>>THE COLOR OF HUNGER, CONTINUED

How strong is the link between trauma and eating problems?
BT: In my study, I sought a community sample—everyday women who were working three jobs, holding half the world up. It's not like I interviewed women who'd been hospitalized. The women I talked to were community leaders, professionals, mothers, artists. They were knock-down-drag-out, amazing women—and the level of trauma in their lives was shocking. That left me to wonder what level of trauma so many marginalized women are living through in a day-to-day way that's just become like the air they breathe. I find that really troubling. I had no idea I'd find that depth of violence in the lives of the women I interviewed. And at the same time, they were very inspiring in their ingenious and methodical ways of healing. Really creative! The negative thing is that none of them got professional help from people who had background in eating problems.

Right. They went to Overeaters Anonymous, and that sort of thing, but they weren't hospitalized.
BT: They weren't treated, but they also avoided some of the stigmatizing aspects of a medical solution to eating problems. They didn't get caught up with being restrained in an eating disorders clinic, or an inpatient clinic. They didn't get pushed with drugs.

I like that you expand the definition of body consciousness beyond weight.
BT: The whole body image category came out of the fashion industry. I tried to think of body consciousness as something that had to do with weight, height, skin color, hair texture, facial structure. All of these things go into how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and the kind of power we're granted in the world. A lot of body literature is problematic because it ranks gender oppression as more severe than other kinds of oppression. That's totally missing the mark. There's a simultaneity of oppression-we don't need to rank them, but we can recognize them all. Jocelyn felt like she couldn't change her skin color or her hair texture, but she could change her body size. That was part of her thinking process, and the way she chose to protect herself while growing up. So it's not possible to talk about body consciousness outside of colorism, or plain old racism.

Why did you pick a multiracial focus on body image?
BT: In the 1980s, I did workshops called Women's Hunger and Feeding Ourselves, in university and community settings. I also worked at The Multicultural Project, which is a community-based, anti-racist, anti-oppression training center. Many of the people who came to these workshops fit the standard portrait-White, middle-class, heterosexual women. But a lot of the people who came didn't fit that portrait-women of color, lesbians, and working-class women. A lot of people lump White women into one homogeneous group. You can't do that. The White Christian women I talked to never would have addressed the issues of anti-Semitism and feeling like they didn't fit in to mainstream American culture. Many Jewish women felt like they were getting hit with one thing after the next-if it wasn't the shape of their bodies it was their noses. If it wasn't their noses, it was their curly hair.

Why do you think there's such a silence for women of color, lesbians and working-class women around this issue?
BT: In my situation, as a lesbian, when I first started to seek treatment for my own eating problems after ten years, I snuck to the support meetings. I thought that it would kind of sully my lesbian credentials. The notion of it being a heterosexual phenomenon made it harder in the '80s for some lesbians to come forward, for fear that they would be seen as having internalized all those patriarchal standards, or weren't "real lesbians." I'm part of that same invisibility.

So it's more of a taboo--as though you crumbled to the patriarchy?
BT: There's a long history of scrutiny that Black women have needed to have because of racism within the health profession. Black women are regularly mistreated by the medical system and misunderstood by psychologists. There are also problems for African-American women who come from families where being big was considered positive in previous generations, and eating was a sign of celebration. To dare develop anorexia or bulimia is in a way to feel like you're betraying your ancestors.

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