IV. NON-ALIENATED LABOR AND RECOVERY FROM DISORDERED EATING

      The previous example of food production shows the difference between alienated and non-alienated labor in the act of consuming a product in both meanings of consumption: buying and eating food. The example of food production is particularly relevant to the problems of eating disorders, in which individuals have serious, potentially life-threatening problems having "normal" relationships with food, and disordered eating in general. The following are the brief definitions of the major eating disorders. Anorexia is self-starvation and avoidance of food. Bulimia is bingeing on huge quantities of food and then purging it, usually by vomiting or sometimes by over-exercise or laxatives. Bingeing is eating huge quantities of food without attempting to purge it. Disordered eating is eating in ways that do not respond to the body's natural hunger pains and nutritional needs. While eating disorders are a subset of disordered eating, disordered eating is characterized most commonly as dieting. Though it is often not life-threatening or even easily diagnosable, it is so prevalent in affluent countries like the United States (especially among women) that it is considered "normal" even though it negatively affects one's life. The negative effects are physical, since dieting can cause long-term damage to metabolism, and mental, since dieting focuses one's attention inordinately on food and eating to the detriment of other worthwhile activities. Non-alienated labor can be useful in helping treat the whole spectrum of eating disorders and disordered eating.

      I need to be clear about the scope of my argument. I am not claiming that all people who buy processed food are alienated by it because they did not produce it, and therefore they should cook their own food. Some people just like processed foods and can go through the day eating them without a problem. Nor am I claiming that eating any processed food is alienating and so we should refrain from all of it. As one of my friends says, "sometimes you just want a Twinkie." Although the people eating processed foods in these examples are slightly alienated from their food by not being particularly involved in producing it, their alienation is not necessarily problematic.

      The cases of alienation from food that I am concerned about are those in which people feel that the food in their refrigerators is talking to them, taunting them, demanding that it be eaten. [16] Food is so externalized to these people that it seems to have a life of its own, which is how Marx characterizes alienating products. It has more than utility value, where it is simply something to be eaten; it is a force to be reckoned with. Individuals who have abnormal and unhealthy relationships to food are alienated by food in this extreme way. Such people feel that the only relationship they have with food is a constant struggle for control.

      This kind of alienation involves reification, whereby product becomes a thing of its own, possessing more than simple utility value. It stands apart from humans, especially its producer, who does not own it under capitalism, and its consumer, who does not have a prior relationship with it. People with disordered eating frequently reify food so that food does not belong to them but is an alien force of its own. Hence they hide it, horde it, fear it, and/or binge on it before it can leave them. This more extreme kind of alienation from food is the kind I find most problematic as it negatively impacts a person's life, and this is the kind of alienation that needs remedying.

      As consumers of food, individuals and especially women have learned to replace their true needs regarding food with artificial needs. We crave food generally not because our bodies need the nutrients in the food but rather because the food holds some symbolic meaning within it.[17] We may crave desserts because we want to be engulfed with sweetness, or we may crave salty snacks because we want some excitement in our lives. We may think that we really just want a cookie, but when that cookie turns into a whole bag, it is not the cookie per se that we desire but the activity of eating it. Many psychology books have been written about why women especially[18] desire yet fear various foods; possible answers are that this desire is rooted in childhood, that we have not learned how to mother or care for ourselves, etc.[19] Regardless of the psychological source, one material fact is clear: marketers play on these desires, exaggerating them and normalizing them.

      Several feminist scholars have pointed out that advertisers use words and images to reinforce, and often exaggerate, abnormal attitudes about food.[20] In fact, food and diet companies encourage the cycle of overeating and dieting by associating eating and dieting with moral qualities in order to make more money. Susan Bordo and Jean Kilbourne have shown that many ads for food that are aimed at women suggest saint/sinner mythology.If a woman eats a "good" (healthy or low-calorie) food like gelatin, she extols her virtue in the ad; if a woman eats a "bad" (unhealthy or high-calorie) food like ice cream, ads depict her sneaking a bite, as if she is getting away with something sinful. Or ads suggest that women form relationships with food to replace their non-existent or unsatisfying relationships with people and imply that it is okay for women to binge on food because it provides an important emotional outlet. Diet companies likewise suggest that a woman will become everything she always wanted to be if only she lost weight. Margo Maine points out that since the failure rate for diets is above 90%, incessant cultural messages to diet is good for the economy and good for diet companies' bottom lines in particular.[21] Food and the diet companies feed off each other (pun intended) by encouraging cycles of sinful overeating and purifying dieting.

