A HUNGER SO WIDE AND SO DEEP: THE POLITICS OF INVISIBILITY

How were women of color and lesbians left out of media attention and research on eating problems in the first place, given that the stereotype of eating problems as a golden girl's disease is probably more indicative of which women have been studied than of actual prevalence? Certainly, the common reliance on studies conducted in hospitals, clinical settings, private high schools, and colleges skewed public perceptions of those most vulnerable to developing anorexia or bulimia. Basing theory on studies restricted to these locations has limited knowledge of women who are not in college, of women of color, of older women and poor women.

This skewed focus has long-term and potentially debilitating consequences. The stereotype that eating problems are "white girl" phenomena has led many highly trained professionals to either misdiagnose or ignore women of color. Maria Root explains that "social stereotypes of plump or obese Black, Latina or American Indian women may avert the therapist from examining any issues around food and body image. Similarly a thin, Japanese American woman may not be assessed for an eating disorder." When women of color are treated, their eating problems tend to be more severe as a result of delays in diagnosis. Among the women I interviewed, only two had been diagnosed bulimic or anorexic by physicians, yet all who said they were anorexic or bulimic fit the diagnostic criteria (DSM-111) for these diagnoses.

Given these realities, a more important question than how these groups of women have been made invisible may be why theorists and the media have been dedicated to stereotyped images of eating problems. The answer to this question lies in the way that ideology about black women's bodies has been invisibly inscribed onto what is professed about white women's bodies. In her work on biases in higher education curricula, Patricia Hill Collins explains, "While it may appear that the curriculum is 'Black womanless' and that African-American women have been 'excluded,' in actuality subordinated groups have been included in traditional disciplines through the groups' invisibility." Toni Morrison also offers essential tools for uncovering ideology about race and racism in literature, tools that apply well to developing race-conscious health research. In her groundbreaking essay "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" — which she later expanded into the book Playing in the Dark— Morrison unravels the illusion that traditional literature in the United States has been "race free" or "universal," recognizing the presence of Afro-Americans, whether spoken or not, in the work of such well-known white writers as Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, Cather, and Hemingway, to name a few. Using Melville as a case in point, Morrison recognizes the presence of Afro-Americans and slavery in Moby Dick, pointing out that traditional American literature is both informed and determined by this presence. For Morrison, this analysis doubles the fascination and power of the great American writers. She warns us that "defending the Eurocentric Western posture in literature as not only 'universal' but also 'race-free' may have resulted in lobotomizing that literature, and in diminishing both the art and the artist." Avoiding future lobotomies, she writes, depends on excavating the "ghost in the machine"—the ways in which the "presence of Afro-Americans has shaped the choices, the language, the structure and the meaning of so much American literature."

Morrison's method of searching for the ghost in the machine of American literature can reveal substantial biases in research on women's mental health. This tool for theoretical excavation dredges up stereotypes of women of color, lesbians, and working-class women that not only are debilitating for these women but also ultimately backfire on white heterosexual women as well.

The portrayal of bulimia and anorexia as appearance-based disorders is rooted in a notion of femininity in which white middle- and upper-class women are presented as frivolous, obsessed with their bodies, and accepting of narrow gender roles. This representation, like the reputation of AIDS and some cancers, fuels people's tremendous shame and guilt about them. The depiction of middle-class women as vain and obsessive is intimately linked to the assumption that working-class women are the opposite: one step away from being hungry, ugly, and therefore not susceptible to eating problems. The dichotomy drawn between working-class and middle-class women reflects the biased notion that middle-class people create symbolic, abstract relations through their actions and thought while working-class people relate to the world in literal, concrete ways. Within this framework, middle- and upper-class women's eating patterns are imbued with all kinds of symbolic significance—as a way of rebelling against parents, striving for perfection, and responding to conflicting gender expectations. The logic that working-class women are exempt from eating problems, by contrast, strips away any possible symbolic significance or emotional sustenance that food may have or give in their lives. Recognizing that women may develop eating problems to cope with poverty challenges the notion that eating problems are class bound and confirms that both middle- and working-class women are quite capable of creating sophisticated and symbolic relations with food that go far beyond a biological need for calories.

Like biased notions about class, the belief that African-American women are somehow untouched by the cult of thinness is built on long-standing dichotomies—good/bad, pretty/ugly, sexually uptight sexually loose —about white and black women. These divisions feed into an erroneous notion of black women as somehow separate from a society in which beauty standards are an integral part of the socialization of all women. The portrayal of white women as frivolous and obsessed with their appearance is linked to the presentation of black women as the opposite: as unattractive "mammies" who are incapable of being thin or who are not affected by pressures to be thin. With these multiple distortions, the fact that the dress and "look" of black youth have frequently set the standard for what constitutes style in the fashion industry is entirely unaccounted for.

Failing to consider eating problems among lesbians reflects the unwritten but powerful belief that lesbians are not interested in or capable of being "attractive" in the dominant sense of the word. This reflects stereotypical notions of "butches" who are too ugly to care about their weight; women who have "become" lesbians because of fear of men and who have subsequently lost touch with "mainstream" society; and women who settle for women after being rejected by men. As biased notions about race reflect racial fears, so distorted ideas about sexuality reflect fears about sexuality in general, and these fears historically have been projected onto lesbians' bodies. These distortions have not only pushed attention to lesbians with eating problems out of the frame of reference, they have also rendered invisible the many ways lesbian communities have refashioned what constitutes beauty in ways that nurture multiple versions of style, glamour, and grace. It is no coincidence that much of the activism and scholarship opposing "fat oppression" has been spearheaded by lesbian feminists who astutely analyze how discrimination against fat women reflects a society hostile to women who take up space and refuse to put boundaries around their hunger for food, resources, and love.

The notion that eating problems are limited to heterosexual women has also contributed to some lesbians' secrecy. The historical association of lesbian sexuality with mental illness and deviance undercuts many lesbians' willingness to identify themselves with any stigmatizing illness. This institutional bias has been coupled with secrecy among lesbians based on the fear of being misunderstood or rejected by other lesbians. The connotation of anorexia and bulimia as problems developed by those who accept male models of beauty means that a lesbian with an eating problem is admitting to being male-centered and therefore not appropriately lesbian. In this way, linking eating problems with appearance rather than trauma has impeded lesbians' self-diagnosis.

The intricacies of race, class, and sexuality encourage us to rethink demeaning assumptions about white middle-class femininity and racist assumptions about women of color and to consider bulimia and anorexia serious responses to injustices. At their core, bulimia and anorexia are not signs of self-centered vanity and obsession with appearance but rather, at least in their initial stages, are sensible ways women cope with the difficulties in their lives. Reexamining split and oppositional images about race, class, and sexuality with a wide-angle lens reveals a single complicated frame. A multiracial focus shows that distorted notions about black, Latina, and lesbian women are embedded—both explicitly and implicitly — in notions about white heterosexual women, and that it is impossible to understand any of them without the others.

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