is a coercive control dynamic between the food marketer and the consumer. Marketers may use aggressive advertising campaigns, low prices, and misleading information in order to sell their products but the consumer, assuming they can afford and have access to healthful foods and fresh vegetables and thus can choose- has other alternatives. They have a breathtaking array of foods, brands, and stores to choose from. And the individual consumer who chooses to eschew the “food marketers’” products and instead to buy other foods would probably not be noticed by said food marketers. This scenario is in no way comparable to the intense scrutiny, control, and manipulation that the abused person is subjected to by their partner. If the person dresses in a “too sexy” manner, talks to “bad” friends, or refuses to account for there whereabouts, she could find herself in physical danger or be subject to other verbal and emotional assaults such as name calling, threats, or destruction of her personal possessions. A food marketer is not able to exact that kind of retaliation against someone for not buying their products. So the concept of abuse via food marketer is absurd at best and incredibly insensitive to the realities of abused women and demeaning to those who have suffered abuse and/or rape.

Criticism of the food industry and many of its questionable practices is valid and deserves a place in national discourses on nutrition. The issue of healthy versus unhealthy foods is more than the black-and-white issue that Ms. Roth presents it to be (and come to think of it, black-and-white thinking is a sign of a potential eating disorder). If the issue is examined through a broader lens of race and class, “choice” depends on availability and accessibility. One’s ability to “choose” is hindered if they aren’t presented with viable alternatives. A person who has access to large grocery stores with fresh vegetables delivered daily and low prices and the money to purchase them has much more of a choice than a poor person living in the inner city who only has access through food at corner bodegas where markups are high and vegetables are either not in stock of the ones available are expensive and of poor quality. I can say more on this topic but I will save it for another post.

MeMe Roth believes that fat shaming will lead to a thinner and purportedly “healthier” world. From the analogy she gave to the reporter, I can’t help but wonder what other kinds of shaming she thinks will be effective in bringing about this “thinner, healthier world”. As many victims of abuse or rape turn to food to cope, whether through starving, binging, or purging, I am curious as to where and how Roth would draw the line when it comes to shaming someone for being “fat”. Would she be as condemning of a rape victim using food to “stuff down” the emotions or to make herself bigger and hence unattractive as she is of the “ordinary person” who she believes indulges in “too much” of all the “wrong foods”? Roth’s desire for a thinner world drives her to savagely criticize and shame others, promoting “nutrition” while neglecting her own physical and psychological health and well-being. I wonder if she wants to see thinness around her because she cannot see it in herself. Who wants to be surrounded by what they hate, especially when what they hate is usually something that is also present in themselves whether rightly or wrongly. People who hate those who are fat often fear that they too could become fat just as people who revile those who are labeled as mentally ill or “crazy” are often afraid they are also “crazy” or could easily end up like that. I can understand Roth wanting to validate her own thinness and the practices she resorts to in order to maintain it as “normal”. But what I don’t condone is taking this to a national level and trying to impose this obsessiveness upon others through misinformation and shaming tactics. I wish she would get help instead of pushing her version of “help” upon others.

http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2009/05/27/the-skinny-on-meme-roth/

http://kateharding.net/2009/05/27/its-not-easy-being-meme/

http://jezebel.com/5269464/anti+obesity-activist-meme-roth-compares-eating-to-rape