      Kilbourne says explicitly that advertisers do not necessarily create women's discomfort with food; it is unfair to blame marketing for causing eating disorders and disordered eating. Nevertheless, advertisers normalize this discomfort so that it seems that all women hide and horde yet fear food.[22] This normalization creates an environment where a vast number of women diet.[23] Women who do not diet, even if they are trying to recover from anorexia, often feel abnormal and doubt their self-worth, since our cultural messages tell us that worth comes from satisfying artificial needs including the need to diet. Capitalism has produced hugely profiting industries (diet, food, plastic surgery, makeup, fashion, etc.) based entirely on playing upon, if not creating, women's dissatisfaction with themselves.

      Sandra Bartky, a Marxist feminist, writes about women's self-alienation in her essay, "Narcissism, Femininity, and Alienation."[24] Bartky applies Marx's theory of alienation regarding the working-class to a kind of alienation shared by women as a class, particularly those women in highly industrialized societies such as the United States. As the economy becomes increasingly globalized, of course, this analysis becomes increasingly true for women the world over. Bartky focuses on the alienation of women from their own sexuality, which results in narcissism. Closely tied to this is also the alienation of women, and increasingly many men, from food. Since sexuality is necessarily part of oneself while food is originally external to oneself, this connection does not seem obvious at first. But, as I explained above, women are alienated from food in a very basic and unnecessary way. Although food is external from oneself and one's body, food is biologically necessary for the body, and consequently the self, to function and to continue its survival. This biological necessity should lead us to regard food as natural, so that it is a real problem that many of us regard it as alien.

      The connection between alienation from sexuality and alienation from food is clear when one understands that both sexuality and food are necessary and natural to continued human function and that both senses of alienation stem from the absurd state of advertising, marketing, and creating artificial needs within an advanced capitalistic society. What Bartky calls the "fashion-beauty complex" is intimately tied to the food-diet industry complex that tells women they are incomplete and would be fulfilled if only they bought certain products. Marketers create artificial needs and tie a woman's self-worth to her ability to satisfy those needs.[25] Yet these are artificial needs, and a woman will never be satisfied with herself, and recognize her own self worth, as long as she keeps trying to fulfill artificial needs at the expense of recognizing and fulfilling her genuine needs.

      If someone with an eating disorder or with disordered eating wishes to recover from her unhealthy relationship with food, she should spend time in self-reflection about what her true needs are. She needs to recognize that satisfying the needs of capitalists by consuming their products-beauty and fashion products, diet products, and food products-is not satisfying her own genuine needs as a human being. She needs to understand that her own self-worth has to come from inside, not from outside. One way to do accomplish this is to engage in non-alienated labor in her life.

      People who have eating disorders of all kinds, and many people who have disordered eating such as dieting, reify food to the point where it becomes a force in their lives that they can barely control; food takes on "a life of its own," as I said. Demystifying and de-reifying food requires that people feel more connected to it, that they have more of a relationship to food than merely one concerned with struggle for control. This relationship requires that one values food for what it really is, a necessary and potentially joyful source of sustenance. At one level food just has utility value as something we need to survive. But on another level food also can be expressive of oneself when one relates to it in a meaningful way. The first goal for the person alienated from food is to demystify and de-reify food, realizing that food simply has the utility value of biological sustenance. This realization reduces a person's fear of food and removes the struggle for control over it. The second goal is for such a person to gain a positive, healthy relationship with food. A person can gain this relationship by investing some of herself in the process of creating the food, thus allowing the food to be self-expressive of herself.

      When food is an issue, as is the case in eating disorders and disordered eating, a person should produce her own food for herself at whatever level she can. If she is not much of a cook, she can start small and learn. By producing her own food, she rejects the external standards of what food should be-the satisfaction of emotional needs-and replaces them with her own standards for what food should be: nutritious and tasty, or the satisfaction of needs for biological sustenance and aesthetic appeal. The act of production provides her with an intimate relationship with the product of her labor: food. An example of how this works would be a bulimic who easily binges on and purges processed foods, such as cake and ice cream from the supermarket, but finds herself unable to binge on and purge the banana bread she made herself from scratch. While the distinction between processed and handmade foods will not be obvious or instinctive to everyone suffering from bulimia or other food abuse, this distinction in the value that these different products have can be helpful in forging a connection to her environment. A person can develop a healthier relationship to food by being personally involved with food production and learning that food is necessarily valuable yet is not to be feared: we need food for survival and we can get pleasure and even express our very essence from it.

      I do not mean to imply that everyone with eating disorders and disordered eating should start cooking and then they will be cured. What is important here is that one finds an activity that satisfies a biological need, such as for sustenance, as well as a psychological need to express oneself and connect one with other people and with humanity. Since food is one of the key products from which people with eating disorders and disordered eating are alienated, producing one's own food is a helpful way to feel connected and not alienated from food. This clearly will not work for everyone; anorexics, for example, often cook copious amounts of food for others but eat none of it themselves. But we live in a society that has major cultural problems with food: we eat very unhealthy foods at all times of the day, often with huge portion sizes, and we get relatively little exercise since most of us work in non-physically demanding jobs. For many people, relating more naturally with their food by taking the time and effort to be personally involved with their food production and consumption would only help. When we see how food nourishes us physically and spiritually, we understand how each of us embodies what Marx calls the human essence and is connected with other people and humanity as a whole.

      Food production is only one example of non-alienated labor that is helpful to people recovering from eating disorders and disordered eating. Those who are unable to feel fulfilled being involved with food production, including anorexics and those who simply hate to cook, should instead find other areas in their lives where they can perform non-alienated labor in producing something meaningful, self-expressive, and nourishing for the body and the soul. Examples include the practical, such as woodworking or quilting, and the aesthetic, such as painting or needlework. Even finding creative ways to do necessary work, such as writing papers for school, counts when one can express oneself through this work. The value of doing non-alienated labor, and the fact that alienated labor and consumption is a relevant concern for those who have eating disorders and disordered eating, demonstrate that art therapy can be a significant benefit to those recovering from destructive eating patterns. Non-alienated labor, including various kinds of creative work, connects a person with the environment around her, forging a bridge between the mind and body. This mind-body connection is especially therapeutic for eating disordered people, especially anorexics, who feel that their mind and body are disconnected.[26]

      One problem that some people (especially anorexics) face in trying to perform non-alienated labor is that they are terrified of failure and thus frozen to act. Since the act of production is self-expressive, it seems to the anorexic or perfectionists that any product that falls short of the standard of perfection reflects badly on the producer, showing the person to be a failure. This mind-set is very black-and-white and allows no room for learning and improvement. In order to avoid failing, the perfectionist will merely refrain from producing-or rather, be terrified and thus unable to produce. Yet the perfectionist who is unable to start performing non-alienated labor for fear of failure can start small. She can start with a pattern or recipe, and follow it strictly until she feels free and self-confident enough to break the pre-set boundaries. We become better at our work through practice, and going through stages, until we no longer fear it but instead have the confidence that allows us to enjoy it.

      Performing non-alienated labor is very valuable therapeutically. Only through non-alienated labor are we able to have true self-expression and an honest understanding of our individual essence. Through non-alienated labor we realize that our minds and bodies do connect when we produce meaningful, useful products; we realize that we are intimately connected to other humans and to humanity in general. When we share the products of our labor, we complete the essence of others, which in turn completes our own essence. Non-alienated labor in producing food relates us to food in an intimate way that causes us to value the food and its labor, causing difficulty or even impossibility in the abuse of the food. The act of mindless consumption is extremely alienating and causes us to question our humanity. The act of producing what we need in a self-expressive and self-fulfilling way, however, helps us realize our own humanity.

