Eating

One of my greatest fears, as the mother of girls, is that my daughters will become anorexic. Obviously this fear speaks to my western upper-middle-class privilege: I’m not worried that they’ll be hungry or homeless, that they won’t get an education, that they’ll be molested or raped (though I suppose I could easily worry about that, I just don’t). And of course it also speaks to my fear of my own parenting: I’m well aware of the effects of parental pressure, especially upon first-born girls, and though I try my hardest not to apply any, M already shows signs of putting incredible pressure on herself, as her mother certainly does.

I’m a bit comforted by the fact that M has inherited her father and aunt’s ectomorphic physique, and as E loses her baby fat, she seems to be heading that way too. They certainly will have no physical reason to consider themselves fat, and we do everything we can to promote the idea that all kinds of bodies are beautiful, that it’s most important to be active and healthy, etc. This effort involves the vigorous suppression of my own negative body issues whenever they’re around, so I suppose it’s good for me too.

But the problem with M’s lean body is that, like her aunt, she NEEDS food. I don’t. I can go a long time without eating, and even when I’m hungry it doesn’t really bother me. When I’m tired it’s another story, though, which helps me sympathize with M. If she doesn’t eat every three hours or so, she collapses--in anger, tears, frustration, whatever. Usually we feed her on schedule and everything is fine, but if we get home too late or get absorbed in an activity or simply forget, it’s all over.

The smallest negative emotion or experience immediately escalates into the greatest catastrophe ever, and she is absolutely certain that the issue is that the world is ending, not that she needs something to eat. And when I say something to eat, I mean barely anything: two bites of bread and butter will do it. But getting those two bites into her can take a long and painful time. I reason, I cajole, I put food in front of her, I call her dad at work so he can reason and cajole. Eventually, somehow, we persuade her, and two bites later she is apologizing and crying some more because she feels bad about getting into such a state, and two bites later she is gobbling her bread and butter and asking for more, and two pieces of bread and butter later she is her usual cheerful self and it’s as if nothing ever happened.

We’re trying to teach her to monitor herself, to ask herself whether she is hungry if she starts feeling bad, and sometimes it works, or at least helps. There are also times when she feels bad and it obviously has nothing to do with hunger--if she bursts into tears right after breakfast, we don’t start with bread and butter. But the fact is, when she gets mad or sad or overly frustrated, the first thing we usually ask is whether she’s hungry. And when she gets into a total state, we insist that she eat. Which means that we are teaching her to respond to her emotions with food. Which worries me, because there’s a fine line between the physiological and the psychological, and I feel like we’re walking it.