Discontinuities: A Study of Lesbians and Body Image

Recipient: Graduate Prize in Feminist Scholarship By: Raina Lenney, MA Liberal Arts, Womens Studies

In 1990 Dawn Atkins, founder and chair of the Body Image Task Force (BITF), was asked to do a workshop for the Lesbian and Gay Community Center in Santa Cruz, CA. The leaders of the organization, an educational and activist group devoted to promoting positive body image, realized that they had never considered the specific body issues associated with lesbians, gay, or bisexuals (xxix). Although information abounded on the topic of eating disorders in communities of white, middle-class, heterosexual women, the issues of non-normative populations had never been considered. The outcome of this revelation is a collection of essays edited by Dawn Atkins entitled Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities. Atkins book is one of the only collections available that analyzes these topics among queer populations; the scarcity of material is indicative of the necessity for research and writing. This collection, while broad in scope, must only be the beginning of an inquiry into the study of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction among deviant populations.

It is commonly assumed that eating disorders and compulsive body issues are issues contained within a white, upper-middle class, heterosexual, and female segment of society. In a study conducted by Gayle E. Pitman, she states Feminists have traditionally focused on gender role conflict, cultural misogyny, and female oppression in constructing a sociocultural theory of the etiology of body dissatisfaction, weight preoccupation, and eating disorders in women (Journal of Lesbian Studies 130). These are such familiar refrains that despite a changing economic and cultural climate, other groups of women, such as minorities and lesbians, are completely erased from

considerations of these concerns. Although each of these groups deserves the utmost consideration, in this article I will attempt to evaluate the specific place of lesbians within this burgeoning epidemic. Do lesbians have problems with eating disorders or compulsive habits concerning weight? It would seem not, or at least a general hypothesis circulates that suggests that lesbians have cultivated a body image that is in opposition to the normative traditional image constructed for heterosexual women (presumably by heterosexual men). This opposing image provides a hypothetical space where differing body images for women may proliferate. Although this is seemingly true, many lesbians have suggested that the impact of cultural images is strong, and these women find themselves struggling to assume a normative body role. In Resistance and Reinscription by Sara Auerbach and Rebekah Bradley a group of lesbians are interviewed about their body perceptions. One woman, Jamie, states: I thought for a long time that lesbians shouldnt, you know, feminists shouldnt have all these issues, but I dont think we can erase them, our subculture; theyre so ingrained in us as childrenI mean, theres certainly a lot of movement going on within the lesbian community, of nonbody image oppressionand you certainly see a lot of large women that carry themselves beautifully, but I thinkin the past few years, people are starting to worry more about body image (Atkins 33). Other women corroborate this report, describing the conflicting messages from within and without the community to rebel against heterosexual norms and yet to maintain an acceptable body weight (33). In Naomi Tuckers essay Contradictions of the Spirit: Theories and Realities of Lesbian Body Image, Tucker states: In oral interviews, some of the same women later discussed how, although they no longer felt confined to

heterosexist, male-defined beauty standards for women, they did feel restricted by a new, lesbian standard of beauty and attractiveness, including physical strength requisites and a particular dress code (Atkins 39). Conflicting ideals about body and resistance to heterosexual norms may cause some of these women to feel stigmatized by the lesbian community, and thus unsure about voicing concerns. A lack of attention from the medical community, cultural theorists, feminists, and philosophers complicates these issues, and while queer theorists are certainly focused on concerns relevant to lesbians, discussions of the physical lesbian body are minimal at best.

Culture plays a larger role than might be imagined in the formation of womens bodies. This includes the lesbian body, as not only are lesbians women, but lesbians are forced to contend with multiple forms of oppression, and may feel desperate to abide by normative roles. In addition to the myriad ways in which misogyny seeks to oppress women, lesbians must contend with rampant, sanctioned homophobia in society; this homophobia is dangerous externally but may also have an impact on the lesbian body. In the last twenty years, post second-wave feminism and in the midst of a backlash, there has been a marked increase in the incidence of eating disorders, and of compulsive eating habits in general. In The Obsession, Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness, Kim Chernin suggests that the second wave feminist movement, and its subsequent backlash, can be seen as contributing to the debilitating images of women that proliferate presently. I am suggesting that the changing awareness of women of our position in this society has divided itself into two divergent movements, one of which is a movement toward feminine power, the other a retreat from it, supported by the fashion and diet industries,

which share a fear of womens power (99). This fear of an assumption of power by women has resulted in the infantilizing of women in the media images of the culture. In an effort to reassert the sense of power that masculine society feels has been lost, the womans image as victim is moderated; her youthful appearance (often only possible through the use of fifteen and sixteen year old models), and unnaturally boyish figure are now the normalizing images presented to women (99-100).

How has this trend impacted the lesbian body? Although the absence of this subject in medical literature may suggest that there is no impact, I believe that a systematic erasure of women, and more specifically of lesbians, has occurred. In the introduction to Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities, Atkins says, The influence of body image disturbances on lesbians and bisexual women was not even considered by most researchers. This erasure can have a profound negative impact on the health of lesbian, bisexual, and gay people (xxxii). Exclusion within the medical community leaves no available space where these problems may be considered, and thus lesbians are left without resources. This lack of consideration, combined with the secrecy within the community surrounding issues of the body mentioned above, may make many women reluctant or unable to discuss struggles with body image.

In this paper I will attempt to demonstrate that the cultural influences that impact womens interpretations of their bodies are not limited to upper-middle class heterosexual women. I will focus on lesbians as a group to demonstrate that these cultural influences

are prevalent in shaping, or helping to shape, womens bodies, and while different groups of women may react differently to these factors, the influences are strong regardless. In other words, although women may not be categorized as a monolithic category, nor may lesbians, the cultural influences that dictate the normative body echo throughout society and these pressures may have negative repercussions for all female bodies. I will explore a concise history of compulsive eating habits, and demonstrate the cultural impact on each of these historical moments in an effort to sustain a cultural theory of eating disorders. I will consider the erasure of lesbians within the medical community, and suggest some reasons why society, the medical establishment, and cultural theorists have ignored this issue in particular. I will look briefly at various lesbian identity constructions, particularly the glamorization of the femme lesbian via lesbian chic, and will demonstrate the impact of this identity category on the body of the lesbian. Lastly, I will examine the minimal data that does exist, and demonstrate the potential for further study.

A large body of writing has been devoted to the study of eating disorders; the scope of this writing traverses the medical canon, feminist and cultural constructionism, historical perspectives, autobiographies, theatre and film, and practically every other form of expression and inquisition. There are three theories concerning the cause of eating disorders: a biomedical theory, a psychological theory, and a cultural theory. The biomedical theory suggests that these disorders are pathological and attempts to define their biological root. According to Joan Jacobs Brumberg, in her landmark historical analysis of anorexia nervosa, Fasting Girls, this biomedical model, while serving some

important functions, is limited in crucial ways. The question that biomedicine must addressis not whether the disease has somatic components (it obviously does) but whether these symptoms are primary or secondary in the etiology of anorexia nervosa (26). The biomedical model fails to explain why this disorder mainly affects women, and this model is unable to address the question of incidencewhy are there so many women afflicted with these disorders at this precise historical moment (27)? More importantly, the biomedical model, with its narrow scope, facilitates the erasure of homosexual bodies within the medical community and thus does not allow it to function as explanatory nor definitive of lesbian needs. The psychological theory interrogates the influences of the home and the internal workings of the mind, and the effects that these factors have on the manifestation of these disorders (28). While this model is useful in some ways, it too ignores the social factors surrounding these disorders. The cultural model seeks to demonstrate the role of society and culture (particularly mass media) and the effects these systems have on the structure and severity of these disorders. It is this model that is the most widely contested within the medical profession, yet it is also this model that may provide the most complete set of answers. An awareness of the body image issues within lesbian communities may demonstrate or contribute to the power of the cultural model to explain the origins of these disorders.

Although the specific terms anorexia nervosa or bulimia may not be carried successfully throughout history, it is evident that women have experienced a myriad of issues concerning the physical body. In this section I will outline a brief historical perspective to demonstrate how these disorders have manifested themselves in other

times and places. I use this section not to demonstrate that anorexia or bulimia is historically pervasive (nor would it be historically accurate to assign those terms to the following relationships between women, food, and their bodies) but rather to demonstrate that the culture surrounding each of these incidents is predominant in dictating the forms these compulsive habits assume. If culture is indeed largely explanatory of these disorders (as I am suggesting that it is), then it seems plausible to assume that marginalized groups of women, such as lesbians, may also suffer as products of a particular culture. With this historical foundation we may then extrapolate the influence of culture on womens bodies, and thus it will be possible to view the lesbian body as a body contained within, and influenced by, the pervasive culture.

As early as the fourteenth century there are writings available that attest to the tumultuous relationship between women and their bodies. Caroline Walker Bynum has constructed a comprehensive collection of religious women and their complex interactions with food entitled Holy Feast and Holy Fast. One famous example of a saintly faster was Catherine of Siena, a young woman who began fasting at puberty and devoted her life to religious teaching and miraculous events. Catherine was the youngest, and most favored, of twenty-three children. The death of her twin sister, a result of having been weaned outside the home while their mother weaned Catherine, may have contributed to Catherines excessive guilt surrounding food (165-167). She is said to have considered her prolonged fast an infirmity (168), and appears to have been motivated through her guilt and a desire to control the sins (such as material consumption) of the body. Bynum questions the central theme of food in womens

religious lives and suggests: Food is important to women religiously because it is important socially (189). She elaborates that womens traditional roles have centered on the growth and preparation of food, stressing that food is the one resource that women control. Food-related behavior was central to women socially and religiously not only because food was a resource women controlled but also because by means of food women controlled themselves and their world (193). The conflation of the female body with sin, and the necessity to contain this sin has been noted repeatedly. Susan Bordo, in her essay Reading the Slender Body, suggests that the female body has been coded morally and economically in terms of its capacity for self-containment and the control of impulse and desire (191). Here the containment of desire is reflected through the womans convoluted relationship with food. In a society where women are allotted a limited medium of power, and where the activities of their minds and bodies are regularly policed, it seems inevitable that food will become a means of manipulation. Bynum, like Bordo, stresses the cultural impact on the bodies of women and suggests that although these early forms of starvation may resemble modern day anorexia, the importance lies not in the label but rather in both cultures emphasis on the relationship of women and food. The behavior [fasting], then, whatever basis it may in some cases have in the physiology and the family history of individuals, is also, in the very particular form it takes, learned; and it is learned from a culture that has complex and long-standing traditions about women, about bodies, and about food (Bynum 198). Thus it seems evident that the cultural impact on these women is substantial.

Another example of the contested relationship between women and their bodies is exemplified in the Victorian era. In Fasting Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg outlines the relationship of food and love in the bourgeois family in France, and documents the emergence of mass starvation among middle class girls at the onset of puberty. The rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century had a number of effects on the middle class family. With more economic power to purchase products outside of the home and with factories producing goods of better quality more cheaply, the role of the woman in the domestic sphere diminished significantly (126-127). For the young women of the household, this meant that they were left to a leisurely existence; no longer required to work in an effort to assist the family, these women were encouraged to cultivate traits traditionally associated with their feminine role. The mothers, who were displaced as domestic goods producers by the factories, took this opportunity to refine their daughters for their future marriage, as a desirable match could enhance the wealth and property of the family. This pressure to conform to a standard image, an image reinforced by the normalizing practices affected earlier in the century1, was often unbearable to a young woman (135). Similar to the fourteenth century woman whose only form of power was invested in food, so too did the Victorian adolescent barter with this medium. The preparation, serving, and consumption of food, for the middle class, had assumed a new level of importance: Among the middle class it seems that eating correctly was emerging as a new morality, one that set its members apart from the working class (136). Thus it was through rejection of this eloquent ceremony of meals that these

In Enforcing Normalcy, Lennard Davis documents the rise of a normalizing image for the middle class. The rising bourgeois used this image to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. One effect of this image was to standardize the size and shape of women (particularly young, marriageable women), in an effort to demonstrate the status (middle-class) of the family.

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women could assert their discomfort with the limited roles that were available to them (135-138). By the late nineteenth century the bourgeois mother was no longer even a midwife to her daughter in childbirth. She gave that role to professional medicine and became, instead, midwife to her daughters social persona. Because she was so actively engaged in managing her daughters physical growth, appearance, and moral development, the middle-class mother had a significant investment in how her daughter fared in the marriage market. A daughter was, after all, an extension of the mother. To see her consistently refuse food was hurtful and frustrating indeed. (137) It seems apparent that the emphasis on food in Victorian culture, combined with the enormous pressure to conform to a particular ideal, served as a catalyst for these eating disorders. I would like to reiterate here that while it seems evident that biological and psychological factors certainly contributed to these disorders, it appears that the surrounding culture largely influenced the form and prevalence of these patterns of starvation.

In both of the previous examples it is evident that women both manipulate and are manipulated by the culture at large. In this way these women may be seen as products of a restrictive culture while simultaneously exhibiting a form of agency. I use the two examples above to demonstrate several things. First, it appears obvious that women have had a long and turbulent history with food. In societies where the bodies of women are constantly under surveillance, women have developed a course of action that both limits

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and liberates them. In other words, these women exercise a form of power in resistance (refusal to eat, etc.) but this power is subsumed by the detrimental body image fostered by the culture. This image is associated with other factors, such as chastity, freedom from sin, etc., and is seen as reflective of the normative roles dictated by society, and thus necessary to obtain. Second, although historical records may only tell the story of those in power, it seems obvious that many women who live in a particular culture potentially feel the impact of that culture. Thus, although little may exist to confirm the existence of a mass epidemic of body dissatisfaction among lesbians, enough exists to suggest that these women may also struggle with body image, and that this struggle may then lead to eating disorders for some of these women. A proliferation of issues surrounding food and the female body among less-studied populations may help to confirm a cultural theory as explanatory of eating disorders, and to suggest a need for further study.

It seems evident that the convoluted relationship between women and food reappears at several historical junctures, and is influenced strongly by cultural factors. Although these cultural factors have only been examined in relation to heterosexual women, it is logical that all women in a particular community may be susceptible to normalizing factors. In this section I will consider the homophobia within the medical community and the resultant erasure of lesbians from medical study and consideration2. In Contradictions of the Spirit: Theories and Realities of Lesbian Body Image, Naomi Tucker defines three reasons why lesbians are invisible in medical literature and
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It is important to note that lesbians have not always been excluded from medical consideration. Until 1973, homosexuality was considered a disease, and prior to this seemingly benevolent reclassification, homosexual was simply seen as deviant, criminal behavior. For a full discussion of the transition of the lesbian body through history, see: Chauncey, George Jr. From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance. Homosexuality: Sacrilege, Vision, Politics. Eds. Robert Boyers and George Steiner. No. 58-59, (Fall 1982-Winter 1983) 114-146.

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communities, and why lesbians may be hesitant to seek treatment for issues surrounding body image. First, until recently the issue of sexuality was not considered in empirical studies on body image, as sexuality was considered irrelevant in defining a problem. Second, the clinical treatments available are based upon the same psychopathological paradigms created in a patriarchal system that perpetuate and sustain the very problems (eating disorders and dissatisfaction with body image) that they attempt to address. These treatments usually fail to acknowledge and address an inherently oppressive system as a root cause of body image issues. Last, the lesbian and bisexual community does not address these issues within the community, as there is a general assumption that lesbians do not struggle with these concerns (Atkins 38). These three items offer some insight into the lack of material available and interest paid to this issue. Combined with a history of homophobia and pathologization within the medical community, these reasons serve to erase the concerns of lesbian and bisexual women.

In Diagnosis Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine, Abby Wilkerson describes the pathologization of homosexuals in the medical communities. Her argument suggests that the moral authority of medicinein other words, the power of the medical structure to dictate an implicit moral stanceperpetuates and sustains the institutionalized homophobia that echoes throughout society (43). Wilkerson describes the transition of homosexuality from a criminal to a pathological state, and the resultant belief that homosexuality could be cured by the medical establishment as a clear and direct instance of medicine as a form of social control (45). This intermingling of medical authority and moral presumptions (which Wilkerson terms pathologization) may

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have negative consequences for lesbians attempting to navigate the medical community. Wilkerson extends the notion of homophobia and defines a concept of erotophobia to consist not only of explicit declarations of pathology, but also of other practices and attitudes which more subtly reflect cultural taboos against sexual practices, desires, and identities (66). This concept, pioneered by Cindy Patton, describes a political and cultural motivation to sustain the stigmatization of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, as these deviant sexualities are condemned by the culture at large (66). This moral condemnation, sanctioned by society, is cloaked in the seeming benevolence of the medical institution and used to reify compulsory heterosexuality. Beneath the stated concern for the medical ramifications of sexual behavior are moral judgements that certify the medical, hence moral, correctness of white, middle-class, monogamous, married heterosexuality, and prescribe a whole set of gender relations in marriages (71). Thus it seems obvious that lesbian bodies are not sanctioned by medicine, and therefore are susceptible to erasure and negligence within that community.

The pathologization of deviant bodies, and the use of these bodies in defining and sustaining the desired norm, was existent prior to the mass medicalization of industrialized countries. In Extraordinary Bodies, Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, Rosemary Garland Thomson describes the popularity of the nineteenth-century freak show. These freak shows, according to Thomson, represented a dramatic resurgence of the tradition of publicly displaying and reading extraordinary bodies (58). Thomson describes this display of disabled and deviant bodies as means by which normalcy was solidified. She states, In an era of social

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transformation and economic reorganization, the nineteenth-century freak show was a cultural ritual that dramatized the eras physical and social hierarchy by spotlighting bodily stigmata that could be choreographed as an absolute contrast to normal American embodiment and authenticated as corporeal truth (63). Thus a desired position of normalcy became sanctioned, and the bodies that did not fit this notion were simultaneously erased and stigmatized with the rise of a medicalized society.

Audre Lorde presents a striking example of the pathologization of homosexual and deviant bodies by the medical institution. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde describes a day in the hospital following the removal of one of her breasts due to breast cancer.

The woman from Reach For Recovery who came to see me in the hospital, while quite admirable and even impressive in her own right, certainly did not speak to my experience nor my concerns. As a 44 year old Black Lesbian Feminist, I knew there were very few role models around for me in this situation, but my primary concerns two days after the mastectomy were hardly about what man I could capture in the future, whether or not my old boyfriend would still find me attractive enough, and even less about whether my two children would be embarrassed by me around their friends (56).

It is evident in the passage that Lorde suffered alienation at the hands of those presumed to be helpful. When the concerns of the patient do not suit the political and moral ideology of the medical institution, these concerns are subsumed by the practices designed to uphold the correctness of white, middle-class, monogamous, married heterosexuality (Wilkerson 71). Thus one may see how the concerns of lesbians may be

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consumed by the larger moral ideologies perpetuated by the powerful institutions medicine. According to an article in a 1997 issue of the Washington Blade, only 11%37% of doctors compile a sexual history from their new patients and only 33% of lesbians are comfortable disclosing their sexual identities to their doctors (Keen 19). If patients are presumed to be heterosexual and no consideration is given to specific health concerns, this may pose serious problems for a lesbian seeking counseling or treatment for an eating disorder.

In the passages above I have tried to demonstrate, however briefly, the pathologization of deviant bodies prior to and throughout the rise of medicalized society. The systematic erasure of all deviance, including lesbianism, has cast the concerns of these populations as unimportant and undeserving of attention. If lesbians are to be heard, if the populations of women suffering grievances are to be registered, then a consistent and diligent research effort must be mounted.

The role of the femme lesbian complicates issues of body image for lesbian and bisexual women. In Butch-Femme and the Politics of Identity, Tracy Morgan describes a brief history of the butch-femme identity. The butch, Morgan states, can be traced back to the advent of sexology; the sexologists label for those with queer tendencies was invert, and it is from the invert that the idea of the mannish lesbian arises (38). This was a purely homophobic generalizationif the mannish woman could be identified as such, she could surely be cured. The femme lesbian was defined by her relationship with a butchin other words, the femmes ability to pass for heterosexual

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denied her an identity of her own. As Joan Nestle says in The Persistent Desire, A Femme-Butch Reader, Butches were known by their appearance, femmes by their choices (139). Although Nestle was speaking of the 1950s and the resurgence of a butch-femme aesthetic, certainly the theme of a dependent femme persists even to the present.

In the 1990s there has been a decided movement to reclaim a femme identity. These women strive to claim an identity of their own; to validate the existence of a femme lesbian, and to subvert the notion that butch is the only signifier for queer. Lesbians have begun to rebel against the restrictive androgynous or masculine costume that the lesbians of the 1960s and 70s deemed as a standard response to a male heterosexual standard of beauty imposed on and accepted by heterosexual women, and insist upon their right to be feminine. In addition, these women have begun to subvert traditional notions of powerlessness and suggest that the dependency and timidity associated with femme women are not the traits that femmes embody. Joan Nestle embodies this reclamation; in the introduction to The Persistent Desire she states: And I wanted to edit this book because I am a femme woman, tired of devaluation by myself and other, tired of past and present attacks on the integrity of our desire, tired of the penalties we have had to pay because we look like womenfrom straight men, from so-called radical feminists, and from some lesbian separatists who, because of their anger at the social construction of femininity, cannot allow us to even exist. I understand the possibility for surface confusions, but we deserve more careful thinking and feeling (18).

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This empowerment includes reclamation of ones life and sexual persona as well as an assertion to a separate and valid identity. In A Coincidence of Lipstick and SelfRevelation, Katherine Millersdaughter states, Finally, in knowing myself femme, I assert a poetics of my own sex, gender, and desire, a study of the infinite excess of my body, the title, the frame of clean space on my page, my margins dripping with the orgasmic, critical trace that bears the tumultuous meeting of my body with hers, our sex (Harris, Crocker 123). These femme women attempt to reserve a space whereby the power and agency they wield is recognized.

While a reclamation and assertion of identity is positive in many respects, embracing a look that mirrors the heterosexual standard of beauty is dangerous for several reasons. In Commodity Lesbianism and essay by Danae Clark, Clark theorizes the intersection of capitalist consumerism with a resurgence of the lesbian femme identity. Clark describes the increasing visibility of the gay community and the recognition by marketers that these lesbians are potential consumers with a disposable income. She describes a technique of marketing designed to appeal to the largest audience possible; this technique is termed the gay window of advertising. These ads are not overtly homosexual nor are they anti-homosexualthis style of advertising is attractive to both straight consumers trying to feel chic, and lesbian consumers who feel that they may have glimpsed a representation of themselves in the ad. Clark states:

Generally, gay window ads avoid explicit references to heterosexuality by depicting only one individual of same-sexed individuals within the representational frame. In addition, these models

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bear the signifiers of sexual ambiguity or androgynous style. But gayness remains in the eye of the beholder: gays and lesbians can read into an ad certain subtextual elements that correspond to experiences with or representations of gay/lesbian subculture. If heterosexual consumers do not notice these subtexts or subtextual codes, then advertisers are able to reach the homosexual market along with the heterosexual market without ever revealing their aim (Creekmur, Doty 486). While this strategy allows for the validation and embracing of the femme woman, it has the negative effect of collapsing the image of the femme with the image of the heterosexual woman (495). This creates a normalized, acceptable version of the category lesbian, and in these ads both lesbians and straight women become subject to the dominant constructions of feminine appearance and normative roles. How does a more mainstream version of a lesbian cater to body image issues within that community? If lesbians are attempting to reflect an image projected by the advertising industry, and that industry ruthlessly perpetuates the thin ideal, where do lesbians fit in? It is no stretch to assert that the media dominates the present day with a proliferation of images designed to commodify everything within reach. This commodification extends to women and their bodies, which are used to sell products ranging from clothing, perfume, and cars to palmpilots (About Face). The body of the woman is glorified, idealized, subordinated, exaggerated, and mythologized, creating again the impossible ideal that must be attained. It is obvious that heterosexual women are affected by this proliferation of imageswith the advent gay window advertising, are lesbians subject to the same standardizing practices? Does it stand to reason that these lesbians are subject to body norms that are similarly oppressive to heterosexual woman?

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In a study conducted by Jeanine C. Cogan (1999) called Lesbians Walk the Tightrope of Beauty: Thin is in but Femme is Out Cogan addresses these very questions. Cogan collected 181 questionnaires at a gay pride festival in Sacramento, CA. These questionnaires addressed concerns such as why these women exercised (if they did), and what type of exercise they engaged in, as well as concerns of body image and weight. The results of the study were interesting, and tended to complicate the notion that lesbians are fully satisfied with their bodies. Cogan found that these women tended, on average, not to exercise for thinness, but rather for functional health reasons. She also found that these women engaged in a myriad of activities, ranging from softball to walking, dancing, hiking and weight lifting. In the area of body image satisfaction, the evidence demonstrated that these women were just as unhappy as heterosexual women with the state of their bodies and that they had, to some degree, internalized the dominant cultures thinness ideal. Many of these women were conflicted by how they thought they should feel about their weight and overall body image, and how they actually did feel about these concerns (78-84). As Cogan states, What is potentially dangerous for lesbians is a tension between the outside expectations within lesbian communities for size acceptance/body love and lesbians internal experiences (82).

These findings were corroborated by a study conducted in 1990 by three college students interested in examining eating disorders among lesbians. In Body Image Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating in Lesbian College Students, Ruth StriegelMoore, Naomi Tucker, and Jeanette Hsu questioned thirty college students about body

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dissatisfaction in an effort to discover similarities between lesbian and heterosexual women. Although their sample was small, and limited by age and economic status, the findings were similar to Cogans study and suggested that lesbian women do not differ from straight women in body esteem and image issues. They state Although lesbian ideology rejects our cultures narrowly defined ideal of female beauty and opposes the overemphasis placed on womens physical attractiveness, such ideology may not be strong enough to enable lesbians to overcome already internalized cultural belief and values about female beauty (498). Thus it seems evident that lesbians are in a precarious double bind; neither legitimated by the heterosexist medical community or their peers, lesbians are left with few options when confronting body issues or relief from a debilitating eating disorder.

Another important consideration in both of these studies was the intersection of homophobia with manifestations of eating disorders. In many cases the women themselves had internalized homophobia and manifested this internalization in the form of compulsive eating tendencies or, in drastic cases, in the form of an eating disorder. In Pitmans study, Body Image, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Internalized Homophobia, she isolates homophobia as a causal factor: Through the internalization of societal homophobia, lesbians and gay men begin to believe that there is something inherently wrong with them, rather than seeing the prejudicial and discriminative forces at work that promote and reinforce the heterosexism in our culture (133). This dissatisfaction with the self may manifest in the form of an eating disorder for women bombarded by the dominant cultures mandate of thinness. Many of these women report

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feeling less concerned with body image after coming out; this is indicative that sanctioned homophobia can have dire consequences for the bodies of lesbians. Jeanine C. Cogan remarks a common thread among many of these [women interviewed] responses is the sense of freedom women felt from the constraining beauty expectations of dominant culture after coming out (86). While this theme is prevalent in these studies it is often countered by the restrictions fostered by the lesbian community. As Esther D. Rothblum states in Beauty Mandates and the Appearance Obsession: Are Lesbians Better Off?: Thus, while for many women coming out represents freedom from the dominant cultures ideal of beauty, mere coming out does not solve the problem. Although, in theory, lesbian communities afford women the opportunity to define themselves and to find the appearance they find most pleasing to themselves, our research suggests that appearance norms continue to exist among lesbians. Some lesbians experience these norms as being just as restrictive as those of the dominant culture (24).

Thus it seems evident that lesbians must contend with a multitude of forces when defining an acceptable body image. This combination of internal and external homophobia, which manifests in the desire to erase any vestige of the lesbian in culture and medicine, is devastating to the bodies, souls, and minds of these women.

Throughout this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that lesbians occupy a precarious and conflicted space within the multifaceted world of eating disorders. Lesbians are forced to contend with a multitude of oppressions; erasure from the medical

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community, silence and secrecy within their own communities, and a dangerous intersection of identity and capitalism pose serious threats to the lesbian body. A brief history of womens contested relationship with food, combined with a contemporary preoccupation with thinness, suggests that all women may be susceptible to the cultures preoccupation with a normalized body. There is little room for a lesbian struggling to come to terms with her body; at the intersection of a culturally mandated thinness, sanctioned homophobia, and silence from the medical community, these women are left with little recourse. Attempting to confront these issues, Naomi Tucker states:

Clearly we have to fight this battle on several fronts. Externally, we must confront heterosexism in all its forms, especially the forces that perpetually subject us under male dominance. Internally, we must enter into a mode of critical thinking with respect to our own community and create models of queer womens community, social structure, and politics that do not re-create heterosexist paradigms of oppression (45).

The limited amount of research that has been conducted concerning this issue makes it clear that lesbians have been erased from what traditionally have been considered heterosexual concerns. It is evident from the existing studies that a problem does exist, and this problem must be confronted if the oppression of women is to be dealt with in all of its manifestations. A research effort must be mounted, as lesbians too are subject to the beauty mandates of our culture. Only through a sustained effort to recognize and include marginalized populations will all women ultimately be freed from the normative standards that haunt us.

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References: About-Face. 1996-2000 http://www.about-face.org/gallery/topten archives/newten2/three.html. Atkins, Dawn. Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, And Transgender Communities. Harrington Park P, 1998. Auerbach, Sara & Bradley, Rebekah. Resistance and Reinscription: Sexual Identity And Body Image Among Lesbian and Bisexual Women. Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, And Transgender Communities. Ed. Dawn Atkins. Harrington Park P, 1998. 27-36. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. U of California P, 1993. Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. Fasting Girls, The History of Anorexia Nervosa. Penguin Group, 1989. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast, The Religious Significance of Food To Medieval Women. U of California P, 1987. Chernin, Kim. The Obsession, Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness. HarperPerennial, 1981. Clark, Danae. Commodity Lesbianism. Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture. Ed. Cory K. Creekmur & Alexander Doty. Duke U P, Cogan, Jeanine C. Lesbians Walk the Tightrope of Beauty: Thin is in but Femme is Out. Journal of Lesbian Studies. 3 (4): 77-89. 1999. Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy, Disability, Deafness, and the Body. Verso, 1995. Keen, Lisa. Slip in Concern? Washington Blade, 11 September, 1997. Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. Aunt Lute Books, 1980. Millersdaughter, Katherine. A Coincidence of Lipstick and Self-Revelation. Femme, Feminists, Lesbians & Bad Girls. Ed. Laura Harris & Elizabeth Crocker. Routledge, 1997. 119-130. Morgan, Tracy. Butch-Femme and the Politics of Identity. Sisters, Sexperts, QueersBeyond the Lesbian Nation. Ed. Arlene Stein. Plume, 1993. 35-46.

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Nestle, Joan. The Persistent Desire, A Femme-Butch Reader. Alyson Publications, Inc., 1992. Patton, Cindy. Why We Cant Get Women and AIDS on the Agenda. Z 3 (12): 99-103. 1990. Pitman, Gayle. Body Image, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Internalized Homophobia. Journal of Lesbian Studies. Vol. 3, No. 4 (1999) 129-139. Rothblum, Esther D., Anna Myers, Jennifer Taub, Jessica F. Morris. Beauty Mandates And the Appearance Obsession: Are Lesbians Any Better Off? Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, And Transgender Communities. Ed. Dawn Atkins. Harrington Park P, 1998. 17-25. Striegel-Moore, Ruth H., Naomi Tucker, and Jeanette Hsu. Body Image Dissatisfaction And Disordered Eating in Lesbian College Students. International Journal of Eating Disorders 9 (5): 493-500. 1990. Thomson, Rosemary Garland. Extraordinary Bodies, Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Columbia U P, 1997. Tucker, Naomi. Contradictions of the Spirit: Theories and Realities of Lesbian Body Image. Looking Queer, Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, And Transgender Communities. Ed. Dawn Atkins. Harrington Park P, 1998. 37-46. Wilkerson, Abby L. Diagnosis: Difference, The Moral Authority of Medicine. Cornell U P, 1998.

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