      The previous example of food production shows the difference between alienated and non-alienated labor in the act of consuming a product in both meanings of consumption: buying and eating food. The example of food production is particularly relevant to the problems of eating disorders, in which individuals have serious, potentially life-threatening problems having "normal" relationships with food, and disordered eating in general. The following are the brief definitions of the major eating disorders. Anorexia is self-starvation and avoidance of food. Bulimia is bingeing on huge quantities of food and then purging it, usually by vomiting or sometimes by over-exercise or laxatives. Bingeing is eating huge quantities of food without attempting to purge it. Disordered eating is eating in ways that do not respond to the body's natural hunger pains and nutritional needs. While eating disorders are a subset of disordered eating, disordered eating is characterized most commonly as dieting. Though it is often not life-threatening or even easily diagnosable, it is so prevalent in affluent countries like the United States (especially among women) that it is considered "normal" even though it negatively affects one's life. The negative effects are physical, since dieting can cause long-term damage to metabolism, and mental, since dieting focuses one's attention inordinately on food and eating to the detriment of other worthwhile activities. Non-alienated labor can be useful in helping treat the whole spectrum of eating disorders and disordered eating.

      I need to be clear about the scope of my argument. I am not claiming that all people who buy processed food are alienated by it because they did not produce it, and therefore they should cook their own food. Some people just like processed foods and can go through the day eating them without a problem. Nor am I claiming that eating any processed food is alienating and so we should refrain from all of it. As one of my friends says, "sometimes you just want a Twinkie." Although the people eating processed foods in these examples are slightly alienated from their food by not being particularly involved in producing it, their alienation is not necessarily problematic.

      The cases of alienation from food that I am concerned about are those in which people feel that the food in their refrigerators is talking to them, taunting them, demanding that it be eaten. [16] Food is so externalized to these people that it seems to have a life of its own, which is how Marx characterizes alienating products. It has more than utility value, where it is simply something to be eaten; it is a force to be reckoned with. Individuals who have abnormal and unhealthy relationships to food are alienated by food in this extreme way. Such people feel that the only relationship they have with food is a constant struggle for control.

      This kind of alienation involves reification, whereby product becomes a thing of its own, possessing more than simple utility value. It stands apart from humans, especially its producer, who does not own it under capitalism, and its consumer, who does not have a prior relationship with it. People with disordered eating frequently reify food so that food does not belong to them but is an alien force of its own. Hence they hide it, horde it, fear it, and/or binge on it before it can leave them. This more extreme kind of alienation from food is the kind I find most problematic as it negatively impacts a person's life, and this is the kind of alienation that needs remedying.

      As consumers of food, individuals and especially women have learned to replace their true needs regarding food with artificial needs. We crave food generally not because our bodies need the nutrients in the food but rather because the food holds some symbolic meaning within it.[17] We may crave desserts because we want to be engulfed with sweetness, or we may crave salty snacks because we want some excitement in our lives. We may think that we really just want a cookie, but when that cookie turns into a whole bag, it is not the cookie per se that we desire but the activity of eating it. Many psychology books have been written about why women especially[18] desire yet fear various foods; possible answers are that this desire is rooted in childhood, that we have not learned how to mother or care for ourselves, etc.[19] Regardless of the psychological source, one material fact is clear: marketers play on these desires, exaggerating them and normalizing them.

      Several feminist scholars have pointed out that advertisers use words and images to reinforce, and often exaggerate, abnormal attitudes about food.[20] In fact, food and diet companies encourage the cycle of overeating and dieting by associating eating and dieting with moral qualities in order to make more money. Susan Bordo and Jean Kilbourne have shown that many ads for food that are aimed at women suggest saint/sinner mythology.If a woman eats a "good" (healthy or low-calorie) food like gelatin, she extols her virtue in the ad; if a woman eats a "bad" (unhealthy or high-calorie) food like ice cream, ads depict her sneaking a bite, as if she is getting away with something sinful. Or ads suggest that women form relationships with food to replace their non-existent or unsatisfying relationships with people and imply that it is okay for women to binge on food because it provides an important emotional outlet. Diet companies likewise suggest that a woman will become everything she always wanted to be if only she lost weight. Margo Maine points out that since the failure rate for diets is above 90%, incessant cultural messages to diet is good for the economy and good for diet companies' bottom lines in particular.[21] Food and the diet companies feed off each other (pun intended) by encouraging cycles of sinful overeating and purifying dieting.

      Kilbourne says explicitly that advertisers do not necessarily create women's discomfort with food; it is unfair to blame marketing for causing eating disorders and disordered eating. Nevertheless, advertisers normalize this discomfort so that it seems that all women hide and horde yet fear food.[22] This normalization creates an environment where a vast number of women diet.[23] Women who do not diet, even if they are trying to recover from anorexia, often feel abnormal and doubt their self-worth, since our cultural messages tell us that worth comes from satisfying artificial needs including the need to diet. Capitalism has produced hugely profiting industries (diet, food, plastic surgery, makeup, fashion, etc.) based entirely on playing upon, if not creating, women's dissatisfaction with themselves.

      Sandra Bartky, a Marxist feminist, writes about women's self-alienation in her essay, "Narcissism, Femininity, and Alienation."[24] Bartky applies Marx's theory of alienation regarding the working-class to a kind of alienation shared by women as a class, particularly those women in highly industrialized societies such as the United States. As the economy becomes increasingly globalized, of course, this analysis becomes increasingly true for women the world over. Bartky focuses on the alienation of women from their own sexuality, which results in narcissism. Closely tied to this is also the alienation of women, and increasingly many men, from food. Since sexuality is necessarily part of oneself while food is originally external to oneself, this connection does not seem obvious at first. But, as I explained above, women are alienated from food in a very basic and unnecessary way. Although food is external from oneself and one's body, food is biologically necessary for the body, and consequently the self, to function and to continue its survival. This biological necessity should lead us to regard food as natural, so that it is a real problem that many of us regard it as alien.

      The connection between alienation from sexuality and alienation from food is clear when one understands that both sexuality and food are necessary and natural to continued human function and that both senses of alienation stem from the absurd state of advertising, marketing, and creating artificial needs within an advanced capitalistic society. What Bartky calls the "fashion-beauty complex" is intimately tied to the food-diet industry complex that tells women they are incomplete and would be fulfilled if only they bought certain products. Marketers create artificial needs and tie a woman's self-worth to her ability to satisfy those needs.[25] Yet these are artificial needs, and a woman will never be satisfied with herself, and recognize her own self worth, as long as she keeps trying to fulfill artificial needs at the expense of recognizing and fulfilling her genuine needs.

      If someone with an eating disorder or with disordered eating wishes to recover from her unhealthy relationship with food, she should spend time in self-reflection about what her true needs are. She needs to recognize that satisfying the needs of capitalists by consuming their products-beauty and fashion products, diet products, and food products-is not satisfying her own genuine needs as a human being. She needs to understand that her own self-worth has to come from inside, not from outside. One way to do accomplish this is to engage in non-alienated labor in her life.

      People who have eating disorders of all kinds, and many people who have disordered eating such as dieting, reify food to the point where it becomes a force in their lives that they can barely control; food takes on "a life of its own," as I said. Demystifying and de-reifying food requires that people feel more connected to it, that they have more of a relationship to food than merely one concerned with struggle for control. This relationship requires that one values food for what it really is, a necessary and potentially joyful source of sustenance. At one level food just has utility value as something we need to survive. But on another level food also can be expressive of oneself when one relates to it in a meaningful way. The first goal for the person alienated from food is to demystify and de-reify food, realizing that food simply has the utility value of biological sustenance. This realization reduces a person's fear of food and removes the struggle for control over it. The second goal is for such a person to gain a positive, healthy relationship with food. A person can gain this relationship by investing some of herself in the process of creating the food, thus allowing the food to be self-expressive of herself.

      When food is an issue, as is the case in eating disorders and disordered eating, a person should produce her own food for herself at whatever level she can. If she is not much of a cook, she can start small and learn. By producing her own food, she rejects the external standards of what food should be-the satisfaction of emotional needs-and replaces them with her own standards for what food should be: nutritious and tasty, or the satisfaction of needs for biological sustenance and aesthetic appeal. The act of production provides her with an intimate relationship with the product of her labor: food. An example of how this works would be a bulimic who easily binges on and purges processed foods, such as cake and ice cream from the supermarket, but finds herself unable to binge on and purge the banana bread she made herself from scratch. While the distinction between processed and handmade foods will not be obvious or instinctive to everyone suffering from bulimia or other food abuse, this distinction in the value that these different products have can be helpful in forging a connection to her environment. A person can develop a healthier relationship to food by being personally involved with food production and learning that food is necessarily valuable yet is not to be feared: we need food for survival and we can get pleasure and even express our very essence from it.

      I do not mean to imply that everyone with eating disorders and disordered eating should start cooking and then they will be cured. What is important here is that one finds an activity that satisfies a biological need, such as for sustenance, as well as a psychological need to express oneself and connect one with other people and with humanity. Since food is one of the key products from which people with eating disorders and disordered eating are alienated, producing one's own food is a helpful way to feel connected and not alienated from food. This clearly will not work for everyone; anorexics, for example, often cook copious amounts of food for others but eat none of it themselves. But we live in a society that has major cultural problems with food: we eat very unhealthy foods at all times of the day, often with huge portion sizes, and we get relatively little exercise since most of us work in non-physically demanding jobs. For many people, relating more naturally with their food by taking the time and effort to be personally involved with their food production and consumption would only help. When we see how food nourishes us physically and spiritually, we understand how each of us embodies what Marx calls the human essence and is connected with other people and humanity as a whole.

      Food production is only one example of non-alienated labor that is helpful to people recovering from eating disorders and disordered eating. Those who are unable to feel fulfilled being involved with food production, including anorexics and those who simply hate to cook, should instead find other areas in their lives where they can perform non-alienated labor in producing something meaningful, self-expressive, and nourishing for the body and the soul. Examples include the practical, such as woodworking or quilting, and the aesthetic, such as painting or needlework. Even finding creative ways to do necessary work, such as writing papers for school, counts when one can express oneself through this work. The value of doing non-alienated labor, and the fact that alienated labor and consumption is a relevant concern for those who have eating disorders and disordered eating, demonstrate that art therapy can be a significant benefit to those recovering from destructive eating patterns. Non-alienated labor, including various kinds of creative work, connects a person with the environment around her, forging a bridge between the mind and body. This mind-body connection is especially therapeutic for eating disordered people, especially anorexics, who feel that their mind and body are disconnected.[26]

      One problem that some people (especially anorexics) face in trying to perform non-alienated labor is that they are terrified of failure and thus frozen to act. Since the act of production is self-expressive, it seems to the anorexic or perfectionists that any product that falls short of the standard of perfection reflects badly on the producer, showing the person to be a failure. This mind-set is very black-and-white and allows no room for learning and improvement. In order to avoid failing, the perfectionist will merely refrain from producing-or rather, be terrified and thus unable to produce. Yet the perfectionist who is unable to start performing non-alienated labor for fear of failure can start small. She can start with a pattern or recipe, and follow it strictly until she feels free and self-confident enough to break the pre-set boundaries. We become better at our work through practice, and going through stages, until we no longer fear it but instead have the confidence that allows us to enjoy it.

      Performing non-alienated labor is very valuable therapeutically. Only through non-alienated labor are we able to have true self-expression and an honest understanding of our individual essence. Through non-alienated labor we realize that our minds and bodies do connect when we produce meaningful, useful products; we realize that we are intimately connected to other humans and to humanity in general. When we share the products of our labor, we complete the essence of others, which in turn completes our own essence. Non-alienated labor in producing food relates us to food in an intimate way that causes us to value the food and its labor, causing difficulty or even impossibility in the abuse of the food. The act of mindless consumption is extremely alienating and causes us to question our humanity. The act of producing what we need in a self-expressive and self-fulfilling way, however, helps us realize our own humanity.

Notes >>