A big part of my intellectual ethic in the book is arguing that because this issue has been overlooked from a political and cultural and intellectual standpoint, partially because of its association with girls, I wanted to give it a really serious treatment that was very grounded in history and science without removing any of that emotion. I wanted to write it from kind of within the distended belly of the beast, if you will. With this issue-eating disorders-people often feel that they have to talk about it from a remove to prove that they’re speaking from a position of recovery or-because it’s so associated with girls and this sort of feminized over-emotion-that they’re rational. Part of that emotional intensity is anger, but I’m also really upset and sad. It is speaking directly to people in pain. ![]() I have been called intense as a person too, so I’m not surprised the book turned out that way. Who did you write this for?Įmmeline Clein: Well, first of all, thank you. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.Įmma Glenn Baker: My first thought when reading this book was: Wow, this is intense, she’s really speaking to people in pain. I spoke to Clein about the failures of traditional rehab, how to cultivate a non-obsessive relationship with food, and the possibilities of healing through embodiment. “I am trying to harmonize with a ghost choir,” she writes, invoking voices from hundreds of historical figures, anonymous posters on Tumblr, and women in popular culture to build what she calls a “choral narrative.” In doing so, she creates some emotional distance between herself and the reader then again, this may be a testament to the difficulty of talking frankly about our relationships to our bodies, never mind our internal and cultural fixation on the topic.ĭead Weight removes the onus from those suffering with eating disorders by offering a path to recovery via a meticulously-documented case against the powers that be. We follow her down rabbit holes into the diagnostic hierarchy of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, eating disorder not otherwise specified, orthorexia), the limits of modern treatment, and the many religious and pseudo-scientific precedents that have come to define our modern misunderstanding-and gross mishandling-of the disease by the medical establishment and popular culture.ĭead Weight is somewhat personal, though Clein seems more interested in defining a collective narrative to explain this particular expression of feminine pain. To make her case, Clein compulsively chronicles the history of what she believes led to the mass phenomenon of disordered eating. Ultimately, she argues that the disease should not be seen as the willful failure of individuals to care for themselves, but as a symptom of a racist, classist, and misogynistic society that regulates the body in pursuit of narrowly-defined conceptions of health and beauty. In her debut essay collection, Clein braids together scientific and academic writing, original reporting, cultural criticism, and memoir in an attempt to reorient our understanding of eating disorders. “Writing about my body is like breaking that mirror, cathartic and chaotic and unclean,” writes Emmeline Clein in Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |