Female Body Image in Contemporary Art: Dieting, Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, and Fatness 9780415346801, 9781315229461, 0415346800, 1315229463

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Female Body Image in Contemporary Art

Numerous contemporary artists, particularly female artists, have chosen to examine the idealization of the female body. In this crucial book, Emily L. Newman focuses on a number of key themes including obesity, anorexia, bulimia, dieting, self-harm, and female body image. Many artists utilize their own bodies in their work, and in the act of trying to critique the diet industry, they also often become complicit, as they strive to lose weight themselves. Making art and engaging eating disorder communities (in real life and online) often work to perpetuate the illnesses of themselves or others. A core group of artists has worked to show bodies that are outside the norm, paralleling the rise of fat activism in the 1990s and 2000s. Interwoven throughout this inclusive study are related interdisciplinary concerns including sociology, popular culture, and feminism. Emily L. Newman is Associate Professor of Art History at Texas A&M UniversityCommerce. Cover images: Left: Ariane Lopez-Huici, Dalila, 2002, gelatin silver print. © Ariane Lopez-Huici. Right: Ivonne Thein, Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos), 2006. © Ivonne Thein and ARS, Courtesy of the artist.

Routledge Research in Gender and Art

Routledge Research in Gender and Art is a new series in art history and visual studies, focusing on gender, sexuality, and feminism. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed. Representing Duchess Anna Amalia’s Bildung A Visual Metamorphosis from Political to Personal in Eighteenth-Century Germany Christina K. Lindeman Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art Women, Agency, and the Trojan War Anthony F. Mangieri Emma Hamilton and Late Eighteenth Century European Art Agency, Performance, and Representation Ersy Contogouris Female Body Image in Contemporary Art Dieting, Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, and Fatness Emily L. Newman For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Researchin-Gender-and-Art/book-series/RRGA

Female Body Image in Contemporary Art Dieting, Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, and Fatness Emily L. Newman

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Emily L. Newman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-34680-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-22946-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my friend Amy, grateful for knowing you and only wish I could have known you both better and longer. To Mema, Mom, and Allison, I am nothing were it not for you three. To my Fred, who puts up with more than he should and makes me laugh every single day.

Contents

List of figuresviii Acknowledgmentsx 1 Beginnings

1

2 Diets

24

3 Eating Disorders

61

4 Self-Harm

105

5 Fatness

138

6 Beginnings, Again

172

Selected Bibliography182 Index191

Figures

1.1

Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972, Installation View, 148 silver gelatin prints and text, 7 × 5 inches each. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. 2 1.2 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (detail), 1972, Installation View, 148 silver gelatin prints and text, 7 × 5 inches each. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. 3 1.3 Adrian Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971 (photographic reprints, 1997). Fourteen silver gelatin prints and forty-four annotated book pages of a paperback edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, torn out and annotated by Adrian Piper. 15" × 14.5". Detail: photograph #3 of 14. Collection Thomas Erben. © APRA Foundation Berlin.6 2.1 Rachel Rosenthal, performing in The Death Show, October 21, 1978, Space Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo by David Moreno. Courtesy of the Rachel Rosenthal Company. 29 2.2 Faith Ringgold, 1986 Change performance image (Faith Ringgold in costume). © 1986 Faith Ringgold. Courtesy of ACA, location of costume unknown. 37 2.3 Faith Ringgold, Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1991, Change series, 75 × 85.5 inches, acrylic on canvas, © 1991 Faith Ringgold. Courtesy of ACA, Collection of the artist/ACA Galleries. 43 2.4 Julia Kozerski, No. 48 from the series Changing Room, 2010. Courtesy of Julia Kozerski. 46 2.5 Julia Kozerski, Casing No. 2 from the series Half, 2010. Courtesy of Julia Kozerski. 48 2.6 Jen Davis, Pressure Point, 2002. Courtesy of the artist, ClampArt, NY and Lee Marks Fine Art, IN. 51 2.7 Jen Davis, Untitled No. 42, 2012. Courtesy of the artist, ClampArt, NY and Lee Marks Fine Art, IN. 53 3.1 L.  A. Raeven, Ideal Individual, 2001, video installation with files and advertisement. Courtesy of the artist and Ellen de Bruijne Projects. 74 3.2 L.  A. Raeven, Ideal Individual, 2001, video installation with files and advertisement. Courtesy of the artist and Ellen de Bruijne Projects. 76 3.3 Laia Abril, Thinspiration, 2011–2012. Courtesy of Laia Abril. 87 3.4 Laia Abril, The Epilogue, 2013–2014. Courtesy of Laia Abril. 89

Figures ix 3.5

Ivonne Thein, Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos), 2006. © Ivonne Thein and ARS. Courtesy of the artist. 93 4.1 Laura Hospes, Scream I, 2015 (series: UCP). Courtesy of Laura Hospes, www.laurahospes.com. 121 4.2 Laura Hospes, Death Feather, 2015 (series: UCP). Courtesy of Laura Hospes, www.laurahospes.com. 123 4.3 Kristina E. Knipe, Leannet’s Arm, Leannet after she received 17 stitches, Queens, NY, June 2012. Courtesy of the artist. 128 4.4 Kristina E. Knipe, Leannet’s Arm Healed, Leannet in her bathroom, 11 months after the stitches, Queens, NY, May 2013. Courtesy 129 of the artist. 5.1 Laurie Toby Edison, Debbie Notkin from Women En Large: Images 139 of Fat Nudes, 1994. © Laurie Toby Edison 1994. 5.2 Ariane Lopez-Huici, Dalila, 2002, gelatin silver print. © Ariane Lopez-Huici.156 5.3 Ariane Lopez-Huici, Triumph, 2007, gelatin silver print. © Ariane Lopez-Huici.157 5.4 Haley Morris-Cafiero, Anonymity Isn’t for Everyone, 2010. 163 Courtesy of the artist. 6.1 Katya Grokhovsky, One Fine Day, 2014, performance. Videographer Yan Gi Cheng. Courtesy of the artist. 173

Acknowledgments

For ten years, I have worked on this project and have seen it develop from an inkling of an idea to this long-awaited book. Finally. What began life as a question was developed in an independent study into my dissertation at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. There, Anna Chave oversaw this project, and under her guidance, I was able to begin to weave these various projects and artists together. I’m grateful to her for supporting this project, indulging my popular culture interests, and undoubtedly making this project and my writing stronger. Rounding out my committee was Mona Hadler, Siona Wilson, and Hilary Robinson, who each provided thoughtful feedback and helped solidify how this project could continue to develop after graduate school. The Graduate Center supported early presentations of this project as well as provided me with the funding to research and write the first Phase of this project, without which my dissertation could not have been completed. I have been incredibly lucky to work at institutions that have supported my projects. St. Cloud State, particularly David Sebberson and Justin Quinn, helped me to secure funding to travel to Paris and continue presenting on this topic. As my research began to expand and include more artists and artworks, Texas A&M University-Commerce has allowed for me to travel extensively, not only to get feedback and development on reconceptions of the project, but also to complete the necessary archival work and copyright funding. All of my colleagues have been thoughtful, supportive, and kind, but especially William Wadley, Gerard Huber, Barbara Frey, Vaughn Wascovich, and Patti Doster, among others. Offices and libraries have graciously accepted me, sometimes even helping me from afar. The Getty Research Institute allowed me to see important archives, particularly those of Eleanor Antin and Barbara T. Smith. I also explored the Faith Ringgold Collection at Rutgers University, the Laura Aguilar Papers and Photographs at Stanford University, and the Museum of Modern Art Library, among others. Stephanie Blue Fletcher graciously became my eyes, allowing me to gain a better understanding of Chen Zhe’s work through her helpful examination at the Art Institute of Chicago. But, of course, it was not just institutions who helped this project. I’m so lucky to have been able to work with many artists, including Barbara T. Smith, Eleanor Antin, Rachel Rosenthal, Laia Abril, Ivonne Thein, Faith Ringgold, Ariane Lopez-Huici, Kristina E. Knipe, Katya Grokhovsky, and more. I’m especially grateful to those who allowed their work to be illustrated in this text. Luckily, I have had some great students, who in their thoughtfulness and questions have helped this project grow. Without my students at Texas A&M University-­ Commerce, St. Cloud State University, and Ramapo College of New Jersey, this project

Acknowledgments xi would have not have developed the scope that it has. I must especially acknowledge the MFA graduate students at A&M-Commerce, with whom I spent much time and who have pushed me as much as I’ve pushed them. Last, I must thank Meagan May, whose academic strengths as an undergraduate inspired me, and whose contributions to and help with this manuscript are invaluable. Without key friends and family, this project could never materialize. Emily Witsell has undoubtedly been one of my biggest supporters, continually listening to my harebrained ideas, repeatedly working on projects with me, and even helping with the editing of this text. I’m so lucky to have met her and to be able to work and collaborate with her. Graduate school colleagues have continued to be important touchstones. From my years at Pennsylvania State University, Nancy Locke is a reliable mentor and friend, Robin Goodman has been and is a guiding force who helps me stay grounded, Barbara Kutis continues to be a wonderful listener and provides encouragement, and Sarah Holloran Weidenauer was one of the first to hear my idea and support the project. At the Graduate Center, Amy Brandt single-handedly helped me survive the dissertation process; I am continually inspired by her work ethic and miss her dearly. A constant light, Sheila Gerami has always been encouraging, and I’m so grateful for her friendship. Because this book involves such tough topics, it was pivotal for me to have a powerful support system. April Anderson, Madeline Rislow, Kiera Faber, and Amy Jones are just a few friends who have worked to help keep me sane as I voyaged into these dark places. Always taking an interest in my projects, John Kinney not only listened to my ideas but also was kind and thoughtful, often providing a sense of humor when needed. My grandfather has held me up, making sure that I was able to research and work, without struggling. My grandmother inspires me daily, and I hope to have inherited her strength, humor, and even her stubbornness. She may never see this book, but without her this project would not exist. My sister, the most talented person I have ever known, pushes me to succeed even when I have lost faith in myself. Her insights have been instrumental. My mother helps me in more ways that I can describe, and in her power I find my own. Without the support of these brilliant and strong women, I could never have written this book. I hope that this text begins conversations and that women’s bodies and their experiences are more thoughtfully addressed—both in the art world and in society. But it is not just about continuing to have these discussions; rather, it is about bringing under-addressed issues to life and pushing society to change. As women continue to conform to impossible ideals, they will inevitably keep harming their minds and bodies along the way. Moving forward, acknowledgment of these struggles and this pain can hopefully be used to encourage evaluation of the ways that women’s bodies are presented and discussed in all types of media. As I finish writing this book, women all over the world are beginning to speak out about the sexual harassment that women have faced in the workplace for years. Building on the strength of these brave women sharing these stories and the prominent Women’s March that took place in 2017, this is the moment for women to take power and control their bodies and reject all kinds of societal pressures placed upon them. I can’t wait for it to happen.

1 Beginnings

Given the sustained attention to the size and shape of women’s bodies in the contemporary era, it is unsurprising that manipulation of the female physique has emerged as a crucial theme in art by and of women, as apparent in the recent exhibitions that have featured women’s art practices.1 Originating in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California, “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” was broadly concerned with the way that the feminist movement has altered the art world, particularly in the way that artists increasingly used the female body and women’s narratives as the subject of their art. As the exhibition showed, feminist attention to body art and performance generally has proven fertile ground for engagement with body image.2 I was lucky enough to see the show at MoMA PS1 in 2008 and was immediately struck by the interactions of all these feminist masterworks. Meandering through the tiny rooms and pausing to watch the videos and study the works, I wound up in a narrow space, slightly larger than a hallway, that had only two pieces installed. On one side was a carpet, various consumable objects (like drinks and books), and photographs, and amid these items a recorded loop of Barbara T. Smith repeating “Feed me . . . Feed me . . .” played over and over. Feed Me (1973) was a work I was not familiar with, but I was intrigued. On the opposite wall was a piece I knew well: Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1977, Figure 1.1 and 1.2), a photographic diary of a 10-pound weight loss over the course of thirty-seven days. As I stood, looking at Antin’s body over the course of a short time and trying to discern if you could actually see her documented weight loss, Smith’s “Feed me . . . Feed me . . .” was inescapable. Because of this installation, I saw Antin’s work in a new light. What Antin had presented as a conceptual exercise in sculpting her body, now seemed to resonate as a piece about the struggles of women in Western society forced to behave and look a certain way. At this moment, my project began, and I knew I had to investigate how a growing number of contemporary artists have worked specifically with female body image as a subject for their art. Because the preoccupation with weight is preeminently visual, artistic interventions can be particularly powerful as a way to address societal expectations. I examine significant examples of such projects by multiple artists, locating their works within a larger social and historical context as well as within recent feminist discourses on the body. The artists to be discussed have made work that has been fundamentally shaped by the increased societal awareness of body size and the imperative for weight loss that might be dated from the 1960s, signaled by the founding of Overeaters Anonymous in 1960 and Weight Watchers in 1963; the rise of popular low-calorie food products, beginning in 1962; and the discovery of the importance of exercise to weight loss,

2  Beginnings

Figure 1.1 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972, Installation View, 148 silver gelatin prints and text, 7 × 5 inches each Source: Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

evidenced by the first publication of a chart measuring calories burned during certain workouts, in 1965. Together, such developments in the United States came to affect how women have viewed their bodies since the 1960s.3 The problematic prioritizing of thin female bodies dominates Western culture from the 1960s forward. Gradually, these ideas will spread to Europe and the rest of the world, but it often still comes back to the United States, who presently has a strong and dominant reach in cultural developments. Unsurprisingly, with the increasing societal privileging of the thin body came a corresponding increase in instances of fat phobia and size discrimination. These issues were further complicated by the fact that the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the birth control pill as a contraceptive in 1960, in one of the most important social advancements of the twentieth century. By the end of 1961, 408,000 American women were taking the pill, and just two years later, the number had jumped to 2.3 million.4 Early versions of the pill contained high amounts of estrogen, resulting in headaches, weight gain, and other negative side effects. In addition to changing women’s bodies and providing control over family planning, the birth control pill was also crucial to the development of the sexual revolution as well as the women’s liberation movement. Significantly, the women’s liberation movement moved into mainstream consciousness with the protest staged by Robin Morgan and the New York Radical Women (NYRW) at the Miss America Pageant in September 1968.5 It is worth emphasizing that one of the first gambits women used to try to dramatize their oppression in the

Beginnings 3

Figure 1.2 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (detail), 1972, Installation View, 148 silver gelatin prints and text, 7 × 5 inches each Source: Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

1960s was centered on society’s evaluation of women’s bodies based on appearance. Speaking out against the oppression of women, which the NYRW saw as epitomized by the pageant, the protesters staged a series of events including picketing, guerrilla theater, and visits to individual contestants urging them to quit the pageant. Perhaps the most significant part of the protest was the now-infamous “bra-burning” event. More than 100 women gathered, throwing bras, girdles, high heels, curlers, makeup, and Playboy magazines into a trash can. No bras actually were burned, however. Unable to secure the permits for a fire, the women instead threw the objects into a barrel, dubbed the Freedom Trash Can.6 Morgan, one of the main organizers, sent a press release to major news outlets not only to encourage people to attend, but also to explain the reasons behind the protest. She wrote, “On September 7th in Atlantic City, the Annual Miss America Pageant will again crown ‘your ideal.’ ”7 Calling the contest “The Irrelevant Crown on the Throne of Mediocrity,” Morgan further wrote, Miss America represents what women are supposed to be: inoffensive, bland, apolitical. If you are tall, short, over or under what weight The Man prescribes you should be, forget it. Personality, articulateness, intelligence, and

4  Beginnings commitment—unwise. Conformity is the key to the crown—and, by extension, to success in our society.8 Pointing out that most women would never even be considered for the title of Miss America because of their race and body size, the NYRW blamed the pageant and, by extension, the media and their coverage of the contest, for putting pressure on women to look a certain way. By throwing out bras and girdles, the women made clear they did not want to bind and alter their bodies to make them conform to a given ideal. After Miss Illinois had been crowned Miss America during the ceremony, two protesters unfurled a large banner over a balcony that proclaimed “Women’s Liberation”; this was one of the first times that many across the country had ever heard the term. The women’s liberation movement, as well as the closely affiliated women’s rights movement, developed in the 1960s under a wide variety of leaders, strategies, and organizations.9 There was not one issue that united the movement; rather, a plethora of issues engaged women on a number of different levels. Susan Welch compared the choice of issues to a “cafeteria”: “Women can support the movement for a variety of reasons including economic self-interest, promotion of self-esteem, or strictly social and companionship needs.”10 But within this multiplicity of ideas and concerns, women generally spoke out to defend equal rights. Further, this ability to join organizations and groups with shared values provided women with an important support system. For example, the National Organization for Women, founded by Betty Friedan, as well as Ms. magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem, created new opportunities for women to share their experiences and connect with one another. Magazines, television, books, and all types of media began to present outlets where women could, in the parlance of the time, “find themselves.”11 Art, then, was no different: as more women found their voice in the 1960s and 1970s, they were using their lives and their experiences in their artwork. This is particularly evident in performance art, a relatively new mode of expression wherein men had not yet established their dominance in the medium, allowing women more latitude in using and shaping performance practices. Meiling Cheng observes, Performance also offered the collective environment sorely needed for many women artists, most of whom suffered from isolation, lack of self-esteem, and doubts about their desires to practice art. Live performance helped these women process the information gathered from consciousness-raising meetings.12 Performance art became a way that women could engage in a discussion of their bodies on their own terms, as art historian Jeanie Forte further articulates: Women’s performance art has particular disruptive potential because it poses an actual woman as a speaking subject, throwing that position into process, into doubt, opposing the traditional conception of the single, unified (male) subject. The female body as subject clashes in dissonance with its patriarchal text, challenging the very fabric of representation by refusing that text and posing new, multiple texts grounded in real women’s experience and sexuality.13 Using their bodies in performance resulted in works that could reflect an autobiographical, therefore personal, presence, but could also challenge larger societal issues

Beginnings 5 concerning the treatment of women and society’s perception of women’s bodies and behavior. Performance art led the way to other artistic developments to incorporate women’s concerns. After the protests and consciousness-raising of the 1960s, by the 1970s, many of the female artists began incorporating these ideas into their work, so it should not be a surprise that issues regarding female body image became viable subjects. Through a discussion of four important, transitional artworks, the ways artists began to challenge the ideal female form become evident. Adrian Piper’s Food for the Spirit (1971), Barbara T. Smith’s Feed Me (1973), Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1974), and Martha Rosler’s Losing: A Conversation With the Parents (1977) each present important viewpoints on the way women’s physique and size is constantly being negotiated and debated. Yet in the early adoption of these subject matters, these four artists maintain other, often more prioritized, interests. It is as if the focus cannot yet be on female body image alone because it is a secondary concern as other issues dominate discussions of these artworks. Nonetheless, these works lay the groundwork for the rest of the artists in this book. Although not fully committed to larger feminist issues concerning body size, each of these four artists expands the visibility and the viability of this topic as a subject matter in the visual arts. Adrian Piper (b. 1948), like many early feminist and performance artists, utilized her body in her artwork, which was informed and inspired by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. In 1971, after she had graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York and was working on a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at City College of New York, Piper spent the summer reading and reflecting on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781). For this project, she set guidelines for herself; she stayed in her apartment and focused on Kant, leaving only for short trips to the grocery store and walks for exercise. Furthermore, she spent the months fasting and practicing yoga with the hopes that she would thus be able to more fully understand and comprehend Kant’s work. While she conceived of and enacted this project during the summer of 1971, she neither published on the topic, nor was it widely discussed until 1981, when she titled the piece Food for the Spirit.14 Between the isolation and lack of substantial food, Piper felt herself slipping away both physically and mentally. As she writes powerfully of the incident, it is worth reading her words in depth: Often, the effects of Kant’s ideas were so strong that I couldn’t take it anymore. I would have to stop reading in the middle of a sentence, on the verge of hysterics, and go to my mirror to peer at myself to make sure I was still there. . . . I rigged up a camera and tape recorder next to the mirror so that every time the fear of losing myself overtook me and drove me to the “reality check” of the mirror, I was able to record my physical appearance objectively and also to record myself on tape repeating the passage in the Critique that was currently driving me to selftranscendence. The sight and sound of me, the physically embodied Adrian Piper, repeating passages from Kant reassured me by demarcating the visual, verbal, and aural boundaries of my individual self, and reminded me of the material conditions of my mental state.15 As she immersed herself in the project, she found herself losing a grasp on the material world. For Piper, this was an experiment and a scholarly endeavor, one she would only later describe as a performance.

6  Beginnings

Figure 1.3 Adrian Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971 (photographic reprints, 1997). Fourteen silver gelatin prints and forty-four annotated book pages of a paperback edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, torn out and annotated by Adrian Piper. 15" × 14.5". Detail: photograph #3 of 14 Source: Collection Thomas Erben. © APRA Foundation Berlin.

Food for the Spirit is intimately connected to Piper’s philosophical studies. As John P. Bowles explained, Emerging within Food for the Spirit as a rational subject, Piper grounds her claim to the transpersonal universality of Kantian metaphysics in personal experience. However, by emphasizing the need to repeat her attempts to master the material conditions of experience, she posed her claim in the form of a dilemma she cannot resolve conclusively.16

Beginnings 7 Piper took fourteen pictures of herself standing in front of a mirror in various stages of dress and undress. The photographs are grainy and blurry, and Piper’s thin frame seemed to emerge out of a foggy background. Focused on grounding herself in the physical realm, these images served to reassure herself of her existence at that moment. Simultaneously, the photographs represent a personal experience for Piper, documenting her body and her weight loss over the course of the fast. As Piper starved herself and her physique shrank, her body became the physical manifestation of her intellectual changes. According to Patrick Anderson, the photographs were a way of reiterating her body’s materiality: In Food for the Spirit alimentary and visual self-consumption stage the “indexical present” as fusion of subject and object: the relentlessly mortal body stares evenly at its own gradual disappearance, objectified by the reflection of an unforgiving mirror, simultaneously subjectified by its spoken and unspoken desire to find itself wholly there.17 Although starvation is not the central element of the private performance, the fast allowed her to achieve her desired transcendental state while reading Kant. Nonetheless, it is hard not to read her photographs as a chronicle of her bodily changes. Piper’s focus on the conceptual and on the intellectual changes incurred by a deep reading of philosophy would help shape her career—both as an artist and as a philosopher—but her interest in manipulating her body is one of the first instances in which a form of dieting became an important part of an artwork. But dieting (as a rephrasing of Piper’s fasting) did alter and shrink Piper’s size. Losing weight was more of a side effect, a consequence of her choices. Although female body image plays a de facto role in this work, it is not Piper’s intention. Similarly, Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931) and her project Feed Me (1973) incorporate ideas about female body image without critically focusing on them. In the early 1970s, Smith fit the stereotypical California female type with long blonde hair, a slender frame, and curves in all the right places—the type that many desired. In fact, Smith’s body at that time has frequently been described as “lovely,” “beautiful,” and “the epitome of Western beauty.”18 Born and raised in California, Smith was married for over fifteen years and had three children. Divorcing in 1968, Smith was newly single and decided to commit to her art by enrolling at the University of California, Irvine. Smith studied side by side with Chris Burden and became acquainted with artists Allan Kaprow, Dick Kilgroe, and Paul McCarthy. The performance culture that was developing in Southern California helped shaped Smith’s early work as she did many collaborative pieces and performance events with these artists.19 Many of her early works involved food preparation, emerging from her experiences as a wife and mother. The previous fifteen years of her life had been spent taking care of others, and these first performance pieces, like Ritual Meal (1969) and Mass Meal (1969), involved her continuing that habit—creating events by planning and serving elaborate meals, culminating in a dinner where she controlled the setting, sounds, lights, and the total environment of the feast.20 Smith continued the practice of giving with her work Feed Me (1973). In this singular event, Smith stood, fully nude, as a viewer entered a designated, private space. Moving into the room one at a time, the viewer agreed to negotiate with Smith on how to “feed” her.21 It was up to the viewer

8  Beginnings to deduce their role in the piece. Smith hoped that the participants would “feed” her spiritually, emotionally, and/or physically.22 Feed Me was performed on April 20, 1973, at the now-defunct Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco as part of All Night Sculptures. This performance event included artists such as Bonnie Sherk, Joel Glassman, and Terry Fox. Feed Me took place in a dilapidated women’s bathroom, which had served the building when it functioned as an old printing plant. Smith filled the space with a variety of “foods”— books, marijuana, wine, cheese, fruit, perfume, beads, flowers, massage oil. To make the space more comfortable, Smith added rugs, pillows, a mattress, and a space heater. For Smith, this one-night experience was intended as a spiritual exercise, which necessitated meditation and preparation.23 After readying herself, an unclothed Smith waited for participants. Throughout the night and entire performance, a taped loop of her voice intoned “Feed me . . . Feed me . . .” Her body on display, Smith received nineteen visitors (both men and women), who “fed” her emotionally and physically by giving her back rubs, smoking marijuana, drinking wine, and asking her questions.24 Simultaneously, she offered food and consumable goods to the viewer, and even her nudity and her presence was a way that she was giving of herself. Although the piece itself, and even the surrounding literature, focuses on the way that Smith was fed, the viewer was an active participant who nourishes himself or herself as well as has his or her own experience. Even with the conditions laid out before going into the bathroom, the participants were hesitant and unsure on how to interact with Smith. She challenged the traditional male-female dynamic, as she elaborated in 2004: Throughout, I was in a state of heightened awareness, of conscious alertness. If, through conversation, I agreed to their “food” offering, I was totally willing to enjoy it, and I did. . . . I was there for a mutual interaction, but on my terms.25 Upon the participants entering the room, Smith did not say anything; rather, they had to figure out what to do. The visitors had to present their offer to her, allowing for Smith to decide whether to accept their offering. Smith was determined to be the one with the power in this situation. Smith looked to performance art to confuse what is real and what is art. On the nature of the medium, Peggy Phelan articulates, Performance uses the performer’s body to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the body per se; performance uses the body to frame the lack of Being promised by and through the body—that which cannot appear without a supplement.26 By having a very physical experience with the participants, be it eating, touching, or having sex, Smith creates a momentary event that resonates with the viewer. Almost as soon as the piece had started, rumors began circulating around the museum that the woman inside the women’s bathroom was having sex with whomever entered. These rumors and misconceptions (in particular, the idea Feed Me was entirely about Smith having sex with strangers) followed the piece for some time afterward. Although, in fact, she did have sex with three people (or, as she noted in her journal, “made love”), sixteen other people participated in the performance and did not have sex. Her

Beginnings 9 experiences are not just well documented in her journal entries after the event, but also were further fleshed out in correspondence between her and a few of the participants and organizer of the exhibition.27 Instead of focusing on a few individual acts, Feed Me is better seen a carefully calculated event that involves preparation of her body and the space. Smith’s desirability and availability created a particularly complicated scenario for women artists. Jenni Klein has more recently noted, Feed Me points to the real difficulties that confront feminist critics when faced with a performance such as this . . . the image of Smith does nothing to contradict her apparent objectification. Smith’s lovely body, which shows no traces of the three pregnancies that she had experienced, or, for that matter, the inevitable aging that is usually visible on a body that has lived for forty-two years, rewards the scopophilic gaze of the male viewer in general, and her boyfriend in particular.28 Smith’s beauty can be troubling to feminists, because it enabled the piece to be viewed as reinforcing societal norms and stereotypes. This helps explain Smith’s repeated assertions that the point of the piece was about her control of the participants (in a thoughtful illustration of the idea of consent), who were primarily men.29 Despite her age and experience, Smith felt like she had been repeatedly hustled and taken advantage of throughout her life and her career. To turn the tables, she wanted to be the one to grant men permission, controlling what they can and what they cannot do. A comparison with Hannah Wilke (1940–1993) is apt here, as Amelia Jones has argued that Wilke, who was also quite beautiful, was frequently viewed as taking advantage of her body and beauty in her art. Critics generally emphasized Wilke’s conformity with established beauty norms through her display of her own body, leading to their interpretation of her work as focused on her beauty.30 But Jones has proposed that Wilke, and I would add Smith, in the act of using their beautiful bodies, were actually challenging ideal body types as she explains, Precisely because feminist body artists enact themselves in relation to the longstanding Western codes of female objectification (what Craig Owens has called the “rhetoric of the pose”), they unhinge the gendered oppositions structuring conventional models of art production and interpretation (female/object versus male/acting subject).31 In Wilke’s works like S.O.S.—Starification Object Series (1974–1982) and Art News Revised (1975), prominently and even proudly on display, Wilke’s nude body emphasized her femininity. In the act of creating these self-portraits, she also forced the viewer to recognize that the artist herself is female. Wilke, much like Smith, attempted to challenge critics and even art historical doctrine, by exposing her body as the object of art while further exploring artistic modes of production.32 No longer would Smith or Wilke be the passive subject for male artists to depict as they see fit; they were taking ownership of their bodies and its depictions. Through her performances, Smith asserted her control—as woman, as artist, as creator. Just as Wilke’s works were often dismissed, Feed Me also was frequently pigeonholed. Smith, in her nudity and openness about how she would interact with participants, encouraged the idea that she would be open to a manner of acts, including

10  Beginnings those of a sexual variety. Like Wilke, Smith positions herself as an agent of her sexuality. Her willingness to be open and free with her sexuality, while also emphasizing her control over the situation, demonstrates an assertion of her sexual identity. In narrow readings, the mattress on the floor and the predominance of male visitors may encourage the piece to be viewed solely about sex and the possible availability of the artist.33 But that limited view precludes the wider critiques that Wilke and Smith were trying to make. They are no longer passive objects meant to be seen or used; rather, they are assertive, feminist artists who are challenging the separation of artist and subject as well as subject and object. By collapsing these distinctions, these artists use performance art to challenge assumptions about female passivity and objectification. By consistently using her short body and dark brown hair in her work, Eleanor Antin (b. 1935) was countering the tall, blonde, popular ideal of the moment—that was similar to Smith and so frequently objectified. Born and raised in New York, Antin was enmeshed in the contemporary art scene of New York in the late 1960s, befriending influential early performance artists Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, and John Perreault.34 Antin was profoundly impacted, not only by the rise of performance art but also by the development of conceptual art, which was introduced to her by friends George Maciunas and Alison Knowles, both affiliated with the Fluxus movement. By privileging the idea and the process over the final object, conceptual art challenges traditional notions of art making. In 1969, just as performance art was becoming increasingly popular and conceptual art was beginning to crystallize, Antin and her husband, David Antin, a poet, moved to San Diego, California. It was at this same time that Antin began reading feminist texts and became involved in the women’s movement. Around 1971 and 1972, Antin befriended many of the L. A.-based feminist artists (Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, and Linda Montano, among others) and formed a women artists’ group at the University of California, San Diego.35 These discussions prompted Antin to integrate her own body in her work as well as encouraging her to explore more aggressively feminist themes. One of the first pieces that integrated all of these influences Antin’s body is Representational Painting (1971), a 38-minute film of Antin applying makeup to her face, undergoing a transformation before the viewer’s eyes. The woman’s body (more specifically, Antin’s body) in the video became the canvas, to which Antin applied the paint. Debra Wacks elaborates on this discussion of Antin “painting” her face: After every move in the video Antin stops and studies her face as an artist pauses to analyze each new stroke of paint left on a canvas. The analogy between producing an artwork and “painting one’s face” is furthered by the title of the performance, “Representational Painting,” which simultaneously contrasts with the contemporary Conceptual Art movement. As Antin points to the creation of a kind of feminine beauty, she suggests that make-up application is sublimation for the creative act of painting—women do not paint canvases, they paint their faces.36 Antin, however, did not typically participate in these feminine practices, as Linda Theung astutely writes, “As a woman who chose not to wear makeup as a political expression of feminism, Antin searches on video to find a face she can live with and eventually transforms herself into a sort of Vogue hippie.”37 As she put on the makeup,

Beginnings 11 Antin was clearly posturing; for her, putting makeup on slowly and deliberately was an act out of character and, more specifically, an act for her art. Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972), frequently read as a sequel to Representational Painting, again featured Antin’s body. Composed of 148 photographs, Carving presents Antin’s nude body as she documented a weight loss over a period from July 15 to August 21, 1972. Each morning for thirty-six days (over a period of thirtyseven days, as she missed photographing herself one morning as she was not at home in San Diego), Antin had her picture taken from the front, back, left, and right side.38 Viewed from left to right and from earliest date to latest, the pictures chronicled the small changes to Antin’s shape as she gradually lost eleven pounds. There is a documentary aspect to the photos; arranged sequentially, the works seem to refer to a police lineup or possibly Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic experiments, wherein he was attempting to capture movement and motion and took repeated frames of the same scenario to show the progression of the act. As curator Howard Fox observed, “With great deadpan skill, the piece gently satirizes much of the humorless monotony, ponderously presented under a veneer of pseudoscience and alleged clinical objectivity, that characterized much of the conceptual art of the day.”39 Although the clinical treatment of the body and the scientific documentation of the diet distanced Antin the person from the photographs, the work’s success depended on Antin’s presence and the fact that she lost weight.40 Carving: A Traditional Sculpture was originally created in response to an invitation to show in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual, which was featuring sculpture that year.41 Antin explained, I thought it was a sculptural Annual and since I figured the Whitney was academically oriented, I decided to make an academic sculpture. I got out a book on Greek sculpture, which is the most academic of all. (How could they refuse a Greek sculpture?)42 Yet Antin did not choose to make a conventional three-dimensional object; rather, she treated her body as her medium. Seeing herself as a sculptor and her body as marble, Antin went on a strict diet, “chiseling” off a total of eleven and a half pounds over the course of the thirty-seven days.43 The daily photographs reflect the reshaping brought about by her diet, and the four different perspectives allow the viewer to appreciate the changes in the round—just as a viewer would approach a sculpture. She challenged the idea of sculpture by using photographic representation of the form, as the viewer considers two-dimensional representations of a single three-dimensional form. Perhaps more accurately, Carving can be viewed as a performance piece with photographic documentation, which functions to challenge to the ideal form traditionally associated with classical sculpture.44 The work exists today only as photographs and wall text, but for Antin in 1972, the piece was a 37-day performance endeavor. She explained her actions in the label that she created to accompany the photographs, quoting Carl Bluemel’s 1969 book Greek Sculptors at Work: The work was done in the traditional Greek mode: “The Greek sculptor worked at his block from all four sides and carved away one thin layer after another; and with every layer removed from the block, new forms appeared. . . . Thus the same figure which started as a block was worked over in its entirety by the sculptor at

12  Beginnings least a hundred times, beginning with only a few forms and becoming increasingly richer, more rounded and lifelike until it reached completion.” When the image was finally refined to the point of aesthetic satisfaction the work was completed.45 Through her citation of Bluemel, Antin constructed her sculptural treatment of her own body as a classical exercise. Just as Antin was aligning herself, the artist, with classical artists on the basis of the supposed similarity of their working methods, she, of course, recognized that her material—her body—was not at all representative of the classical ideal. As the label text continues, This artist may have a different aesthetic for the female body than Greek sculpture exhibited for the Korai but it should be kept in mind that two considerations determine the conclusion of a work: (1) the ideal image toward which the artist aspires, and (2) the limitations of the material.46 The second part of the statement referred to Antin’s own body; after all, she made clear that the “material” was her body. As much as she wanted the freedom and control of the classical sculptor, Antin did not see her body as challenging the ideal; rather, she lost the weight in the service of her art, explaining, “When I was smoking I couldn’t [sing]. So I stopped. For art you see. For art I could lose weight. For art I could do anything.” But she could do only so much with her body, as she mentioned toward the beginning of the text when describing the basic details of the piece, “The work was originally intended to include a regimen of exercise also, but this proved unacceptable, in practice, to the artist who appears to have lost her former skills at this technique.”47 Although Antin’s statements in the wall text are intended as selfdeprecating and humorous, they also spoke to Antin’s challenges with changing her body. Although she was able to succeed at dieting, exercise was problematic. She is acknowledging there was only so much she can do with her body, as if her body was a predetermined shape already formed within the marble (recalling like the famous Michelangelo quote). She was not the classical ideal and never would be. Although she can slightly alter the size of her body, she could not become a Kore. Although Antin presented the artwork as an exploration of process and art making, it is important to also read Antin as struggling against the increasing popularization of the ideal of the slender yet curvy body demonstrated by the models (and later actresses) Lauren Hutton, Marisa Berenson, and Cybill Shepherd. These tall, striking, beautiful women obliquely functioned as the desired end result for Antin’s dieting.48 Naomi Wolf later discussed the issues surrounding this ideal body in her seminal book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1991), wherein she articulated the issue that Antin was fighting against: women are constantly bombarded with images of beautiful women whose putatively “ideal,” yet heavily retouched, bodies are unattainable. For Wolf, women’s aspirations to these ideal standards forced them into a battle over power with men: “Beauty” is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West, it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves.49

Beginnings 13 Antin, then, is critiquing the way that women have been forced to put forth their efforts into how they look, instead of advancing themselves intellectually or otherwise. By showing her body as it changes throughout the process of weight loss, she is not only drawing attention to the pressures that women face, but she is also illustrating her dissatisfaction with her body. It is not until she installed the work for the first time that she was able to grasp the feminist nature of the piece the way that Carving was attempting to challenge ideal body standards.50 Although Antin may not have been pleased with her physique, she repeatedly turned to its form as a starting place for many of her artworks, perhaps explaining her continued separation of Antin the artist and Antin the person.51 When viewed together, Representational Painting and Carving are united in their critique of the ways that women are told implicitly and explicitly how they should present themselves to society. Joanna Frueh agrees, as she expounds on Carving, “Just as the classical Greek nude occludes women’s bodies in this kind of aesthetically rigid form, so the socially correct beautiful body disciplines—and punishes—women through frustration, guilt, anxiety, and competitiveness with other women.”52 Did losing eleven and a half pounds really make Antin’s body ideal? What many historians do not take into account is the ordinariness of what Antin did: over the course of thirty-seven days, she put herself on an intensive diet. Anne Wagner hinted at this in her review of the 1999 retrospective of Antin’s work, where Carving functioned as a centerpiece in the show: “Yet from what I could tell, the message seemed to strike many viewers less as critical or ironic analysis than as realism pure and simple: testimony to the inevitable order of things. Of course women diet.”53 Antin’s use of dieting in Carving paralleled the burgeoning of the diet industry and the rise of the exercise movement in the early 1970s. The publishing of Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972 made history when in just seven months it sold 1 million copies. In addition, the number of diet essays and books published dramatically increased, with diet articles in Reader’s Guide quadrupling over the course of the 1970s.54 These successes paralleled that of Weight Watchers, which was founded in 1961 by Jean Nidetch, who created the organization on the basis of her own experiences in a support group for weight loss, and who was herself described in a 1972 Time article as “a 214-lb. Queens housewife [transformed] into a trim 142-lb career woman.”55 At the time of that article, Weight Watchers had 101 operations in forty-nine states and some foreign countries. Along with a best-selling cookbook, magazine, and foodstuffs, Weight Watchers succeeded, as their revenues went from $160,000 in 1964 to a whopping $8 million in 1970.56 Antin and art historians have arguably limited their focus on the conceptual and performative innovations of Carving. Antin’s diet, although not as dramatic as that of Jean Nidetch and the millions of other Weight Watchers members, was still profoundly relatable. Similarly exploiting this pivotal cultural moment, where weight management techniques to achieve the increasingly popular thin body were being advertised everywhere, Martha Rosler (b. 1943) began exploring this theme with photomontage in the mid-1960s when she was fresh out of college. Not interested in using her own body, she instead preferred the manipulations that the collage process could offer: It is seizing control of the discourse, the reading, and focusing attention: “Look here now!” Don’t look here in order to go somewhere else in your mind. I thought if you are going to engage with everyday life, you have to be very careful about selecting what is to be looked at.57

14  Beginnings Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain (c. 1967–1972), a series of thirty-one photomontages, juxtaposed commercial images of women’s bodies with consumer goods and objects. According to Alexander Alberro, these works forced the viewer to reconsider the use of women as signs for domesticity, docility, sexuality, and the circulation of commodities. . . . The series as a whole parodically fetishizes the female body and its parts while defetishizing the object quality of the art work or the Madison Avenue image.58 Rosler’s cutout images ranged from Playboy nudes to lingerie advertisements to material from women’s fashion magazines. Because each of her sources of imagery is meant to sell something, her use of these images makes it very clear how integral the female body is to the advertising world. In one photomontage in the series, Cargo Cult, Rosler organized the entire composition around a loading dock. In this work, large cranes lift wooden cargo boxes whose sides are decorated with pictures of women’s faces, many in the process of applying makeup. The lifting of the large boxes onto the ship reiterates the ways that beauty can repeatedly be purchased—either through cosmetics or plastic surgery. In another photomontage, Hot Meat, Rosler superimposed a side view of a woman’s upper torso and breasts onto an advertisement for an oven. Here she visually connected the female body with a kitchen appliance, thereby uniting the categories of domesticity and sexual desire. Through works like these, Rosler drew attention to sexist views that widely circulated in society, which encouraged women to conform to unrealistic body standards as articulated by Wolf. In cutting up the photographs of women’s bodies and refiguring them onto and with advertisements for domestic products, Rosler showed the way women’s bodies are appropriated by various companies. By manipulating the images in her collages, she emphasized how the media had manipulated them first. By choosing only thin, beautiful bodies, she also made reference to the supposed ideal body that fills magazines and mass media. Although these works critiqued uses of the female body to sell products, Rosler’s collages also drew attention to the media’s focus on the thin body in particular, a focus that fostered the inadequacies so many women felt in trying to measure themselves against these unrealistic standards. In her video piece, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents (1977, 18:39), Rosler is able to explore many of these pressures in a more nuanced way, in a way inevitably shaped by her relationship to her teacher and mentor Eleanor Antin.59 The scripted film is presented in a manner meant to recall a confessional television interview; however, the man and woman are completely unmediated (no interviewer or talk show host is present). For the duration of the film, they tell stories and descriptions about their daughter, who died from complications from anorexia.60 Yet in Losing, their picture of their unnamed daughter is incomplete. Variously, they exhibit denial about what happened, skepticism regarding the existence of eating disorders in general, and frustration when discussing her struggle with body image, and they frequently express annoyance and irritation that this could happen when there are larger international struggles with famine and hunger. Although anorexia figures as a catalyst for the narrative, and certainly guides their discussion, in their inability to understand the disease, the parents seem disconnected from their daughter and lost. For Rosler, the talk show/confessional nature of the video dominates and the man and woman appear as struggling, inept parents, refusing to accept their daughter’s tragic eating disorder. The

Beginnings 15 video, then, is actually about the young woman’s parents more than about the young woman herself. The film begins with statements that emphasize the parent’s misunderstanding about their daughter and her condition, as they immediately start by describing how “normal” she was. The mother continues, We never imagined—never imagined—that we would have any problem about her weight. Well, we used to remind her occasionally that she couldn’t overindulge and expect to keep her pretty little figure, but every girl knows that. TV and magazine ads are telling you that all the time . . . I assure you, we didn’t, we did not make a big thing out of it. She was 5'7" at the time, weighed about 133 pounds, not even close to what you call chubby, but she just felt there was a little too much.61 These contradictions—where they acknowledge that she did struggle with her weight and that they even told her to watch her figure, but deny that it was a problem—occur repeatedly throughout the entire film. The obvious information about her eating disorder and her behavior (like going on a diet, or not eating dinner) is dismissed or ignored. Whereas the mother frequently attempts understanding, seemingly attuned to some of her daughter’s issues, the father often brings up his daughter’s selfishness and inconsiderate actions. As he elaborates, “It’s a sad thing, isn’t it, in this land of plenty, people can’t control their food intake. Millions, I mean, literally millions of people, most of them children, die every year from hunger.”62 He returns to these ideas a number of times in the video, discussing starving children in Bangladesh and the poor in Mississippi. These narratives feel distanced and out of place, and therefore, these distracted comments emphasize how the father figure is terribly out of touch with both his daughter and eating disorders. By contrast, the mother is aware of the societal pressures on women and the contradictory messages that women are often presented with, as she discusses magazine advertisements: “On one page they will have a pie ad—‘serve your family this scrumptious pie this evening!’ and on the next page, they will have a diet plan ‘650 calories a day will make you lose!’ ”63 Importantly, the mother also conveys the specifics about anorexia and relates information that she has been told by doctors. To the twentyfirst-century viewer, well-educated and aware of the common symptoms of eating disorders, what the mother describes is hardly new information. Yet for many viewing in the late 1970s, this was important information that was not often conveyed to the public.64 In fact, the mother describes how the diets stopped working for their daughter and she began throwing up. Although never named, the mother describes bulimia, which at the time of the video was seen as a symptom of anorexia and not its own complicated disease. Further, she details some of the painful symptoms anorexia can cause (hair loss, change of skin color, obsession with food, changes in energy). Nevertheless, like her husband, the mother retreats into larger global issues, bringing in British suffragettes’ hunger strikes and starvation at the concentration camps. As she gets closer to the root of her daughter’s disease, the mother gets distracted and lost in these broad, barely related topics. She and her husband are trying to use these other narratives concerning global events to explain what happened to their daughter. Of course, this is completely impossible, as having an eating disorder is distinct from the

16  Beginnings punishing starvation forced on Jews in World War II. After such discussion about their daughter and their confusing comprehension about starvation and eating disorders, the video ends abruptly, as the mother says, “Sometimes, not even the best-intentioned doctors can save you and you pass away anyway, like she did.”65 Losing is unique in that it is one of the first explicit works of art to address eating disorders, specifically their symptoms and consequences. Like the aforementioned works, though, there are many other issues at play within this one piece, so that eating disorders are de-emphasized in critical discussions regarding this film. In particular, Rosler is interested in the rise of talk show culture and the way that confessional interviews were being popularized.66 Alexander Alberro recognizes the power of this work in that vein, noting, “Losing functions as a biting critique of the ideology of television documentary, and in particular, of the personal interview format conventionally presumed to provide direct and unmediated, though emotionally loaded, truth about a situation.”67 Yet although Losing certainly does challenge this kind of programming and, arguably, even the way television functions in society, the larger piece is filled with contradictions—scripted by Rosler. Alberro further addresses the importance of these misdirections: Losing thus fulfills the description of her work as functioning metonymically as a decoy attracting the viewer only to send him or her somewhere else, to another issue or set of concerns; this essentially dialectical strategy of layering of levels of interpretation, and analysis.68 Rosler herself talks at length about the idea of the decoy or distraction in Losing in a 1981 interview Jane Weinstock.69 Emphasizing the scripted nature of the piece, Rosler discusses hiring theater actors, who had no expertise in film, with the idea that viewers would understand that they were actors very quickly. Instead, though, many viewers do not actually question the reality of the scene until she brings it up. Rosler articulates, “They accept what they see and don’t think about its precise relation to fact; it’s their working hypothesis, and the boundaries of its fictionality remain vague until questioned.”70 In fact, everything is meant to be questioned, and Losing itself repeatedly feels so awkward that it becomes unstable and hard to believe. Although humor is included, the story of the young woman’s death is ultimately incredibly upsetting. Rosler elaborates, Ideologically speaking, the world is divided into nontransferable oppositions: victim-aggressor, American against the world, the family against the public world. I join the terms of these dichotomies together. I have them talk. More specifically, I have them overlap—notions of causality in the private world; self-starvation and the starvation of other people. . . . What you have is neither parody nor burlesque, but rather contradiction. My work is a series of decoys; a work briefly masquerades as one thing, following a given form, until you soon realize that something is amiss.71 In this discussion of the thorny interpretations of this work, of which Rosler encourages a destabilization of the viewer: nothing is as it seems. Questioning meaning and the public’s perception and understanding of media is one of the overarching themes of Rosler’s entire career, and Losing certainly fits into this larger discussion.

Beginnings 17 Rosler has argued that anorexia should not be forgotten about as the subject of this work, but yet the film could be about a variety of subjects and still function as Rosler’s decoy.72 In fact, anorexia is not even specifically named in Losing, and its lack of importance is reiterated by the incomplete way the parents discuss eating disorders and their (also unnamed) daughter. Although Rosler’s important and early discussion of anorexia illustrated its potential as a subject for art, eating disorders can never be seen as the central or sole focus for this piece. These four works (Piper’s Food for the Spirit, Smith’s Feed Me, Antin’s Carving, and Rosler’s Losing) loom large throughout this book, as they provide the start for female body image to be taken seriously in contemporary art. Showing the influential and biographical opportunities afforded performance artists, these pieces all emerge from the preoccupations on the thin woman in the United States, land of Weight Watchers and Miss America. While nuanced and complicated, in their inclusion of issues such as eating disorders, body size, and dieting, these artists address topics not historically seen before in the art world. Each artwork can thus be seen as a precedent for each chapter in this book. In her seminal Carving: A Traditional Subject, Antin has visually depicted herself on a diet, just as dieting was becoming mainstream. The chapter “Diets,” then, explores the artists following Antin’s lead, chronicling how artists have showed their thorny attempts to challenge the diet industry. For example, Rachel Rosenthal dramatically tells her personal stories of overeating and how she was able to achieve weight loss in her performances Charm (1977) and The Death Show (1978). Similarly, Faith Ringgold shares her experiences in quilts and in performances, the first and best known being Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Weight Loss Story Quilt (1986). Rosenthal’s works remain rooted in her personal story and her successes, whereas Ringgold engages similar narratives, but expands her discussion to prioritize her desire to lose more weight. More recently, Julia Kozerski and Jen Davis have extensively documented their dramatic weight loss. In Half (2009–2012), Kozerski shows the effects that losing half of her body weight has had on her body—stretch marks included. This 160-pound weight loss was further documented in Changing Room (2009–2012), which was a series of camera phone pictures taken in dressing rooms throughout the time she was making this huge change in her life. Jen Davis explored similar issues in Eleven Years (2014, begun in 2002). Using a tripod, Davis’s photographs have a much more formal and posed quality to them, as they are carefully composed and arranged. She documents her body in a variety of states and situations, even bringing in sexuality. Continuing to make these types of images after having a lap band surgery to help her lose weight, her work brings up some of the same issues as Kozerski. All four artists (Rosenthal, Ringgold, Kozerski, and Davis) heavily rely on the before-and-after format, demonstrating their successes. Although these artworks serve to document each of these artists’ weight loss achievements, is it possible to see them as critiquing the diet and/or exercise industry? This question will be addressed in length, but ultimately, these artworks are too inwardly focused to allow any type of sustained challenge to societal perceptions of the female body. In “Eating Disorders,” the next chapter, artists have addressed this increasingly incipient disease, which began with the work of Martha Rosler in Losing It. By tracing the history of eating disorders in contemporary art, we can begin to see a set of complicated artworks which include the painstaking documentation of personal

18  Beginnings experiences with the disease as well as artists striving to draw attention to the developing crises of eating disorders, often providing social commentary. Vanalyne Green (Trick or Drink, 1984), Vanessa Beecroft (Book of Food, 1983–1993; VB01, 1993; and other performances), and Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven, who produce work under the name L. A. Raeven (Test Room, 2000 and Ideal Individual, 1999–2000) have made artwork that intensely conveys the pain and struggles with their various disorders and individual experiences and emotions. Making their eating disorders real and visible, their painful work is often hard to witness. While those personal artworks persist, two artists work to draw attention to the problematic causes of eating disorders. Laia Abril herself suffered from bulimia, and in a series of three works she confronts the damage caused by eating disorders— from private recollections to online communities to parental grief (A Bad Day, 2010; Thinspiration*Fanzine, 2013; The Epilogue, 2014, respectively). These works involve a distinct specificity, different from Ivonne Thein, whose photographic work ThirtyTwo Kilos (2008) shows already thin women in exaggerated model poses in which she digitally modifies the final image. By contrasting these different depictions, a complicated analysis regarding the potential that these artworks have for perpetuating the disorders develops. Adrian Piper’s fasting and isolation in Food for the Spirit could easily be seen as punishing, and begins to hint at issues concerning “Self-Harm,” the following chapter. The issue of self-harm is rarely addressed in real life, much less discussed in art. Exact statistics are hard to come by, but it has been estimated that 5.9% of Americans self-mutilate.73 Often medically described as Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI), self-harm includes biting, bruising, burning, scratching, scraping, hitting and, perhaps most well-known, cutting. Various artists explore violent behavior and self-injury at times in their careers will be briefly addressed, but this chapter discusses many artists who have made work that engages behavior or ideas that are adjacent to NSSIs, before addressing the work of the few artists who have begun to fully consider the mental health concerns and nuances that make up various self-mutilations. Jo Spence, Jenny Saville, and Catherine Opie all utilize carving and marking the flesh to comment on issues of health and insecurities about body size and identity. In the act of cutting their bodies in public performances Gina Pane, Marina Abramovic´, and Kira O’Reilly have forced viewers to consider both the reasoning behind and the implications for this behavior. Whereas these three artists have opted to use self-harm to comment on larger societal ideals, emerging photographer Laura Hospes turned to her camera to document her experiences being institutionalized after a suicide attempt and as she suffers from various mental health issues. Kristina E. Knipe documented the self-injury practices and aftermath by photographing people she found via Craigslist. Last, Chen Zhe combined both of these ideas, photographing herself in The Bearable (2007–2010) and capturing intimate moments and behaviors by other self-harmers in The Bees (2010–2012). In examining the range of self-harm techniques and strategies, the deeper prevalence of NSSIs become more evident, and in drawing more attention to these concerns, can they begin to be fully understood and helped. Finally, Smith’s Feed Me might repeat its “feed me” refrain over and over, yet it does not specifically lead to overindulgence. Many misconceptions abound when it comes to “Fatness,” but this chapter uses contemporary artwork to correct those assumptions. To be clear, being fat is not a disease or illness like other issues discussed in this book; rather, the way fat bodies are talked about in Western cultures is a symptom of

Beginnings 19 a larger problem concerning the way that fat people are actually treated. In an attempt to counter discrimination and derogatory practice, fat studies and activism had been gaining traction in the 1970s; the movements achieved full recognition in the 1990s. Photographing different types of bodies—in particular, larger bodied women—not only validated their existence but also made the case that women outside the conventionally accepted standards of body size could be beautiful. Debbie Notkin and Laurie Toby Edison worked together as model/writer and photographer respectively to produce Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes (1994), a book of photographs of nude women of all different sizes and races. Not only did this book show women who often were invisible, but also the creation and promotion of the book mirrored activist practices. Building upon this work, Ariane Lopez-Huici and Leonard Nimoy continued similar practices, focusing on untraditional bodies either in a carefully composed studio setting (Lopez-Huici) or a reinterpretation of famous art historical images (Nimoy). By contrast, Laura Aguilar used her own body and explored her insecurities in a series of nude self-portraits in the 1990s. Haley Morris-Cafiero also photographed herself but managed to capture bystanders and onlookers staring at her or mocking her figure. By looking at the evolution of images of fat women (and even the reclaiming of the word “fat”), the breakdown and understanding of societal norms becomes clear. The conclusion of this book attempts to make sense of female body image and art in the present moment. Using a variety of often referential strategies, these artists force a consideration of the way women’s bodies are often conveyed. Katya Grokhovsky creates bold work that questions pervasive sexism in relation to the female body. In her performance One Fine Day (first performed in 2014), she wore exaggerated elements of femininity (tall high heels, a tutu) while taking off T-shirt after T-shirt, each emblazoned with a various offensive statement like “you are ugly, but your smile is nice” and “you are too thin now.” Grokhovsky leads the way for younger, feminist artists, like that of Gracie Hagan and Julia Fullerton-Batten, who challenge conventional portraiture, emphasizing how historical paintings have a role in shaping the ideal female body type. In these reconsiderations of past views and drawing attention to the increasingly unattainable goal sizes, are we at a cultural moment where change could actually happen? Bans on too-thin models and variously shaped and sized Barbies seem to suggest that we are.74 But the road to better acceptance regarding all types of bodies is long, and it is my intention that this book gets society a little closer to that end goal. The issues presented in each chapter of this book are often ignored and not fully addressed by scholars. Prior to the 1970s and feminism, women did not have the tools, resources, or spaces to talk about their concerns. As women created places for these discussions and ideas, artists logically began to incorporate these issues into their artworks. Through their nuanced and thoughtful exploration of these topics, these ideas can be easier to address, even prompting necessary conversations. Although many of the topics of the following chapters, specifically eating disorders and selfharm, are practiced in secret and often hidden, artworks have the unique ability to bring these topics to people’s consciousness in a thoughtful and, often, more accessible manner. This is particularly important, because talking about these issues is the first step toward enacting change. The artists discussed in this text are brave, tackling subjects few artists are even willing to approach. May their courage inspire all of us to work toward helping women find acceptance with their bodies.

20  Beginnings

Notes 1 These important exhibitions include, but are not limited to, “elles@centrepompidou: Women Artists in the Collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre de Création Industrielle” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, 2009; “REBELLE: Art and Feminism, 1969–2009” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, 2009; “Dangerous Beauty” at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, 2007. 2 Cornelia H. Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds., WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). 3 Roberta Pollack Seid, Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War With Their Bodies (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1989), 137–62; Marjolijn Bijlefeld and Sharon K. Zoumbaris, Encyclopedia of Diet Fads (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2008). 4 Although the pill was not approved until 1960, many women had been on the pill since as early as 1957, when doctors were using the drug to treat gynecological disorders. See Bernard Asbell, The Pill: A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 1995), 168–70. 5 Gail Collins, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 440; Bonnie J. Dow, “Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 129–31. 6 Deborah Rhode, “Media Images, Feminist Issues,” Signs 20, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 693; Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: Dial, 1999), 36–7; Myra Ferree and Beth Hess, Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change (New York: Routledge, 2000), 83. 7 Robin Morgan, “ ‘No More Miss America!’ (1968),” in Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 584. The press release made clear that Morgan would agree to be interviewed by women only. If any of the group was arrested, she would demand to be arrested by policewomen, which drew attention to the fact that Atlantic City’s female police officers were not allowed to make arrests. Laying out ten points of protest, Morgan attacked what she identified as the institutionalized racism of the pageant, the privileging of looks over brains, and the focus on women as objects to be consumed, among other problems. For more information, see Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). 8 Morgan, “ ‘No More Miss America!’ (1968),” 587. 9 Jo Freeman, “The Origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (January 1973): 792–811. 10 Susan Welch, “Support Among Women for the Issues of the Women’s Movement,” Sociological Quarterly 16, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 217. 11 See Patricia Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963–1975 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003). 12 Meiling Cheng, In Other Los Angeles: Multicentric Performance Art (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 36. 13 Jeanie Forte, “Women’s Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism,” in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue Ellen Case (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 254. 14 Adrian Piper, “Food for the Spirit,” High Performance 4, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 34. 15 Adrian Piper, “Food for the Spirit,” in Out of Order, Out of Sight (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 1: 55. 16 John P. Bowles, Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 206. 17 Patrick Anderson, So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 109. 18 Jeannette Elizabeth Klein, “Excavating the Goddess in the Nineties: Feminist Performance and Video in Southern California,” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1999); Charlotte Lindenberg, “Barbara T. Smith Revisited,” N. Paradoxa, no. 24 (2009): 87; Marjorie Harth, ed., The Twenty-First Century Odyssey Part II: The Performances of Barbara T. Smith (Claremont, CA: Pomona College Museum of Art, 2005), 43.

Beginnings 21 19 In particular, her early performances from 1968 were collaborative, including One Minute, Chicken Sandwich, and Raymond Rose Ritual Environment. For more information regarding the collaborations, see Harth, Twenty-First Century Odyssey, Part II, 81. 20 Barbara T. Smith, interview by author, Venice, CA, May 31, 2009. For a fuller description of Smith’s meal pieces, see Barbara Smith, Barbara Smith (San Diego: University of California, Art Gallery, 1974), 24–6. 21 Harth, Twenty-First Century Odyssey, Part II, 60. 22 Photographic documentation of this work is scant; her friends took a few photographs of the preparatory process that show Smith’s nude body as she bent to put lotion on her legs or as she mentally prepared herself for the piece. There is one additional photograph of a group of four people gathered around a peephole, trying to get a glimpse of the performance. No photographs were taken of the piece itself as it was happening in the bathroom. 23 Smith, Barbara Smith, 26. 24 Feed Me has been variously recorded as having eighteen visitors, which I believe is a result of not counting the last visitor, her friend. Her journal after the performance details each of the nineteen visitors (three women, sixteen men). Additionally, three people variously interrupted the event: one angry girlfriend, Smith’s boyfriend Dick Kilgroe, and a young woman who befriended Kilgroe. In her journal, Smith detailed that Kilgroe was jealous of her behavior during the performance, and he retaliated by sleeping with this woman. Feed Me Support Material, 1973, Box 164, Folder 6, Barbara T. Smith papers, 1927–2012, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 25 Harth, Twenty-First Century Odyssey, Part II, 34, original emphasis. 26 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993), 150–1. 27 Feed Me Support Material, Barbara T. Smith papers. 28 Klein, “Excavating the Goddess,” 150. Klein is referring to Dick Kilgroe, Smith’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, an artist with whom she collaborated infrequently; Smith, interview by author. 29 Jennie Klein, “Feeding the Body: The Work of Barbara Smith.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 21, no. 1 (January 1999): 31. Smith explained that she has recently gone to great lengths to explain the work as more than photographs of her nude body. Smith has written a specific text that now must accompany photographs whenever this piece is shown in exhibition that details Smith’s reading of the work, which focuses on her control of the viewers and the entire situation that evening. Smith, interview by author. 30 For a full discussion of the problematic criticism and reception of Wilke, see Anna C. Chave, “ ‘I Object’ Hannah Wilke’s Feminism,” Art in America 97, no. 3 (March 2009): 104–8, 159. 31 Amelia Jones, Body Art: Performing the Body (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 152, original emphasis. 32 Jones, Body Art, 154–5. 33 In one of the most extreme examples, A. Belard writes that “Barbara Smith exposed herself in a series of one to one relationships with all who would impose their egocentric needs upon her naked open body.” See A. Belard, “All Night Sculptures,” Artweek, May 26, 1973, 3. 34 Howard Fox, Eleanor Antin (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999), 16–24. 35 Fox, Eleanor Antin, 204–7. 36 Debra Wacks, “Subversive Humor: The Performance Art of Hannah Wilke, Eleanor Antin, and Adrian Piper,” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2003), 111–12. 37 Linda Theung in correspondence with Antin; see Linda Theung, “Eleanor Antin,” in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, ed. Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 214. 38 Eleanor Antin, e-mail message to author, June 28, 2009. Antin took roughly twenty pictures each day, which included the four standardized positions that made the final version of the piece but also showed Antin making a variety of poses; Series VII: Photographs, Box 44, Eleanor Antin Papers, 1953–2010, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 39 Fox, Eleanor Antin, 44. 40 For a more detailed analysis of the conceptual nature of Carving, see Jayne Wark, “Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson,” Woman’s Art Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 44–50; Fox, Eleanor Antin, 20–46.

22  Beginnings 41 The Whitney Museum requested an artwork from Antin, expecting something in line with her piece 100 Boots (1971–1973). When Antin sent them Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, which was composed of photographs and text, the museum rejected it, only to show the work twenty-five years later at the exhibition “The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900–2000.” Antin, e-mail message to author; State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970, recordings and documentation, 2011, Pacific Standard Time Collection, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 42 Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations With Fifteen Women Artists, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 243. 43 See Fox, Eleanor Antin, 44; Joanna Frueh, “The Body Through Women’s Eyes,” in Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 195. 44 Ellen Zweig provides one example of this type of reading: “The performance, of course, was the actual dieting, but the artwork was the row upon row of photographs, attesting to the fact that Antin could at least strive to ‘carve’ the perfect sculptural form of her own body.” Ellen Zweig, “Constructing Loss: Film and Presence in the Work of Eleanor Antin,” Millennium Film Journal, no. 29 (Fall 1996): 36. 45 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972, black-and-white photographs and text panel, Art Institute of Chicago. In her text panel, Antin quoted Carl Bluemel, Greek Sculptors at Work (London: Phaidon Press, 1969), 12. 46 Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture. Kore (pl. Korai) are freestanding sculptures of youthful, idealized woman from Ancient Greece, prior to the Classical period. 47 Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture. 48 The feminist reading is proposed by Howard Fox, who sees Antin as comparing her body with popular models of the day. See his Eleanor Antin, 44. For example, one of the most popular models of her time, Twiggy emerged on the scene in 1967, standing at 5'7" and weighing only 91 pounds. Seid, Never Too Thin, 148–9. 49 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1991; repr., New York: Perennial, 2002), 12. 50 Antin, e-mail message to author. 51 Antin has written more about the use of her body in her artistic creations in the often-cited Eleanor Antin, “An Autobiography of the Artist as Autobiographer,” LAICA Journal, no. 2 (October 1974): 18–20. 52 Frueh, “The Body Through Women’s Eyes,” 195. 53 Anne Wagner, “Eleanor Antin,” Artforum 38, no. 2 (October 1999): 141. 54 Seid, Never Too Thin, 166. 55 “Fortune From Fat,” Time, February 21, 1972, www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,905 812,00.html. 56 “Fortune From Fat”; Seid, Never Too Thin, 138. 57 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “A Conversation with Martha Rosler,” in Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World, ed. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 29. 58 Alexander Alberro, “The Dialectics of Everyday Life: Martha Rosler and the Strategy of the Decoy,” in de Zegher, 80. 59 Prior to making Losing, Rosler had attended the University of California, San Diego to pursue an MFA. There, she met and studied with Eleanor Antin. 60 The majority of the film is the same basic framed shot of these two actors. This deviates only twice: once to pan the entire room, which allows for the middle- to upper-class status of the home and their daughter’s empty chair to be glimpsed, and a second cutaway to show a photo album placed on the coffee table in front of the parents. 61 Martha Rosler, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents, 1977, video, 18:39, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. The transcript is printed in Juan Vicente Aliaga et al., la casa, la calle, la cocina/the House, the Street, the Kitchen (Granada: Centro José Guerrero, 2009), 221–3. 62 Rosler, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents. 63 Rosler, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents. 64 Brumberg makes the case that it was not until the early 1980s that anorexia became more well known, with news agencies and the media finally covering the topic. Joan Jacobs

Beginnings 23 Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (1988; repr., Cambridge, MA: Random House, 2000), 11–13. Further, the first book published about anorexia for lay people was published one year after Losing, see Hilde Bruch, The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa (1978; repr., Cambridge, MA: Howard University Press, 2001). 65 Rosler, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents. 66 In fact, the 1970s represented both the cementing of talk shows as a pivotal part of American culture and a transition into the more modern era with the rise of Johnny Carson and Barbara Walters. For a fuller discussion, see Bernard M. Timberg and Bob Erler, Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). 67 Alberro, “The Dialectics of Everyday Life,” 97. 68 Alberro, “The Dialectics of Everyday Life,” 97. 69 Jane Weinstock, “Interview with Martha Rosler,” October, no. 17 (Summer 1981): 78–98. 70 Weinstock, “Interview,” 79. 71 Weinstock, “Interview,” 81–2. 72 Weinstock, “Interview,” 92. 73 E. David Klonsky, “Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in United States Adults: Prevalence, Sociodemographics, Topography and Functions,” Psychological Medicine 41, no. 9 (September 2011): 1981–6. 74 Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, “Fashion Group Sets Guides to Rein in Ultra-Thin Models,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2007; “Skinny Models Banned from Catwalk,” CNN.com, September 13, 2006, http://articles.cnn.com/2006-09-13/world/spain.models_1_associationof-fashion-designers-skinny-models-pasarela-cibeles?_s=PM:WORLD; and Julie Wosk, for “The New Curvy Barbie Dolls: What They Tell Us About Being Overweight,” HuffPost Women, February 12, 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-wosk/the-new-curvy-barbiedolls-what-they-tell-us-about-being-overweight_b_9193136.html.

2 Diets

In the United States today, girls as young as six years old are expressing concerns about their body.1 When most should be starting first grade and adjusting to no longer having naps in the classroom, these young girls are internalizing weight loss pressures on women, which manifests as expressions of dissatisfaction with their body size. It should not come as a surprise, however, as dieting is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life in the United States, with 40 billion dollars spent on attempting to lose weight each year in this country.2 Forty years ago, at least one person in almost half of American households had been on a diet.3 More recently, in a 1995 survey of college students, 91% of women reported dieting, with 22% saying they dieted “often” or “always.” But beyond just college-age women, as many as 75% of women are thought to experience some kind of disordered eating—including anorexia, but more commonly skipping meals, avoiding food with carbohydrates, binging and purging, and even some ill-conceived types of meal planning.4 It has been estimated that as many as 25 million men and women struggle with disordered eating in the United States alone, and as many as 70 million people worldwide.5 These facts are startling, but perhaps not surprising with the overwhelming media coverage of diet fads, advertising for weight loss companies and low-fat meals, popular television shows on the subject (like The Biggest Loser, 2004–present, Extreme Makeover, 2002–2007, and Extreme Weight Loss, 2011–present), and more. Noted scholar Sander L. Gilman has articulated the link between capitalism and the industry that has developed to support weight loss in the past century: Dieting aims at both cure and profit. . . . For as the diet industry of the modern era shows, its greatest failure would be the elimination of actual or perceived unhappiness with weight, for with this success would come the end to the dieting industry.6 In light of this, Weight Watchers’ accomplishments are telling, as Hillel Schwartz has noted, “When it first became a business, Weight Watchers had revenues of $160,000 (1964). In 1970, revenues were up to $8 million, in 1977 to $39 million, with nine million people registered in thirteen years.”7 Beyond Weight Watchers, programs such as The Atkins Diet, The South Beach Diet, Jenny Craig, and others created booming businesses geared towards people seeking help to lose weight. From group meetings and personal consultations, these companies would expand to offer food products, aerobics and exercise options, and more, but they continue to profit only so long as people need (or perceive a need for) help.

Diets 25 Logically, Americans began to consume more low- and fat-free foods in the 1980s and 1990s, as companies moved beyond weight loss groups into making actual products.8 Created as a healthier alternative to Stouffer’s popular frozen meals, Lean Cuisine began in 1981 with only ten options, but today it has over 100. Its main competitor, Healthy Choice, was founded by ConAgra Inc. in 1985–1986, after its chairman Charles M. Harper had a heart attack and was forced to dramatically change his diet. Not only do they sell frozen meals (starting in 1989), but also they sell a variety of food products, amassing a quick $352 million dollars in January 1991.9 These companies offered easier, convenient ways to diet, providing lower calorie options for those who could afford them. Unfortunately, many studies have emphasized dieting of any kind rarely works.10 Not only are rebounds to previous behaviors and bouts of binge eating common occurrences after dieting, but studies have shown that cycles of weight loss and weight gain are perpetuated because dieting can increase health and psychological problems that can lead to disordered eating.11 Perhaps even more problematic, dieting shapes people’s lives—from creating obsessions with caloric intakes to altering moods. Alarmingly, Gilman has noted that “Certain studies have shown that dieters as a class have lower self-esteem than non-dieters . . . having radically unrealistic expectations about self-improvement following weight loss will change their lives rather than their belt size.”12 And yet, as we know, women and men repeatedly turn to dieting as a means to lose weight because of the ease of access and affordable options, but also because it is the common and expected response to the problem. Thanks to media prominence and advertising dominance, dieting programs and information are everywhere. Understandably, it would eventually become a topic for artists to address both in its prevalence but also because artists, like the general population, would inevitably diet themselves. As artists begin to explore dieting in their art, many often attempt to critique or challenge the diet industry. However, as the artists discussed in this chapter all lose weight, it becomes increasingly hard to distinguish whether the weight loss is for health, appearance, or the artwork itself. By succeeding in losing weight, these artists do not critique the industry; rather, they show that these different companies, programs, and surgeons can be successful in what they do. How, then, can one actually challenge these popular weight loss companies? Further complicating this question, these projects do not have the same conceptual underpinnings that Eleanor Antin and Martha Rosler utilize in their artwork. Whereas their work is often accompanied by larger questions related to what could and should be considered art, in this chapter, these artists often express a desire to lose weight and how it could benefit their lives, being open and clear about their process and progress concerning weight loss. Rachel Rosenthal, Faith Ringgold, Julia Kozerski, and Jen Davis offer relatable narratives about their struggle with body size and simultaneously offer proof that change can happen. Through their participation in the weight loss industry, these artists can be seen as representing the ultimate “success stories.” Although their works bring in other important and relevant social concerns, as we will see, it becomes impossible to separate their successful weight loss from their identity as artists and, essentially, they end up reinforcing problematic ideals. Yet in their representation of their weight loss, they must often deal with frustrations and failures, emphasizing feelings of inadequacies and ugliness. By recalling Gilman’s insightful commentary about the diet industry’s reliance on the failure of weight loss, these artists reconcile those ideas in their own work by confronting their wins and losses.

26  Diets To begin, in The Death Show (1978), Rachel Rosenthal (1926–2015) used photographs of her overweight body to celebrate her newer, more svelte figure. Somewhat recalling Eleanor Antin’s photographic illustrations of her weight loss in Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972) to demonstrate the “sculptural” changes to her body, Rosenthal’s performances entailed a personal revelation about her weight concerning her childhood, her familial relationships, and her aging and ailing body. Having been born in France of Russian-Jewish blood, her experiences as a European in the buildup to and beginning of World War II shaped her life very differently from the younger American artists discussed in “Beginnings.” Rosenthal calls herself a “DP”—a Displaced Person, as she had been raised in Paris, but forced to flee Europe because of the Holocaust, relocating first to Brazil in June 1940 and then to New York in April 1941.13 From 1946 to 1954, Rosenthal shuffled between Paris and New York, studying with the likes of intellectuals Meyer Schapiro and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, while learning theatrical practices from Merce Cunningham and Roger Blin (known for starring in and directing the first staging of Waiting for Godot in 1953).14 After her father’s death in 1955, Rosenthal set out for California, particularly interested in experimental performance. Exploring art, dance, theater, philosophy, and even stage direction, Rosenthal established Instant Theatre (1956–1966) in Los Angeles. This small group of artists and thespians focused on a combination of improvisation and theater exercises all developed and directed by Rosenthal. This connection to theater did not preclude her from being involved in the art world, however, as is evidenced by her connections to Robert Rauschenberg, a fellow artist-performer, to sculptor Ed Kienholz and to the vital Ferus Gallery.15 Rosenthal did not, however, produce a project conceived of as performance art until the mid-1970s. The feminist movement fundamentally changed Rosenthal; she was encouraged by fellow feminists to explore performance art and to incorporate in it her life experiences. Both feminism and performance art were relatively new practices, and with that came more freedom to experiment. Specifically, many advocated the appropriateness of the new art form to tell women’s stories—voices that for so long had not been shared.16 This is not to say that women had not used their bodies to make art before the 1970s, as Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Shigeko Kubota, and Yayoi Kusama all used their body in their performances and projects in the 1960s. So, although Antin, Rosenthal, Smith, and Rosler (among others) in the 1970s were not the first artists to use their bodies, they were pioneering in their use of feminist thinking to produce the work. Rosenthal explained in 1989, I was able to do in my performance work what I had never been able to do in my life, which is to reveal myself, to disclose, to air, to put out all this garbage and turn it around and make it into art, and in a sense reveal all the dark secrets that I had kept locked up all these years. It was redemption and exorcism.17 In that vein, her first performance art pieces, Replays (1975) and Thanks (1975), began to address her relationship with her father.18 Yet it wasn’t until Charm (1977) that Rosenthal fully delved into her childhood and made connections to how those issues concerning her father were still shaping her life in the present, specifically her weight. Subtitled “A Sonata in Three Movements,” Charm was performed at Mount St. Mary’s College Art Gallery on January 28, 1977.19 The stage was divided into

Diets 27 two parts, with a raised platform on one section giving it additional height. The piece began with a voiceover (done by Rosenthal’s then-husband King Moody) reading from a Los Angeles Times scientific article about physics. Performed in three sections around multiple definitions of “charm,” Rosenthal weaves in stories about her parents, her childhood, her first home in Paris, and her relationship with her servants. As the piece progressed, the pace quickened and the environment got increasingly frantic. On the elevated platform, supporting cast members dressed in black called “nightmare figures” engaged in acts of sadism and sado-masochism at escalating speeds until they became a mesh of figures. Meanwhile, on the lower platform, Rosenthal remained seated, regaling the audience with tales of her aristocratic Parisian life. As things sped up and became increasingly chaotic, Rosenthal became increasingly anxious and upset, shouting at intervals, “CAN YOU ALL SEE ME? CAN YOU ALL HEAR ME?”20 Throughout her entire monologue, a butler was presenting her with pastries, which Rosenthal ate rapidly, repeatedly asking for more. As the pastries piled up faster than she could devour, she frantically shoveled them in her mouth. For the triumphant finish, the butler brought out a large chocolate cake, which Rosenthal plunged into face first. As these events took place, Rosenthal used storytelling to tie the piece together. Discussing her unconventional family, Rosenthal explained that her mother was unable to marry her father for some time because he had another family elsewhere in France. Despite the situation, Rosenthal made clear that her parents loved each other and made every effort to give their beloved daughter everything. For example, she recounted the playful story of her father coming home from work and how they would engage in spirited banter. Yet there was a dark side to her life in Paris, as Rosenthal spoke of how she was forced to go to bed unreasonably early and was left under the watch of the servants upstairs. Although her “downstairs” life with her doting parents was enjoyable, pleasant and, most importantly, “charming,” Rosenthal had a particularly precarious relationship with her governess, who openly mocked her and put the sixyear-old Rosenthal on a diet. As she explained in the piece, Downstairs I was adulated and loved. Everything I did was wonderful and pretty. Upstairs my hair was pulled, my face was slapped, I was told I was stupid, that I was an idiot and a show-off, and that people were only nice to me because my father was rich.21 After this comment in the performance, Rosenthal rang a bell to alert the butler for more food. As the stories get darker and darker, Rosenthal speeds the stories up, working herself into a frantic state where she gorged on the sweet pastries. Charm was the first piece Rosenthal performed where she addressed food and also marked the first time she discussed her deep-seated self-consciousness about her body. In a 1975 letter to Barbara T. Smith, she opened up about her desire to lose weight and change her body size. Rosenthal traced the origins of her overeating to the CordonBleu chef Julie who worked for her family.22 In a letter the following year, Rosenthal explained how her body was physically hindering her work: Needless to say, I am petrified. Here I am, almost fifty, having to have my knees operated on, overweight, ten years older, out of shape and training, trying to resume one of the most difficult and demanding forms art can take.23

28  Diets Charm was Rosenthal’s attempt to come to terms with her body and food, but specifically her childhood. In a later interview, she expounds, My half-sister was obese and was getting a great deal of flak from my mother, so I associated being loved with being thin. That created a lifelong problem and an eating disorder. For example, I can never remain an even weight because it either goes way up or way down. I eat emotionally—and for all of the wrong reasons.24 Charm makes clear that Rosenthal was struggling intensely with her weight, and after the revelations discovered throughout the performance, she joined Overeaters Anonymous.25 Founded by Rozanne S., Overeaters Anonymous (OA) began in Los Angeles in 1960, modeled after a Gamblers Anonymous meeting she had attended with a friend the previous year. Following a similar twelve-step program like that of Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous, the group provides members with a safe meeting place to come together and share not only their struggles with overeating but also coping mechanisms. For Rosenthal, OA, coupled with group therapy, helped her confront her feelings about food. Rosenthal discusses her behaviors, “Well, what in French we call ‘boulimie.’ Here bulimia means something else; it means eating and inducing vomiting. I never did throw up, but I was a compulsive overeater.”26 Thanks to her participation and commitment, she lost over sixty pounds. After a brief stint trying to revive Instant Theatre in 1976–1977, Rosenthal returned to performance art significantly thinner and, in her mind, healthier, which she addressed in The Death Show (1978, Figure 2.1). Performed only once at Space Gallery in Los Angeles on October 21, 1978, The Death Show was part of a larger performance and exhibition event, “Thanatopsis: Contemplations on Death,” that involved a variety of media and thirty-two artists. For her performance, Rosenthal bisects the L-shaped gallery with a large platform, allowing the audience to be seated on both sides. An easel draped with a purple cloth is on the far end of the platform, with a teddy bear and a mask on the floor next to it. Rosenthal projects blue, green, and purple light throughout the space, while the easel and four candles toward the back of the space amplify the drama. The piece begins with Rosenthal entering, holding a candle, and passing out crackers to the audience. She asks the crowd to take a wafer but not to eat it until she instructed. The sound of Tibetan bells echoes throughout the gallery, and a metronome clicks, at first quickly, but gradually slowing throughout the performance. Rosenthal recited her previously unheard text about death, primarily concerned with three deaths that “stick out as prototypes of all the others.”27 The first death she addresses is her beloved “Teddy”—a childhood toy taken away from her when the “grownups” felt she was too old for it, under the guise that the bear had fleas. “Defective Kitten” is the second death discussed, though in this instance she felt guilty. One of her cats had kittens, of which one was “defective” and the mother refused to help it. Rosenthal decided to act, drowning the cat as it squirmed and struggled. The third death Rosenthal presents was the 1972 death of her treasured cat “Dibidi,” whom she had for eighteen years, during twelve of which the cat was paraplegic and had to be constantly attended to and supervised. One particularly rough night, Rosenthal asked Dibidi “tu veux me quitter?” (translated as “Do you want to leave me?”—she used French because she felt that was the language the cat

Figure 2.1 Rachel Rosenthal, performing in The Death Show, October 21, 1978, Space Gallery, Los Angeles Source: Photo by David Moreno. Courtesy of the Rachel Rosenthal Company.

30  Diets understood) and the cat replied “oui” and died in her arms.28 As she discusses these deaths, it became clear The Death Show was about Rosenthal exorcising these demons of her past as she strove for redemption. Addressing this piece in 1979, Rosenthal explained that although our body knows death and stores this knowledge “in our memory bank at the cellular level,” we must consciously rehearse for the “Big One” by learning how to die the myriad deaths of our lives, letting go and shedding people, events, parts of ourselves. If this is not done, a “monster emerges.”29 By processing these three deaths, Rosenthal also had to experience a dramatic change herself. After Rosenthal shared her macabre experiences, she reveals a picture on an easel, calling it the Icon of the Fat Vampire. There, mounted on plywood is a photograph of Rosenthal, near the time Charm was made. Her face is centered, surrounded by a funeral wreath composed of pastries, cakes, and doughnuts spray-painted black. Describing the icon to her audience, Rosenthal said, The Fat Vampire is fat from the accumulation of countless botched-up deaths not allowed to die, fat from the unrecognized fear of the Big One, fat from the wrong substances ingested for life and sustenance, fat from opaqueness, the refusal to let in the rays of light. Fat from blocked deaths.30 After impressing on the crowd that the Fat Vampire had taken over her life, she exorcises it by letting out a primal scream. Next, Rosenthal shares how she had to rid herself completely of this monster. Initially, Rosenthal had resisted killing the Fat Vampire because of her fear of leaving her comfort zone. Lighting additional candles at the front of the stage, Rosenthal starts to define the “Stations of the Fat Vampire” as moments where she could have killed the Fat Vampire, but she was too afraid of dying. Each articulation of a station begins with Rosenthal stating a year, then a type of food, and then a brief explanation about how she refused a death (her virginity, her parents, her identity as an artist, etc.). For example, 1. 1946: Rice Croquettes. I refuse the death of my childhood and the subsequent glimpse of paradise. . . . 6. 1972: Cheesecake. I refuse the death of my feminine role and resist the call to feminist arms. . . . 9. 1978: Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream. I refuse the death of the Fat Vampire, of my marriage, of 51 years of my life. The 10th Station is this performance.31 In this, the death of the Fat Vampire becomes an exorcism of all her “deaths,” those demons that have haunted her and made her body fat and bloated. To process and move past these devastating events, Rosenthal must excise them from her life and her body—shedding the sadness and the pounds. As the performance comes to a close, Rosenthal addresses her own deaths: I want to bury the Fat Vampire, and with it, all my small and medium-sized deaths that were left to decompose without proper burial. To all these, I wish a final and

Diets 31 blessed rest so that I may live my real and beautiful death without the confusion of Teddy’s euphemistic fleas, but rather with the neatness and clarity of line of Dibidi’s sweet departure. To this end do I recite the “Bardo of the Fat Vampire” and ask you to eat the wafers now, for the Vampire absorbed because it wanted to be absorbed.32 A recording of Rosenthal reciting the “Bardo of the Fat Vampire” begins just as she approaches the Icon and repeatedly slashes it with a knife. Putting vampire teeth in her mouth and the mask on top of her head, she squeezes the teddy bear between her legs. Meanwhile, the poem continues to be read, and in it, Rosenthal reiterates the shedding of her former self, while lyrically asking for wisdom and understanding, among other concerns. She bends over and with her head down so that the mask faced the audience, the mask sinks between her shoulders. In one swift move, she lowers the mask to her face. Cuddling the bear, she takes off her mask and puts it on the bear itself, resting her chin on the bear. Pausing, she leans over and bites the teddy bear’s neck, eventually letting the bear fall to the platform. She straightens up, and gradually opens her mouth and eyes as wide as possible in a silent yet terrifying scream. The metronome comes to a stop, and there is silence. By Rosenthal’s account, the Fat Vampire had taken over her life, manifesting itself physically through the size of her body. She claimed to never have been fat, but rather the Vampire wrapped around her body and encased her: “As for me, I finally lost track of my real boundaries and amnesiac of my true self, I too mistook this padded shroud for my own skin.”33 This concept of alien fat enveloping the true person resembles Susie Orbach’s arguments in Fat Is a Feminist Issue (1978). Published at the same time that Rosenthal was producing these works, Orbach’s work points to fat as a tool that women use to avoid complex issues. As she explained, “Fat is a social disease, and fat is a feminist issue. Fat is not about lack of self-control or lack of will power. Fat is about protection, sex, nurturance, strength, boundaries, mothering, substance, assertion and rage.”34 For Orbach, becoming fat can be a way of taking control of one’s body and attempting to avoid objectification in the eyes of men. Rosenthal claimed that the fat overtook her, shifting, shaping, and obscuring her true self. Both Orbach and Rosenthal, then, see fat as an insidious entity separate from the individual, one that with hard work (dieting, exercising, etc.) can be removed. As she recounted and demonstrated in Charm, Rosenthal was an overeater, and specifically an emotional eater.35 The Death Show took things further, pushing out this part of herself. Overeating can be construed as a deliberate act, a choice to avoid the ideal woman, as Orbach has proffered: My fat says “screw you” to all who want me to be the perfect mom, sweetheart, maid and whore. Take me for who I am, not for who I’m supposed to be. . . . In this way, fat expresses a rebellion against the powerlessness of the woman, against the pressure to look and act in a certain way and against being evaluated on her ability to create an image of herself.36 Such ideas may have been evocative for Rosenthal, who was trying to have the ideal, thin body that her mother wanted for her, who often told her young daughter “when you are fat, I don’t love you.”37 But by the 1970s, her weight had ballooned, and she

32  Diets suffered from various health problems. In 1989, she elaborated on her dissatisfaction with her body size, and how it actually disrupted her artistic output: There was a time in my life when if I’d looked the way I look now I would hide. I would not show myself. I would not perform. I would not go out. I would hide under the sheets and nobody would see me. And I knew, deep in my heart, that I could never be loved or appreciated or even considered as part of the human race if people could see me with these pounds overweight. And now I thank goodness have gotten past that . . . But it is still a problem, because I know how good I look when I’m thin and I feel so much better too.38 The Death Show then becomes particularly powerful, as it illustrates Rosenthal’s exploration of her heaviness as a hindrance and a destructive force—one that provoked anger and violence and one she even associated with death. It also evidenced Rosenthal’s focus and dependence on her body size; her thinness was integral to her creation of art. Rosenthal felt pressure to become thinner for a multitude of reasons, one of which logically seems to conform to a societal ideal. Yet her Jewish identity precluded her from completely being able to achieve that goal. Rosenthal did not dye her hair or, for instance, undergo rhinoplasty, as many Jewish women did; instead, by dieting, she made clear that it was her body size that she saw as most needing change. Similarly, Lisa E. Bloom has discussed Antin’s ethnicity in relation to Carving (but applicable to Rosenthal): Antin’s project can be seen as her inability to adapt to the ideal and thus to assimilate as an unmarked subject . . . Antin does not offer an easy solution to the dilemma of being both Jewish and female. Instead she points to the limits of fitting in, by presenting a series of anti-aesthetic photographic self-portraits that refuse to offer a neutral and undisturbing aesthetic experience.39 The attempt of Jewish women to assimilate and change their figures to look “whiter” has been well documented. As Melvin Konner articulates, Hair was straightened and dyed blond, eyebrows trimmed and plucked, skin bleached, and ears tucked back closer to the skull in innovative surgical procedures. And, in the greatest step in the cosmetic surgery of the era, Jewish noses were straightened and “bobbed”—cut short—to remove this most obvious and “indestructible” Jewish stigma.40 By tracing the history of rhinoplasty from its invention by the Jewish doctor Jacques (né Jakob) Joseph to the popularity of the surgery with celebrities and teenage Jewish girls, Konner emphasizes the lengths Jewish men and women have gone to change their bodies to fit in. More specifically, though, Jewish women—arguably including Antin and Rosenthal— have historically tried to resemble a particular type or types of figure—one that is significantly less Jewish. Sander Gilman explores this idea: The desire for invisibility, to “look like everyone else,” still shaped the Jew’s desire to alter his/her body. . . . The internalization of the negative image of the Jew is

Diets 33 one model of response to the sense of being seen as “too Jewish,” or, indeed, being seen as Jewish at all.41 By documenting her body in a straightforward and scientific approach, Antin further drew her attention to her Jewish nose and short stature and its differences from the California woman. Similarly, the Jewish refugee Rosenthal, with her body type, with her dark hair, her larger frame and troubled knees, is certainly distinct from the figure of her erstwhile mentor, Barbara T. Smith. Changing their bodies and making them thinner could serve as a comfort for Antin and Rosenthal, making them more American, and as Gilman said, more “invisible.” Furthermore, as Dr. Thomas Rees asserted, “Everybody wanted to look like a shiksa.”42 Derived from the Hebrew verb shakaytz (to abominate an unclean object), shiksa evolved into an epithet describing the gentile female, one who was simultaneously desired by men but forbidden.43 Although the term “shiksa” does not necessarily imply a thin body, it does frequently suggest some attractiveness or appeal that the Jewish woman is lacking. In this discussion, Smith could be cast as the shiksa—the quintessential American blonde W.A.S.P. (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), whereas Rosenthal and Antin strove to make their bodies look more like that of the shiksa and Smith, and so more conventionally desirable. Interweaving questions of Jewishness into the struggle about weight certainly complicates Antin and Rosenthal’s relationships with their bodies. Likewise, Oprah Winfrey’s battles with her weight mimic the ordinary dieter, but she powerfully led the way for a very public discussion about weight while also addressing race on her popular talk show as well as in other forms of print and television media. Begun as a local talk show in Chicago in 1983, The Oprah Winfrey Show was syndicated nationally in September 1986 and ranked number one out of all daytime talk shows by the end of its first season.44 In a 1986 New York Times article that introduced Winfrey to a national audience, journalist Thomas Morgan made a point of bringing Winfrey’s weight into the discussion: At 5 feet 7 inches and 190 pounds, Miss Winfrey is not the svelte stereotype of a female television figure. Periodically, like many other people, she promises to diet. In one of her shows, she invited the audience to begin the diet with her. Winfrey told him, I’m overweight. . . . People tell me not to lose weight, I might lose my personality. I tell them, “Honey, it ain’t in my thighs.” . . . We all want to be happy, we have sad times. If you have lived, you have overeaten at one period or another.45 With an increase in visibility because of her success in syndicated television and the increased commentary on her body, it seemed only natural that Oprah would eventually go on a diet. After much hard work (and much fodder for her show), Oprah was able to proudly walk onto the set of her show in her “skinny jeans” in November of 1988. Behind her she pulled a red wagon filled with sixty-seven pounds of animal fat—the same amount of weight she had lost. A celebration of her achievement, the fat was a way of visualizing the weight lost in a tangible form. Yet the wagon of fat also emphasized her prior unhealthiness and the disgustingness of what was once a part of her body. Winfrey echoed Rosenthal, who also celebrated her weight loss by championing her new thinner body, acknowledging her food issues and its connections to

34  Diets her mental health. Both women needed visual aids to express the grandeur of their achievements. Winfrey had used a liquid fast to drop the pounds yet, unfortunately, as soon as she began eating solid food again, the weight came back (as it does for as many as 90% of people who followed this diet).46 The Optifast plan that Oprah used to lose her weight did not allow for the consumption of food, instead providing 400 to 800 calories a day in the form of water mixed with nutrient packets, all while under medical supervision.47 The visibility of her weight loss caused a frenzy, with droves of people seeking out the same diet. Eventually, Optifast and other liquid protein diets went under review by the Federal Trade Commission and were charged with deceptive advertising.48 Oprah herself was devastated by her weight gain, describing her feelings in her journals: “Scale said 203 pounds this morning. . . . Dancing on the M. C. Hammer show with the fattest behind I’ve ever seen. I saw that tape and can’t deny it anymore. I really am fat again.”49 Winfrey had been triumphant in her success, but just fourteen months later, she was forced to publicly reconcile with her changed and now larger body. Her ratings had continued to rise dramatically by this point, and now, the size of her figure was up for public discussion. In 1991, Winfrey graced the cover of People with the exclamation, “I’ll never diet again!” In the article, appropriately (and potentially humiliating) titled “Big Gain, No Pain: Chubby Again, Winfrey Drops Dieting and Develops a New Attitude Toward Carrying Her Weight,” Winfrey explained her relationships to food and to her body. I’ve been dieting since 1977 and the reason I failed is that diets don’t work. I tell people, if you’re underweight, go on a diet and you’ll gain everything you lost plus more. Now I’m trying to find a way to live in a world with food without being controlled by it, without being a compulsive eater. That’s why I say I will never diet again.50 As Winfrey had been a role model to many women, her successes had served as an emblem of hope for women who wanted to be thinner everywhere. At the same time, many women were equally disappointed by her own obsession with her body and its weight. Every change in her body—a weight gain or a weight loss—inspired an emotional response from her audience and the media. Her resolve to not diet again represented less an acceptance of her current body than an admission of her failure to keep the weight off. People illustrated its “Big Gain” article with numerous photographs that recorded both the successes and the failures of Winfrey’s diet. Reiterating Winfrey’s weight fluctuations by showing the varying sizes of her body, the article showed Winfrey at her thinnest (the famous picture documenting the moment when she walked out on her show in her size 10 jeans) to her 1991 “accepted” weight. The article also discussed the weight of two other popular “TV Heavyweights,” Roseanne Barr and Delta Burke.51 Because it was addressing the heavier Winfrey, the magazine felt the need to compare her to two other larger women in the commercial media. No longer thin, Winfrey now resembled Barr and Burke, and she did not easily fit into the norms propagated by mainstream television. But because of her immense popularity, Winfrey became the person that magazines and tabloids turned to again and again to dissect issues surrounding weight.

Diets 35 Whereas Winfrey’s weight was a topic for reporters and a common focus of her television show, Faith Ringgold’s artistic career prior to the 1980s did not address her weight. However, both had repeatedly addressed women’s issues and African American topics in their work. After twenty years of focusing on her career and creating successful work, the African American artist, Ringgold (b. 1930) decided that she, much like Winfrey, needed to make a change in her body. Ringgold’s art career began in earnest in the 1960s, when she painted large works that confronted issues of black identity in the United States. As an active participant in the civil rights movement, Ringgold was interested in using her artwork to demand equality for people of all races. In the 1970s, her professional successes increased while she started to explore other mediums including soft sculpture, dolls and, eventually, quilts. Ringgold’s use of quilts stems from a moment in her career when she was seeking a change in direction. In 1980, she collaborated with her mother, Willy Posey Jones, a retired fashion designer, to make Echoes of Harlem, a pieced quilt covered with thirty different black faces.52 The quilt was made for an exhibition titled “The Artist and the Quilt,” in which each artist was paired with a quilt maker who would help the artist realize her vision in a new medium.53 Ringgold was aghast when her mother wanted to use hand-cut pieces, thinking it would look unprofessional. But, she explained later, “not knowing at that time anything about the tradition of African-American quilts, I didn’t realize where my mother’s free-hand design approach was coming from.”54 Posey died the next year, but in that brief collaboration she had helped Ringgold to find the perfect medium for her artistic vision; quilting allowed her to explore women’s issues through the process of sewing and piecing as well as, more generally, by its references to women’s domestic lives.55 Although her first quilt—an arrangement of thirty portraits painted onto quilt blocks—was very simple, reflecting her background as a painter, a few years later, Ringgold was incorporating a large amount of narrative text into her work. Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? tells her invented story of Aunt Jemima, a character who began life as a cook, known for an apron and a bandana around her head (though she was often played by both white men and black men in blackface in minstrel performances). In Ringgold’s 1986 version, Aunt Jemima is no longer the slave and servant devoted to her master; rather, she is a black woman who works to become a successful businesswoman.56 The quilt includes painted pictures of characters in the story, surrounded by the handwritten fiction of Aunt Jemima’s life. Ringgold continued to produce a number of quilts like Aunt Jemima, which incorporated text and visual images. These works became known as her story quilts, because they differ from more traditional quilts, which use stitching and piecing exclusively. With the addition of text, Ringgold is able to use story quilts to present activist arguments, historical narratives, personal events, and recollections. In 1986, Ringgold lost 100 pounds. To celebrate, she created the first story quilt of a series of three, all of which have Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt as their title. These quilts include both photographic and painted portraits of the artist, showing all versions of herself—from young to old and skinny to fat. The first quilt, which provided an autobiographical sketch of the artist written on it in text and matching photographs, was accompanied by a corresponding performance piece. To make the quilt, she used a combination of photoetchings on fabric, painted portraits, and handwritten texts, which were then pieced onto the quilt by assistants whom she had hired. Focusing on anecdotes and personal

36  Diets feelings regarding her weight, Ringgold incorporated parts of a text she had been writing for an unpublished autobiography.57 On the first quilt, Ringgold chronologically shares her life story—in respect to her body—organized by decade. The central section is the exception, as “January 1, 1986,” tells of Ringgold’s current relationship with her body and weight loss goals. Shifting from the first to the second person, the tone of her writing also moves from autobiographical to motivational as the text begins, In this year, 1986, I will lose 128 pounds. By January 1, 1987 I will weigh 130 pounds, or I’ll eat your hat. Mine I’ve already eaten. Faith, you have been trying to lose weight since the sixties. For the last twenty, twenty-five years you’ve been putting yourself on diets, charting your lack of progress and gaining weight. For the next six months you’ll be in California, away from everybody, the perfect place to make the CHANGE.58 Thus, the quilt becomes not just a history of her complicated relationship to her body, but also an attempt to encourage herself to lose more weight. Ringgold has admitted that she wanted to lose weight, not just to look better but to become healthier and to increase her agility when working and performing.59 Moira Roth astutely articulated the way that the quilt embodies Ringgold’s emotions with respect to her weight: With this quilt Ringgold visually records the progressive transformation of a woman from what she is expected to be to what she wants to be. The weight gain is part of that struggle and a response to the stress and pressures of conflicting demands and expectations. It becomes a protective shield in Ringgold’s denial of her stereotyped image as a sex object (the Black temptress).60 Ringgold is expressing the desire to claim her body for herself, but by emphasizing weight loss, she is also calling attention to the pressure put on women. The quilt represents her willingness to act on her dissatisfaction by shedding some of her weight. Roth claimed that Ringgold used her excess weight so that her body would not become a sexual object, an idea that also recalls Orbach’s writings. Orbach maintained that just as many women first become fat in an attempt to avoid being made into sexual objects at the beginning of their adult lives, so many women remain fat as a way of neutralizing their sexual identity in the eyes of others who are important to them as their life progresses.61 Ringgold even parallels Orbach in the 1970–1979 section of the quilt: “You used to say your husband Burdette made you eat so that no one else would look at you. And then you didn’t look at you either.”62 Throughout her writing, Ringgold expresses an instability and vulnerability in regards to her body and her weight. The text often comes across as exceedingly relatable, if not common, in that it mirrors many weight loss narratives that now frequent magazines, television, memoirs, and even Facebook. The Change text is not completely serious or dark; rather, Ringgold includes moments of humor and lightness to break up the upsetting stories. For example, the section for 1980–1985 begins with this witty insight: “By the 1980s you had finally

Diets 37 eaten yourself into a corner. The only way out was cold turkey without dressing.”63 She continues, telling the story of a political benefit she attended: You posed with her [the candidate], not realizing you held a greasy bag of nuts. She slapped you on your hand and ordered you to, “put that away . . .” You could have made the front page and the Nightly News that day, “Fat Woman Goes Nuts,” but you smiled, wiped your mouth, and put your nuts out of sight.64 The humor, however, cannot disguise the hurt that Ringgold was feeling, as she chronicled painful moments in her life—the binging, the divorces, even the loss of self-­ control when faced with appealing wine or delectable chocolate. Ringgold has shrewdly affirmed the overabundance of feelings that accompany the often rollercoaster experience that is the process of gaining and losing weight. Because of the pressure to be thin, these feelings seem increasingly familiar. After completing the quilt and losing 100 pounds, Ringgold incorporated the ideas and anecdotes of the quilt into a performance piece that she would present when the quilt was shown in exhibitions (Figure 2.2). Through song, dance, and spoken word, Ringgold narrated her life and her struggles with weight. Throughout the performances, she wore a coat with the same imagery and text as the first Change quilt. At the event’s climax, she dramatically removed the coat. Her thinner body was revealed, as was a shirt with her new physique on it. Symbolically, at each performance, she shed her larger self and revealed her accomplishments.

Figure 2.2 Faith Ringgold, 1986 Change performance image (Faith Ringgold in costume) Source: © 1986 Faith Ringgold. Courtesy of ACA, location of costume unknown. According to the artist, this is the only known photograph of the performance.

38  Diets Additionally, throughout the performances, she brought out twenty two-liter soda bottles filled with water and placed in two large, black garbage bags, which she attempted to pull around the space. Collectively symbolizing the weight that she had lost, the bottles did not budge easily, a blatant metaphor for the burden of the extra pounds she carried and the difficult of shedding them.65 She invited the audience to get up and pull the “weight,” to experience firsthand the weight of 100 pounds. In an act anticipating Winfrey’s wagon of fat two years later, Ringgold needed to tangibly represent her lost pounds as a way to visualize the changes to her figure. In her performances, Ringgold repeatedly acknowledged her past weight loss failures: the fad diets, the doctors’ advice, even the weight loss pills. In contrast, the separation of the extra fat (as represented by Ringgold’s bottles) and her body emphasized her triumphs. Throughout each performance, Ringgold repeated the phrase, “I can change. I can do it. I can do it. I can CHANGE, I can CHANGE. Now.” Ringgold would encourage audience participation, wanting them to join in on her chanting. Her frustrations—the up and the downs of her body—were now not only vocalized, but also shared with a much larger group. Ringgold was no longer alone with her experiences, they were made communal. In addition, Ringgold uses the crowd to inspire her as she tried to lose more weight. These sentiments are echoed in the quilt itself, which arguably has its own performative element. The last panel records the specific date that she completed the quilt, as an update to her progress since the first panel of January 1, 1986, she wrote, It is September 27, 1986, and though I have 40 pounds yet to lose I have lost 88 pounds. Today I am thinner than I have been in the last twenty years. I eat fresh fruit and vegetables instead of pasta and pork chops, and I exercise almost every day. I am out to prove something right here and now.66 And, yet, what exactly has she proved? The numbers on the scale had changed, and she admitted that she had developed healthier behaviors, but her performances and the quilt itself made clear that this change was not enough. The stories expressed in the quilt repeatedly emphasize her anxieties regarding her body. This omnipresent discomfort led Ringgold to continue the series as she continued to lose weight and attempted to come to terms with her physical presence. A second quilt dealing with her weight loss, Change 2: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Quilt (1988), was originally intended as a celebration of losing another thirty pounds. Yet as she noted in her 2005 autobiography, “I must admit I failed to do that, but I was still fortunate because I didn’t gain back the weight I lost.”67 The focal point of the quilt is the center panel, which includes a painting that depicts Ringgold’s ideal, svelte figure in a simple bathing suit. Lurking behind the thin version of Ringgold was the larger shadow of her current, imperfect self. Additionally, and like the first quilt, Change 2 includes lithographed photographs. Here, five recent photos are included, showing Ringgold posing in front of her first Change quilt and other works of art (each of these photos is repeated twice, for a total of ten photographs incorporated into the quilt). These pictures are accompanied by eight text panels that provide the lyrics to her Change Song that she had developed in earlier performances.

Diets 39 For the Change 2 performances, she wore a costume that worked to accentuate her waist and her successful maintenance of her 100-pound weight loss. Made of glamorous and glittery fabric, the dress shimmered as she danced around the room. Rather than recite the stories of the first quilt, for the second performance piece, Ringgold sang the Change Song with accompaniment by a drummer and an actor who asked questions during the song.68 The song used similar motivational lyrics as the text in the first quilt, repeating “I’ve just got to change” as well as putting the onus on herself to do the changing: “Never mind who’s to blame/It’s me that’s got to change/Eatin’ all that food is so insane.”69 At the conclusion of the song, she again asked for audience participation, encouraged everyone to get up and dance with her. She has said, “This performance piece was by far my most successful. I performed it approximately twenty-five times from 1988 until 1991.”70 Audience participation was evidently critical in Ringgold’s Change performances, as viewers bonded over their commonalities concerning weight loss, body image, and general insecurities concerning body size. Indeed, the audience, in its support of Ringgold and her project, did not challenge their assigned role in Ringgold’s weight loss. Speaking of Rikrit Tiravanija’s relationship to his audience and participants, Claire Bishop discusses the problem that some artists have when working directly with participants, in a way that can illuminate Ringgold’s works and performances: Despite Tiravanija’s rhetoric of open-endedness and viewer emancipation, the structure of his work circumscribes the outcome in advance, and relies on its presence within a gallery to differentiate it from entertainment. Tiravanija’s microtopia gives up on the idea of transformation in public culture and reduces its scope to the pleasures of a private group who identify with one another as gallery-goers.71 In these events, Ringgold did not critique or challenge the pressure on women to look a certain way. Rather, Ringgold used the people in her performances as a support structure to help her maintain her lower weight. Furthermore, the participants’ complicity reinforced the need for change in Ringgold’s body, and perhaps for others’ weight loss in the group. Ringgold’s performances captured the desire she felt to fit in and to find others who were experiencing the same challenges. Similarly, as Rosenthal details her own complicated issues with food, she projects her feelings on the audience while feeding them and pushing them to eat. Even Oprah Winfrey, reached out to her audience, seeking solace by sharing her experiences. Echoing the strategy used successfully in Weight Watchers and Overeaters Anonymous, Rosenthal, Ringgold, and Winfrey all found support through group participation, which recognizes that the struggle with weight or to be comfortable with body size is something that many, many women are working through. The public process and scrutiny displayed and addressed in these artworks recalls the process of Weight Watchers members who have to confront his or her weight publicly each week. The frequency and repetition of the weekly weigh-ins coupled with the encouragement of members to use food journals demonstrates the group’s dependence on documentation to keep its members aware of their weight. Fear of not meeting goal weights prompts anxiety in members, thereby helping to motivate them to lose more pounds. Daniel Martin, a sociologist who performed a study on the group

40  Diets through research and personal participation, explained how shame becomes a critical role in the effectiveness of the organization: As a participating observer, I experienced the anxiety that members later recounted in interviews about “facing the scale,” that is, weigh-ins. Because weigh-ins take place in semipublic space, it is possible that queuing members will learn of one’s weight, increasing the anxiety that is already present for some members. Having failed weigh-in several times by gaining weight, I was struck by the capacity for the ritual to evoke, simultaneously, feelings of dependency and embarrassment.72 This practice has since stopped, as Martin noted that the increasing singling out of people at meetings in the 1970s resulted in a number of people dropping out of the organization, in turn forcing Weight Watchers to reevaluate their policies, particularly the reading aloud of weight losses and gains. That being said, the organization continues to recognize members in the meetings who have reached a milestone in their weight loss diet.73 When reaching a goal weight with Weight Watchers, and after maintaining it for a short period, the company grants the customer a lifetime membership, with which comes a recognition award, unlimited meetings, and online access to the program. Achieving a satisfactory weight loss with Weight Watchers promises continued support and needs for its member, perhaps recognizing the frequent impossibility of maintaining the goal weight. In the painted portrait of Change 2, Ringgold was beginning to fantasize about her body size, dreaming of her own goal weight. In fact, she gained weight while traveling in Europe and Japan for exhibitions in 1987. While she continued to use the subtitle Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Quilt for her second quilt, she hadn’t made the progress expressed in the first quilt. She maintained the celebratory nature of the project despite her setbacks. Without denigrating the accomplishments of the first quilt—because losing 100 pounds was most certainly a victory for her—the second quilt evinces a measure of sadness. That she still felt she needed to change was evident in the center quilt block where Ringgold painted her thinner, idealized self overshadowed by the larger shape of her actual body. This drawing represents two versions of Ringgold: her at her present weight and her after losing more pounds. Essentially, this block serves as Ringgold’s own before-and-after comparison, explicitly referencing the popular pairings of images that conventionally demonstrate the dramatic transformations of successful celebrity dieters. She has combined the before-and-after into one picture on the quilt, using the shadow to represent her prior self and a new, slender figure wearing a skimpy bathing suit to represent her future. Similarly, the photographs in Ringgold’s first Change quilt can be read as beforeand-after shots and not simply as snapshots of various phases of her life. The six photographic panels on the border of the first Change quilt show Ringgold’s younger self, her graduation portraits, her dressed up in costume, posing in front of her artwork, and so forth. With a scrapbook-like quality, these panels illustrate the transformation from girl to woman, from a college student to a model for her mother’s fashion designs to a working artist and, strikingly, from thin to fat. The center panel here depicts Ringgold in skintight attire, as this “new” Ringgold stands, facing the viewer, with her hands on her hips, emphasizing her new thin waistline. Being in the center of the quilt, this panel highlights the “change” that she has experienced, with her new figure surrounded by all the photographs of her former self.

Diets 41 In these references to before-and-after photographs, Ringgold creates easily understandable media. Ringgold’s Change quilts and Winfrey’s 1991 People interview show both sides of the weight loss experience in different modalities—success in losing weight as well as failure to maintain a thinner figure long term. Ella Howard’s keen summary of Oprah’s relationship to her body and weight could apply to Ringgold as well: Winfrey has waged a search for her ideal physique, setting out to re-create her body by regulating her activities and disciplining her desires. At times, she has expressed feelings of victory and celebrated her achievement of the physical ideal, crediting therapeutic strategies with helping to liberate her from troubled relationships with food, exercise, and physical appearance. At other times, she has represented herself as a failure in her quest, expressing frustration and despair. But throughout her struggles she continues to rely on the self-help model, employing new or familiar therapeutic strategies in pursuit of her goals.74 Though their audience differed drastically, both made their struggles accessible to ordinary women, acknowledging that obsession with body weight is a common experience. Through documenting their trials, they offered to teach and motivate other women, spreading the idea that “anyone can do it.” Yet, ironically, by their accounts of their experiences, they effectively supported the idea that everyone should be of an “ideal” weight, regardless of the fact that they could not maintain such a weight themselves. By trying to achieve a putatively ideal body, Ringgold, Rosenthal, and Winfrey could also be said, in effect, to have tried to achieve the ideal white body. As Sidonie Smith discussed in the case of Ringgold, [Her] identity as a subject of disordered eating and disordered self-restraint is a social identity, one manifesting the psychic formations of her specific history as an African American woman. The ironic self-analysis of the narrative points to a profound psychic wound, the internalization of the phantasm of the idealized “feminine” body, raced as “white,” and the degraded African American female body stereotyped as unconstrained and excessive.75 Traditionally, African Americans have been more accepting of a heavier body type than other ethnic groups.76 But since the 1980s, the African American magazines Ebony and Jet have shown a marked increase in attention to diet, exercise, and body image issues. According to Becky W. Thompson, only in the last two decades have black women been able to communicate about their struggles with weight, breaking from the mammy stereotype (large, desexualized black women) that haunted them.77 Winfrey’s and Ringgold’s open discussions about their weight drew attention to the fact that people of color, like white people, could have issues with their bodies, and even struggle with eating disorders.78 The desire for slenderness so associated with Western white women is no longer specific to them, as women of other ethnic groups have generally come to adhere to the same ideals. On some level, Ringgold’s and Winfrey’s battles with their weight seem to demonstrate that their black bodies cannot fit into society the way that they are—they have to be modified (slimmed down) to be accepted. Furthermore, their desire to be thin points to a figure frequently missing in the literature on anorexia, bulimia, and weight issues, namely the black body.

42  Diets Ringgold had started to weight put back on by the time she began making her third quilt in 1991. Like Winfrey, Ringgold had used Optifast to quickly lose pounds. Originally Ringgold lost 100 pounds and kept the weight off in part through the exercise entailed in the performances and dancing for the first Change and for Change 2. When regular performances stopped and real food returned, Ringgold gained about twentyfive pounds.79 For Ringgold, this weight gain served as the impetus to create her third quilt, Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt (1991, Figure 2.3), which she explained, contain[ed] no photographs but rather a painted “group” self-portrait in the nude, showing me at my various different weights over the years—a testament to the continuing struggle I have had with food. The text for this quilt is about the eating habits of different “women” (all of them, of course, are just me) who are portrayed on this quilt.80 These different nude Ringgolds, while of varying sizes, were much closer to a thin body than to the heavier woman she once was and could become again. The text for Change 3 is illuminating, as it explains that the central image is a party where everyone invited is actually various versions of Ringgold: At my party everyone invited is actually me and therefore knows me so there is no need to posture and pretend. . . . The extreme manifestations of me showed up at the party uninvited, and were snubbed. One was eating a fried pork chop sandwich from a greasy bag. When she left in a huff, she got stuck in the door.81 The text makes clear that, as much as Ringgold wants to be open to all versions of her body, she is not able to accept her fat self. Yet as much as she desires to be thinner, she also has a problematic relationship with the thinner selves that are represented in the center panel of Change 3: “There is another woman who likes only to look at food. She is a culinary voyeur. I admire that. She will prepare delicious food and never eat it. I am very fond of her, though I rarely see her.”82 This thin Ringgold, and another self-disciplined Ringgold, who eats only one low-fat meal a day, do not make appearances in Ringgold’s life very often. Ringgold attempts to position her real self as someone in the middle of the weight range, one who eats but does not gorge. Unsurprisingly, Ringgold’s expressed favorite version of herself is the thinnest version, a figure who still gets to indulge in food and whom she describes on the quilt as one “who eats nonstop and never gains weight.” This woman is not invited to the party, as this fantasy is perhaps too painful for Ringgold to consider. The brief text on the quilt ends with the note that the two larger women had showed up at the party, eaten all the appetizers and then invited Ringgold for “coffee-cake and ice cream after dinner. Really?” Ringgold questioned these two women, perhaps because she identified with them. These sweets were among her weaknesses, and it is as if these two women were perpetuating Ringgold’s bigger body. She would rather not go out with these women, instead wanting to associate with the thinner women who either show restraint or have disordered eating habits. With those women, her body is safer.

Diets 43

Figure 2.3 Faith Ringgold, Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1991, Change series, 75 × 85.5 inches, acrylic on canvas Source: © 1991 Faith Ringgold. Courtesy of ACA, Collection of the artist/ACA Galleries.

Because the third quilt does not contain photographs or anecdotes from Ringgold’s life, it relies on a fictional event and painted (often idealized) portraits of the artist. Creating this image of her world allowed Ringgold to express these alter egos, some of whom are past versions of herself, whereas others are fictitious and exist solely in her mind. There are the skinny and the overweight Ringgolds, the emotional eaters and the ones who starve. Ringgold’s point is that all of these people are in her, and probably in most people. Nonetheless, the text makes clear that she is clinging to the idea that one day, maybe she can be as slender as the thinnest women in the quilt. For Ringgold at the time of Change 3, the goal was still to lose more weight. What had begun as a celebration of her weight loss had morphed into a hopeful wish of what her body could be and ended with a reluctant acceptance of her fluctuating weight. The Change series tracks her mind-set regarding body image but also provides for the hope that maybe one day she can achieve her desired slender body,

44  Diets which Susan Bordo has argued becomes a symbol of “correct attitude.” Bordo continues, “it means that one ‘cares’ about oneself and how one appears to others, suggesting willpower, energy, control over infantile impulse, the ability to shape your life.”83 A fat person can thus be seen as weak, as fatness can “be seen as reflecting moral or personal inadequacy, or lack of will.”84 This example is perhaps best seen in Change 2, as Ringgold’s imaginary thin body is weighed down by her heavy shadow or the meeting of all the different sized Ringgolds in Change 3. She will never reach that ideal weight, no matter what diet she goes on. In her 1995 memoir, Ringgold discussed plans to make a fourth quilt in the series: The content of the quilt and performance is slowly evolving from a daily documenting of the following: Food intake, exercise, work, play or entertainment, feelings either pleasant or traumatic, happenings, which include good things as well as bad. The first six months of this personal research will shape the form and content of the quilt and performance. My premise is that if I make a public document of my behavior patterns, then I will be forced to transform them in order to make myself more acceptable. This public self-therapy will reveal not only the food I eat but what else is going on in my life at the same time.85 As she was dieting this time, she was also using the process as research. Ringgold used a journal to keep track of what she was eating and how she was feeling and even drew a daily self-portrait that recorded the change in her self-image.86 Although she had met her initial goal of losing 100 pounds, she never lost 130. By the mid-1990s, she had gained back some weight and the fourth Change quilt was never made.87 The success with Optifast was never repeated. While fad diets persist in popularity, the rise of the Internet and technological developments has radically changed how people are losing weight. Now, instead of weekly meetings, social media, phone apps, and blogs offer new platforms for discussing ideas, sharing, and motivating others/oneself to lose weight. In 2015, for the first time, Winfrey made a deal with a weight loss company, Weight Watchers. The company wanted her strong influence, and Winfrey, ever struggling to lose weight sought out results herself, but also wanted to engage her fans (and, indeed, make a large sum of money). A deal with Weight Watchers made sense, because not only do they understand weight loss success, but also they have developed a strong foothold in building online communities, applications, and types of engagement for their participants. There is a legitimate basis for combining social media and weight loss practices, as studies have proven time and again that having an outlet for support and camaraderie helps people become more active and lose more weight.88 Not only do these communities provide a sense of accountability, but they also offer reassurance and relief when times get tough.89 Although some weight loss companies set up websites and message boards, many people prefer smaller, more private interactions and communities. Blogs are certainly one way that people can both control their audience, yet also engage a larger public. Chez Leggatt-Cook and Kerry Chamberlain explain, “The weight-loss blogosphere is . . . a messy and ambiguous online social space where people interact variously, forming communities shaped by their mutual interests, focused on weight loss, and involving practices of affirmation, challenge, affiliation and self-presentation.”90 An important part of these blogs are the photographic records of the body as it changes.

Diets 45 A blogger called PastaQueen, notes, “I feel pretty lucky to have my fat pictures and fat videos because otherwise I just might not believe how much I’ve physically changed.”91 Having lost weight, the pictures reinforce her changes and successes, not just to herself but also to her followers.92 These pictures act as proof of her process, legitimizing her to her readers. These personal, if not private, images are then put into public dialogues to make tangible the effects of weight loss while proclaiming success (or, in the case of weight gain, admitting defeat). Julia Kozerski embraces the ideas and makes them the centerpiece of her Changing Room project (2009–2011, Figure 2.4). Taken in the drab dressing rooms of anonymous clothing and department stores, Kozerski primarily photographs herself as she models and tries to decide if she should buy certain pieces of clothing. Using a smartphone and a mirror, Kozerski focuses on her body in a variety of different pieces of clothing. Her poses are often similar: grasping the phone with her left hand, her right hand is placed at her hip. Often her body is slightly angled to the mirror and her head is slightly pushed forward and tilted to one side or another. Each of these small choices Kozerski makes are strategies to make one appear thinner, strategies that are often discussed on makeover programs, entertainment television, mainstream magazines, among other places. Yet as she poses and preens for the mirror and the camera, little moments emphasize her discomfort such as toes curling up, forced smiles, or directing her eyes toward the phone instead of the mirror. Attempting to look her best in the clothes she is trying on, Kozerski’s lack of confidence remains apparent. Viewing multiple photographs from the series, her changing body is clearly evident. Presenting two years of her life over the course of the photographic series, Kozerski repeatedly shows the viewer a woman wrestling with her body, trying to find clothes that fit and are flattering while also trying to come to terms with her physique itself. It makes sense then that Changing Room developed without the intention of ending up as an artwork. Most of these photographs are “selfies.” Although Parmigianino might be credited with the first painted selfie (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1523–4), as soon as photography was invented, photographic self-portraits were being taken. The term selfie itself was first believed to be recorded in 2002, by an Australian who posted a picture of his hurt lip on an online forum soliciting opinions on his injury.93 By 2012, the word was a part of the mainstream, and in 2013, Oxford Dictionaries proclaimed it the international word of the year.94 In an attempt to get a handle on this increasingly popular photographic format, Jerry Saltz has defined selfies as “a fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera and immediately distributed and inscribed into a network, is an instant visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing, who we think we are, and who we think is watching.”95 Kozerski is making these photographs much as Saltz described them— quickly—and yet they do not quite align with his definition in that the photographs were not originally made for distribution. They were made for Kozerski herself to see how she looked in clothing on a phone or in a photograph as contrasted to the mirror of the dressing room. The photographs in Changing Room do not fulfill their purpose of being a selfie until Kozerski presents them to others. For Saltz and many others, a selfie is dependent upon being made public, and perhaps, even further, it needs an interaction—to be liked, shared, and/or reposted. In that way, while taken by the person in the picture, it does not exist as selfie until it enters the public realm. Further, in this act, viewers

Figure 2.4 Julia Kozerski, No. 48 from the series Changing Room, 2010 Source: Courtesy of Julia Kozerski.

Diets 47 become a necessary and important part of the project. Kate Murphy has argued that “selfies transfer control to viewers because in the end they are the ones who decide whether to post an encouraging or derogatory comment, press ‘like’ or ignore your existence all together.”96 In shifting them from personal works to a public sphere, Kozerski sees Changing Room as breeching public and private worlds, allowing her moments in the dressing room to express the reality of the physical body to be understood in a larger context. At the time she was taking the photographs, she was in school, pursuing graduate work at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. At the end of two years, Kozerski had taken over 20 photographs and lost over 160 pounds by focusing on nutrition, portion control, and increasing her exercising. Although her body was transformed, her life did not change in the way that she expected, as she has explained, While I genuinely believed that my hard work and dedication would transform me into that “perfect” person of my dreams, the reality of what has resulted is quite the opposite. My experience contradicts what the media tends to portray. While it is easy to celebrate and appreciate the dramatic physical results of such an endeavor, underneath the layers of clothing and behind closed doors, quite a different reality exists.97 In a closely related series of self-portraits called Half (2011, Figure 2.5), Kozerski photographs her smaller body after the weight loss. Her body has significantly changed, and in fact, the series is named Half because she actually lost half her body weight. Of course, she not only lost a huge amount of weight, but that quick of a weight loss has left its marks. Her skin is stretched and hangs off of her form. In certain photographs, it is hard to even recognize human flesh. Many of the photographs in Half are studio shots, and the focus of these is on details of Kozerski’s body. Hanging, her skin gathers and folds, empty of the weight it used to stretch around. Within the series, she repeats two titles—Casing and Ruins—and both sets of images groups focus on her body’s changes. These evocative titles both imply the body as an object, a holder of something or the remains of a larger object. At once degrading, they also work to create a distance from Kozerski the person to her physical body. This is echoed in the images, where she zooms in on her breasts, abdomen, and stomach, Kozerski focuses on the stretch marks and cropped nipples in Casing No. 2. In other works, such as Ruins No. 1 and Ruins No. 2, she shows both her back and the front of her upper body respectively. While the light emphasizes her torso, her face is either in shadow or not acknowledging the camera. Uniting these photographs is Kozerski’s willingness to put her body on display, dramatically lit and emphasizing its new form. By contrast, other images of the series engage a broader sense of tension by zooming out onto her entire body and creating more awareness of space. In Untitled, she stands naked, blocking the interior of the refrigerator as the door is swung open. Kozerski looks down, avoiding the camera’s gaze. Her breasts look deflated and her skin hangs loosely. This avoidance can be seen in other images where Kozerski’s insecurities appear to be heightened. Surrender, Avert, and Lover’s Embrace all show Kozerski with her unnamed partner. Yet these do not emphasize two people who are connected. Rather, she includes physical space between her and him (Surrender and Avert) or appears emotionally separated (Lover’s Embrace). With the distance between the two

48  Diets

Figure 2.5 Julia Kozerski, Casing No. 2 from the series Half, 2010 Source: Courtesy of Julia Kozerski.

figures and the consistent refusal to acknowledge the camera/viewer, a melancholy mood settles over the entire series. In fact, in the only photograph that focuses on her face, Absolution, Kozerski appears crying with her eyes closed. Although weight loss is often celebrated or prized (just look at the winners of The Biggest Loser, for example), Kozerski is clearly emphasizing that losing weight does not solve every problem. In making Half, Kozerski came to understand the pictures she had taken in dressing rooms differently. Although the images in Half are composed and staged as Kozerski clearly meant to convey specific ideas in her process, the photographs in Changing Room come across as quick and immediate. Nothing is posed or perfect, the backgrounds are askew and her hair is often a mess. In Changing Room, she engages the camera in a direct way, whereas in Half, she often avoids the camera by cropping her head, looking down, using her hair to cover and distract, closing her eyes, or keeping

Diets 49 her face in the dark. She elaborates, noting that the Changing Room pictures “serve an important role breaching the divide between the public and the private and offering a raw, uncensored, and unrestricted ‘behind-the-scenes’ look of my personal experience.”98 This series also functions importantly as before-and-after photographs, as it is easy to see Kozerski’s shrinking form when looking at the images chronologically. And although the series Changing Room may be Kozerski’s personal experiences, they feel intimately familiar. Presumably most of us have been in that dressing room, with the unflattering bright lights and the cramped space, trying to figure out if the outfit is flattering or worth the price. We have to work around the tags of the garments or wearing the wrong underwear in a situation that seems to doomed to make us look less than our best. Understandably, the photographs come across as awkward at times. Kozerski is presenting images that are deeply understandable and relatable, whether weight loss is a factor or not. The multiplicity of photographs and the length of the time span they were taken in, however, reinforce that female body image is at the heart of the photographs. A close look at many of the images in Changing Room reveals Kozerski is wearing an armband, a device called a BodyBugg (a variation of the more mainstream Fitbit), a personal calorie management system that is connected to an online subscription app, so that you can closely monitor how many calories you consume and you burn off. Personal devices like these have developed rapidly and intensely over the past decade, with already 4,200 personal health-related apps in 2010, increasing 78% over the course of the year.99 Although not in every picture, the BodyBugg reappears frequently enough throughout Changing Room to tie the images together but also to reinforce the necessity of the object to Kozerski’s shrinking body. This device combines two proven methods of losing weight: health apps and monitoring systems.100 Not only do these devices record your activity, but also they often connect to online communities related to the brand and/or social media. Although they can track one’s physical process, they can also help users connect to other users for advice, feedback, competition, motivation, or whatever is needed. This is the twentyfirst-century response to the group meetings popularized by Overeaters Anonymous or Weight Watchers in the 1960s. Now, today, one can connect online not just to count calories or figure out how much exercise one needs to complete on the basis of what one ate, but to reach other people in similar positions. Although comparable to faceto-face support systems, online communities offer anonymity, easy and convenient access, and the potential to speak freely without any kind of judgment.101 It is not just technological devices and the Internet that have revolutionized weight loss practices. Bariatric surgeries have advanced dramatically since first performed in the 1950s, where Jejunoileal bypasses created the conditions for malabsorption by allowing nutrients to avoid the stomach and most of the intestines.102 This practice was risky and many patients suffered from severe complications, and consequently, many bypasses were reversed.103 The more familiar gastric bypass surgery was developed in the 1960s and involved sewing off a portion of the stomach and directly attaching it to the small intestine, reducing time for the absorption of nutrients and allowing for feelings of fullness after little food was consumed. Important refinements to the process were made in the 1970s and 1980s that allowed for it to become a much more viable option.104 In 1994, a laparoscopic approach to gastric bypass offered similar results but caused far fewer complications. Introduced in the 1978, gastric banding was also reformed in the 1980s, and the LAP-BAND System received FDA approval

50  Diets in 2001, providing another viable option for those seeking surgical help with weight loss.105 Less invasive, the surgery involves wrapping a band around the stomach to restrict how much food it can hold. Accompanying these medical advances, awareness and interest in bariatric surgeries increased. Insurance companies more than ever before began to foot the bill, a development that was imperative for many patients, as the surgeries can often cost as much as $20,000–25,000.106 Advertising and marketing for these surgeries has also expanded and, as expected, the numbers of surgeries has risen dramatically.107 Between 1998 and 2002, the number of weight loss surgeries grew by an estimated 400%, and in the year 2013, there were over 450,000 weight loss surgeries performed worldwide.108 Although increasing in popularity, it is worth noting just how risky these surgeries are, and that they are riddled with complications. Bariatric surgery potentially can be successful for many people who meet the qualifications, but often only for the short term. And yet although it is often touted as one of the best options to those needing to lose large amounts of weight, its long-term results are seriously questionable.109 Predictably, the vast number of patients who opt for bariatric surgery are women, perhaps as many as 80% of patients.110 Jen Davis’s photographs are a necessary contribution to this discussion then, as she photographed her body extensively before her lap band surgery as well as afterward. In losing a significant amount of weight, her later work parallels the photographs of Kozerski but is focused more on loneliness and, in particular, the way that her body existed in its surroundings. Davis began making self-portraits in 2002, fresh out of college and exploring her own identity. In that year, she created the photograph Pressure Point, focused on her own body in a bathing suit at a beach (Figure 2.6). Surrounding her are two women in bikinis, and a shirtless man drying off with a towel. No one is looking at the camera, and no one is looking at Davis. While the three figures besides Davis are either standing up or stretched out, Davis is seated with her legs folded inward and her arms near her torso. Although she is not quite closed off, she is distinctly different from those around her in her posture, her positioning, and her body size. In discussing this work, she has articulated the vulnerability of her position on the beach and in a bathing suit. Davis explains, When I first began making my self-portraits, part of what terrified me was that the camera would never lie to me, that what I was creating was the dead honest truth. The pictures would show the way that my body actually looked, where nothing was hidden. There was so much detail in a large-format negative that I saw things that I never noticed or wanted to see magnified. I thought of the photographs as a hyper mirror, showing an estranged replica of me that I occasionally didn’t even recognize.111 Her body becomes her subject for her work, something that Pressure Point illuminated. For years, she returned to her body in various ways, using it as a point of departure for the series she would eventually call Eleven Years. Not only did she address the appearance of her body and the physicality of her flesh, but also her pictures emphasize isolation. Sometimes filled with solitude and sadness, she is able to use her photographs to address feelings of yearning and desire. Davis’s physique locates the imagery; her body is front and center in the images, frequently set indoors and incorporating natural light. She appears in various stages of undress, usually showing much of her skin. Often, Davis draws attention to poignant

Diets 51

Figure 2.6 Jen Davis, Pressure Point, 2002 Source: Courtesy of the artist, ClampArt, NY and Lee Marks Fine Art, IN.

details—water droplets on her shoulders (Purity, 2002) or red splotches and bruises on her knees (Untitled No 28, 2003). In a memorable work, Conforming of 2003, Davis’s torso is the focus of the work. At the center of the image, she is struggling to button her pants, which no longer fit. In a refrain that sounds familiar (in that it has been used for all of the artists in this chapter), interviewers and writers have noticed the relatability of Davis’s work, particularly emphasizing the viewer’s ability to see themselves and their experiences in her photographs.112 That, however, was not Davis’s goal, as she explains, It’s not my intention to be a poster child or to be, like, the voice of obesity of or overweight people and how they respond in the world. Because I think with any body type, with any body size, it’s a universal thing, this uncomfort [sic] with one’s body. So I was just trying to figure it out at a really young age, 22, 23, when I started making the work, and feeling sheltered, like I didn’t know myself and like I didn’t know where I stood in the world. And just this kind of overarching judgment that I fell was placed upon me by people’s eyes.113

52  Diets Although she insists that discomfort with body size is universal, she is undoubtedly focusing on the fat experience. In another image, Maxwell Street (2002), she shows herself ordering at a 24-hour express grill, a place frequented by her university classmates. She describes how uncomfortable it was to order and eat food in public, how she felt judged and viewed by the public, as was evident in this image.114 She challenges the viewer to see her and understand the daily frustration to exist in a body that makes her uncomfortable. As the series progresses, two things happen: Davis introduced intimacy via the inclusion of male partners and she has lap band surgery, quickly losing weight. Besides Pressure Point, most of the early photographs focus solely on Davis. Sitting at a table in the dark in Vestige (2003) and uncomfortably leaning and retreating on floral couch in Recessed (2003), there is no doubt of Davis’s unease. In Fantasy No. 2 (2004), she is working with a male model and playing out her visions of what it would be like to be involved in a relationship (something at the time that was foreign to her).115 The two bodies are seated on the couch, their faces out of the frame. One of her legs is propped over one of his, as he moves his hand up her thigh and under her negligee. Although this photograph does not allow for the viewer to see her face, her passivity in the situation is abundantly clear as she leans away from the man with one arm out of view and the other pressed against the couch. In Fantasy No. 1 (2004), the two are now on a bed. The man lays in shadow, with Davis herself in the light, positioned on her side and glaring at the camera/viewer. His arm is wrapped around her, with hers draped over his. Davis is tense, and her slightly upwards gaze acknowledges the viewer and interrupts what should be a quiet moment. She continues to juxtapose her body with a thinner male form throughout the series as well as continuing the photographs of her alone. The images that incorporate an partner break up the darker, more upsetting monotony that could develop with a series so willing to tackle loneliness and personal pain. They complicate the series as well, providing Davis’s character (not Davis herself) with more of a narrative and, specifically, with a love life. After all, Davis was thinking of these photographs as interpretations of real life moments and events. Elaborating, I was creating a character whom I didn’t necessarily know. It was a surrogate me, a body double, who looked like me, but wasn’t actually me. I was more vulnerable in front of the camera than I could have ever been in my actual life, because no one was watching.116 These photographs are simultaneously her and not her. Not only do things develop in terms of Davis adding male figures to the photographs, but also she gradually adds more unexpected elements, things that are typically not positively shown with bodies like Davis’s: eating, showering, wearing a push-up bra. Additionally, in 2007, she focuses on her flesh. In What was left, she shows her shoulders, neck, chin, side of her face, and some of her hair. Her skin is flushed throughout, showing various shades of red over the entire photograph, while small details like freckles, veins, goosebumps, and wrinkles are made visible. In another work from that year, Untitled No 26, Davis’ nude body is shown as she lies on a gray sheet with a shadowed white wall behind her. Her legs are elevated with her knees bent. Only her torso and legs are shown; her head, breasts, arms, hands, feet are all out of the frame. Whereas earlier works often showed her whole figure or gave more

Diets 53 importance to aspects of her identity, these works focus more on elements of her physical form. In August 2011, Davis had her lap band procedure. Her photographs and her unchanging body had actually pushed her to seek out change. As she clarified, “I realized I didn’t want to wake up at 40 and be in this body—I wanted to know what it would be like to be in a different body, and that was a painful realization.”117 She changed her lifestyle, and just two days after the surgery, she took Untitled No. 42 (2012, Figure 2.7).118 Wearing only a nightgown and black underwear, she pulls up the fabric to reveal her stomach. Her bandaged sutures are shown, as are stretch marks and expanses of skin. She appears to be studying her stomach in a mirror off to the side of the camera, which results in the positioning of her body as if she is displaying her wounds to the camera, and therefore eventually the viewer. She lost weight quickly, over 100 pounds in total. In her photographs from 2012 onward, her thinner form is apparent. Along with her skinnier physique, her images have changed once again. In the photographs with a male partner, there is more connection. In both Pablo and I (2013) and Aldo and I in bed (2013), Davis and her male counterpart are intimately intertwined

Figure 2.7 Jen Davis, Untitled No. 42, 2012 Source: Courtesy of the artist, ClampArt, NY and Lee Marks Fine Art, IN.

54  Diets while looking directly at one another. In addition, her shrinking body deals with a sudden weight loss. In Untitled No. 53 (2013), she focuses on her lower body and grabs part of her upper thigh, showing the loose skin similar to many of the images in Kozerski’s Half. It is not just the photographs that bear some resemblance to Kozerski. Davis has expounded on how losing weight was the easy part, and that she has struggled trying to come to terms with changes mentally: “I’m feeling really great physically, but still trying to figure it out emotionally. When I stand in front of the camera now, I don’t really know what I want to do.”119 Both Kozerski and Davis have expressed that the physical changes do not resolve or fix the other issues in their lives. For Davis, however, over time, her self-portraits decreased as she preferred to actually experience her life: “I was living in this world I’d never been in before, going on dates, meeting men, forming relationships. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be photographing this anymore. I want to be living this!’ ”120 Although she has explained that she still sees herself at her largest, she enjoys experiencing the world in a way she hadn’t before: being comfortable on the subway, eating in public, existing more anonymously in the world than feeling like an outsider because of her size.121 Another artist whose changing body has been the focus of her work is Samantha Gebelle who, after undergoing gastric bypass surgery, also documented the extreme change in her body and has articulated how confusing the entire process has been. Attempting to deal with this dramatic shift, she explains, I don’t understand any of this. This: my body. I have never been at a weight this low in adulthood. Ever. . . . More than half of me is gone. It feels like it vanished overnight and adjusting to the present has been challenging in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined.122 Her changes are recent and she is still processing them, trying to understand this very different body she now possesses. In a number of photographs and films from 2016, Gebelle explores her excess skin, moving it and shaping it, generally drawing attention to it and her newly shaped body. In her blunt questioning of her changed physique, she asks understandable questions: “Who am I if not the fat person? What identity do I have other than being extremely large? How do I get my needs met without compromising my health? How do I feel heard?”123 Weight loss can often cause a crisis of identity, confusing the understanding of the new form that their body has taken and challenging perceptions about their physique. Having lived in a body for so long, it is near impossible to erase those feelings and experiences. Indeed, the body is always changing and shifting too, and, of course, weight fluctuates. For each of these artists, there is the entirely real possibility that the weight can return at any time. All these artists have shown attempts to change their bodies while often later acknowledging that change does not and cannot solve all their problems. Dieting, and even bariatric surgery, are often solutions that can last a limited amount of time. Laura Fraser has challenged the success of many of these programs, documenting the changing position doctors are taking toward helping patients, elaborating, As more physicians are finding out just how hard it is to help obese patients, some have begun to wonder whether diets are merely exercises in futility and a setup for

Diets 55 defeat. Instead, they are trying new approaches to obesity, which, unlike dieting, don’t make the problem worse.124 Many doctors have shifted to programs advocating education, nutrition, and moderate lifestyle changes, whereas patients might not see the dramatic results they are looking for but will see healthier, longer lasting results. In both their struggles and successes, these artists are sharing extremely personal stories. In these intimate details, these artworks and narratives are engaging and approachable. These ups and downs are familiar to most. Anne Wilkes Tucker powerfully discusses the work of Davis: By showing herself as vulnerable and projecting her emotions connected to the moment, her pictures have garnered her sympathy from viewers. Her photographs elicit empathy rather than criticism of her situation, and that empathy is not limited to those in plus sizes. Anyone who has struggled with body-image issues, with depression, desire, and one’s place in society can identify with the images.125 As Tucker makes clear, these artworks are moving, challenging, and work to convey all kinds of emotion to the viewer. For Kozerski, Davis, and Gebelle, their larger (and then thinner) white bodies reinforce ideas about societal norms without the complicated racial concerns that are deeply embedded in Ringgold and Rosenthal’s projects. These two have to struggle and work harder, trying to live up to ideals and standards not meant for their non-white bodies. Yet dieting often affects them just as it does the other artists. This group of artists cannot fully challenge the dieting industry or complex, because they exist within it themselves. From the elation at losing weight and wearing smaller clothes and the defeat of not being able to lose the last few pounds, these artists are united in that they smartly convey the challenges of what it is like to exist within a female body trying to lose weight in the United States in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. Whether going to extreme measures, like surgery, or by feeling defeat when putting weight back on, these women articulate the problematic pressures put on women every day in society. Yet by making art about the topic, it no longer matters if they succeed or fail at dieting. By shining light on topic that is both insidious in our culture and frequently under-analyzed, these artists prompt viewers to reflect on attitudes about shrinking the female body.

Notes 1 Linda Smolak, “Body Image Development in Childhood,” in Body Image: A Handbook of Science, Practice, and Prevention, eds. Thomas F. Cash and Linda Smolak (New York: Guilford, 2011), 67–75. 2 Louise Foxcroft, Calories & Corsets (London: Profile Books, 2011), 9. 3 Hillel Schwartz, Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets and Fantasies and Fat (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 247. 4 Cynthia Bulik, “Strange Bedfellows: UNC Eating Disorders Program,” Chapel Hill News, May 6, 2008; Tula Karras, “Disordered Eating: The Disorder Next Door,” SELF, April 2008, www.self.com/fooddiet/2008/04/eating-disorder-risk. 5 “Eating Disorders 101 Guide: A Summary of Issues, Statistics, and Resources,” Renfrew Center, October 2003, www.renfrewcenter.com/uploads/resources/1067338472_1.doc. 6 Sander L. Gilman, Diets and Dieting: A Cultural Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2008), x–xi.

56  Diets 7 Schwartz, Never Satisfied, 246. 8 Barry M. Popkin, “Nutritional Patterns and Transitions,” Population and Development Review 19, no. 1 (March 1993): 145. 9 Trish Hall, “How a Heart Attack Changed a Company,” New York Times, February 26, 1992, www.nytimes.com/1992/02/26/garden/how-a-heart-attack-changed-a-company. html?pagewanted=all. 10 For just a few examples (among many), see: Simone A. French, Robert W. Jeffery, and David M. Murray, “Is Dieting Good for You? Prevalence, Duration, and Associated Weight and Behaviour Changes for Specific Weight Loss Strategies Over Four Years in US Adults,” International Journal of Obesity 23, no. 3 (March 1999): 320–7; Simone A. French and Robert W. Jeffery, “Consequences of Dieting to Lose Weight: Effects on Physical and Mental Health,” Health Psychology 13, no. 3 (May 1994): 195–212; David M. Garner, “Confronting the Failure of Behavioral and Dietary Treatments for Obesity,” Clinical Psychology Review 11 (1991): 729–80; Kiera Buchanan and Jeanie Sheffield, “Why Do Diets Fail? An Exploration of Dieters’ Experiences Using Thematic Analysis,” Journal of Health Psychology 22, no. 7 (2015): 1–10; and Traci Mann et al., “Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer,” American Psychologist 62, no. 3 (April 2007): 220–33. 11 Erik Muls, Kitty Kempen, Greet Vansant, and Wim Saris, “Is Weight Cycling Detrimental to Health? A Review of the Literature in Humans,” International Journal of Obesity 19, no. 3 (1995): S46–S50. 12 Gilman, Diets and Dieting, xi. 13 Rachel Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal,” Los Angeles, September 2–3, 1989, transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 14 Moira Roth, Rachel Rosenthal (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 206. 15 Rosenthal mentions her friendship with those who showed at the Ferus Gallery and that they frequently attended her shows. Additionally, in New York, through her relationship with Cunningham and Cage she became very close to Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, even being gifted many of their early works. Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal.” 16 Moira Roth and Mary Jane Jacob, The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970–1980 (Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983); Meiling Cheng, In Other Los Angeles: Multicentric Performance Art (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 33–43; Jeanie Forte, “Women’s Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism,” in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue Ellen Case (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Josephine Withers, “Transforming Ourselves,” in Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Gerrard (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 158–61. 17 Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal,” Quoted in Roth, Rachel Rosenthal, 14. 18 More information on these works can be found in Edie Danieli, “Rachel Rosenthal: A Life History,” Artweek, December 13, 1975, 13. 19 The full script and stage explanations for Charm and The Death Show have been printed in Una Chaudhuri, ed., Rachel’s Brain and Other Storms—Rachel Rosenthal: Performance Texts (London: Continuum, 2001). Rosenthal also performed and recorded Charm for “Soundings” on KPFC Pacifica Radio almost ten years after its original production, though the performance was strictly aural and performed with a full cast. The piece was also altered for the radio, including more music as well as a performer who wrote and performed new selections that functioned as the voices in Rosenthal’s heads. Rachel Rosenthal, Charm: KPFC Pacifica Radio, 1987, audio cassette, High Performance Audio, Los Angeles, CA. 20 She does this four times throughout the performance, increasingly getting more agitated and louder, see Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 20, 23, 24, and 30. 21 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 28. 22 This exchange with Barbara T. Smith from the summer of 1975 took place when Rosenthal bought “times” in Smith’s auction, A Week in the Life of . . ., one of which included a correspondence exchange. She admired Smith’s performances and looked up to her as a mentor. Roth, Rachel Rosenthal, 158. 23 Roth, Rachel Rosenthal, 166.

Diets 57 24 Linda Montano, Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 198. 25 For a fuller history, see Overeaters Anonymous, Beyond Our Wildest Dreams: A History of Overeaters Anonymous as Seen by a Cofounder (Rio Rancho, NM: Overeaters Anonymous, 1996). 26 Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal.” 27 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 34. 28 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 35. 29 Rachel Rosenthal, “The Death Show,” High Performance 2, no. 5 (March 1979): 44. 30 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 36. 31 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 38–9. 32 Here, Rosenthal refers to the bardo, which is defined as the position of the soul between life and death. Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 39. 33 Chaudhuri, Rachel’s Brain, 36. 34 Susie Orbach, Fat Is a Feminist Issue (New York: Berkeley Books, 1978), 6. 35 Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview of Rachel Rosenthal.” 36 Orbach, Fat Is a Feminist Issue, 9. 37 Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal.” 38 Rosenthal, “Oral History Interview with Rachel Rosenthal.” 39 Lisa E. Bloom, “Ethnic Notions and Feminist Strategies of the 1970s: Some Work by Judy Chicago and Eleanor Antin,” in Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, ed. Catherine M. Soussloff (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 150. 40 Marvin Konner, The Jewish Body (New York: Schocken Books, 2009), 170. 41 Sander Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 193. These ideas are further explored in his earlier text, Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991). 42 Quoted in Jane Gross, “As Ethnic Pride Rises, Rhinoplasty Takes a Nose Dive,” New York Times, January 3, 1999, www.nytimes.com/1999/01/03/weekinreview/as-ethnic-pride-risesrhinoplasty-takes-a-nose-dive.html. 43 Christine Benvenuto, Shiksa: The Gentile Woman in the Jewish World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), xii–xiii. 44 Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, “You’d Better Recognize: Oprah the Iconic and Television Talk,” in Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, eds. Charlotte Brunsdon and Lynn Spigel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 120. 45 Thomas Morgan, “Troubled Girl’s Evolution into an Oscar Nominee,” New York Times, March 4, 1986, www.nytimes.com/1986/03/04/movies/troubled-girl-s-evolution-into-anoscar-nominee.html?mcubz=3. 46 Marjolijn Bijlefeld and Sharon K. Zoumbaris, “Liquid Protein Diets,” in Encyclopedia of Diet Fads (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2008), 77. 47 Ella Howard, “From Fasting Toward Self-Acceptance: Oprah Winfrey and Weight Loss in American Culture,” in The Oprah Phenomenon, eds. Jennifer Harris and Elwood Watson (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2007), 106. 48 Bijlefeld and Zoumbaris, “Liquid Protein Diets,” Encyclopedia of Diet Fads, 77–8. 49 Quoted in Howard, “From Fasting Toward Self-Acceptance,” 109–10. 50 Marjorie Rosen et al., “Big Gain, No Pain: Chubby Again, Winfrey Drops Dieting and Develops a New Attitude Toward Carrying Her Weight,” People, January 14, 1991, 82–91. 51 Rosen et al., “Big Gain, No Pain,” 86, 88. 52 Faith Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1995), 67. 53 For more information on the exhibition, which began in San Antonio, Texas, but traveled to other cities, see Charlotte Robinson, The Artist and the Quilt (New York: Knopf Publishers, 1983). 54 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 76. 55 For more on the relationship between quilting and domesticity, see Marybeth C. Stalp, Quilting: The Fabric of Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2007); Eva Ungar Grudin, Stitching Memories: African American Story Quilts (Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, 1990).

58  Diets 56 For more information on Aunt Jemima and how the character developed into a brand icon, see Michael D. Harris, Colorful Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 83–124. 57 Michele Wallace, “Soul Pictures: Mid 1940s through Early 1950s,” Soul Pictures: Black Feminist Generations, http://mjsoulpictures.blogspot.com/. 58 Faith Ringgold, Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1986, photoetching on silk, private collection. 59 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 241–50; Faith Ringgold, interview by author, Englewood, NJ, November 1, 2009. 60 Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Faith Ringgold: Change: Painted Story Quilts (New York: Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 1987), 15. 61 Orbach, Fat Is a Feminist Issue, 13. 62 Faith Ringgold, “1970–1979,” from Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1986, photoetching on silk, private collection. 63 Faith Ringgold, “1980–1985,” from Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1986, photoetching on silk, private collection. 64 Faith Ringgold, “1970–1979,” from Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1986, photoetching on silk, private collection. 65 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 249. 66 Faith Ringgold, “January–October 1986,” from Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1986, photoetching on silk, private collection. 67 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 247. 68 Ringgold, interview by author. 69 Faith Ringgold, “Change Song,” from Change 2: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1988, photoetching on silk, artist’s collection. 70 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 247. 71 Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October, no. 110 (Autumn 2004): 68–9. 72 Daniel Martin, “Organizational Approaches to Shame: Avowal, Management, and Contestation,” Sociological Quarterly 41, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 129. 73 Martin, “Organizational Approaches to Shame,” 138–9. 74 Howard, “From Fasting Toward Self-Acceptance,” 105. 75 Sidonie Smith, “Bodies of Evidence: Jenny Saville, Faith Ringgold, and Janine Antoni Weigh In,” in Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance, eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 145. 76 Meg Lovejoy, “Disturbances in the Social Body: Differences in Body Image and Eating Problems Among African American and White Women,” Gender and Society 15, no. 2 (April 2001): 240. 77 Becky W. Thompson, A Hunger So Wide and So Deep (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 109–11. 78 Doris Witt, “What (N)ever Happened to Aunt Jemima: Eating Disorders, Fetal Rights, and Black Female Appetite in Contemporary American Culture,” in Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture, ed. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 99–127. 79 Osteoarthritic knees also contributed to her weight gain, as her painful knees discouraged her exercising. Eventually she underwent knee surgery, which improved her mobility and her ability to exercise. Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 248. 80 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 248. 81 Faith Ringgold, Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt, 1991, photoetching on silk, artist’s collection. 82 Ringgold, Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt. 83 Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 195. 84 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 192. 85 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 249. 86 Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 249. 87 Ringgold, interview by author.

Diets 59 88 Victor Li et al., “Losing It Online: Characterizing Participation in an Online Weight Loss Community,” in Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (2014), 35–45. 89 Jessica Greene et al., “The Impact of an Online Social Network With Wireless Monitoring Devices on Physical Activity and Weight Loss,” Journal of Primary Care & Community Health 4, no. 3 (July 2013): 189–94; Mie Imanaka et al., “Effectiveness of Web-Based SelfDisclosure Peer-to-Peer Support for Weight Loss: Randomized Controlled Trial,” Journal of Medical Internet Research 15, no. 7 (July 2013): e136. 90 Chez Leggatt-Cook and Kerry Chamberlain, “Blogging for Weight Loss: Personal Accountability, Writing Selves, and the Weight-Loss Blogosphere,” Sociology of Health & Illness 34, no. 7 (2012): 972. 91 Leggatt-Cook and Chamberlain, “Blogging for Weight Loss,” 969. 92 Leggatt-Cook and Chamberlain, “Blogging for Weight Loss,” 969. 93 Lauren Keating, “The History of the Selfie Stick,” Tech Times, April 22, 2015, www.tech times.com/articles/47738/20150422/history-selfie-stick%C2%A0.html. 94 Australian Associated Press, “Selfie: Australian Slang Term Named International Word of the Year,” The Guardian, November 18, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ nov/19/selfie-australian-slang-term-named-international-word-of-the-year. 95 Jerry Saltz, “Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie,” Vulture, January 26, 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html. 96 Kate Murphy, “What Selfie Sticks Really Tell Us About Ourselves,” New York Times, August 8, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/sunday-review/what-selfie-sticks-reallytell-us-about-ourselves.html. 97 Julia Kozerski, “Half,” Julia Kozerski, 2010–2016, http://juliakozerski.com/half-statement. 98 Julia Kozerski, “Changing Room,” Julia Kozerski, 2010–2016, http://juliakozerski.com/ changing-room-statement. 99 Brian Dolan, “Number of Smartphone Health Apps Up 78 Percent,” Mobi Health News, November 4, 2010, http://mobihealthnews.com/9396/number-of-smartphone-health-appsup-78-percent. 100 Rajvee Subramanian, “Diet, Exercise, and Smart Phones—A Content Analysis of Mobile Phone Applications for Weight Loss,” (PhD diss., Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2015), 33–4. 101 Kevin O. Hwang et al., “Social support in an Internet Weight Loss Community,” International Journal of Medical Informatics 79, no. 1 (January 2010): 5–13. 102 Gilman, Diets and Dieting, 18. 103 For more information on the intricacies of these surgeries, see “Story of Obesity Surgery,” American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, January 2004, https://asmbs.org/ resources/story-of-obesity-surgery. For a succinct survey, see Marjolijin Bijlefeld and Sharon K. Zoumbaris, “Obesity Surgery,” in Encyclopedia of Diet Fads, 96–8. 104 Mariam Moshiri et al., “Evolution of Bariatric Surgery: A Historical Perspective,” American Journal of Roentgenology 201, no. 1 (July 2013): W40–8. 105 American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, “Story of Obesity Surgery.” 106 Phillip J. Brantley et al., “Why Patients Seek Bariatric Surgery: Does Insurance Coverage Matter?” Obesity Surgery 24, no. 6 (June 2014): 961–4. 107 Laura Fraser, Losing It: America’s Obsession With Weight and the Industry That Feeds on It (New York: Dutton, 1997), 200–2. 108 William E. Encinosa et al., “Use and Costs of Bariatric Surgery and Prescription WeightLoss Medications,” Health Affairs 24, no. 4 (2005): 1039; L. Angrisani et al., “Bariatric Surgery Worldwide 2013,” Obesity Surgery 25, no. 10 (October 2015): 1822. 109 Fraser compiles an insightful discussion of several studies and firsthand experiences that emphasize the many problems and risks associated the surgery, see Fraser, Losing It, 200–8. 110 Julia Temple Newhook, Deborah Gregory, and Laurie Twells, “ ‘Fat Girls’ and ‘Big Guys’: Gendered Meanings of Weight Loss Surgery,” Sociology of Health & Illness 37, no. 5 (2015): 653–67. 111 Jen Davis et al., Eleven Years (Heidelberg, Germany: Keher, 2014), 29. 112 For two such examples, see Lisa Gonzalez, “Interview: Jen Davis,” Tag Tag Tag, June 18, 2013, https://tagtagtagmag.com/interview-jen-davis-fcc2273c7b61#.ov9ywhyka; Hannah Frieser, Contact Sheet 165: Looking & Looking (Syracuse, NY: Light Work, 2012).

60  Diets 113 Angela Carone and Maureen Cavanaugh, “Photographer Jen Davis’ Intimate Self-Portraits,” KPBS, November 9, 2010, www.kpbs.org/news/2010/nov/09/jen-davis-self-portraits/. 114 Elise Sole, “Self-Portraits Reveal the Truth About Body Image,” Yahoo! Shine, 2013, http://shine.yahoo.com/photos/self-portraits-reveal-truth-body-slideshow/. 115 Kate Salter, “Jen Davis Interview: The Skin I Was In,” Telegraph, March 17, 2013, www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/9930597/Jen-Davis-interview-The-skin-I-was-in. html. 116 Davis et al., Eleven Years, 27. 117 David Rosenberg, “In Revealing Self-Portraits, Body Image Is Front and Center,” Behold: The Photo Blog, April 22, 2013, www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/04/22/jen_davis_ using_self_portraiture_to_explore_body_image_photos.html. 118 Miki Meek, “Seeing Yourself as Others Do,” New York Times, April 26, 2012, http://lens. blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/seeing-yourself-as-others-do/?_r=0. 119 Meek, “Seeing Yourself as Others Do.” 120 Salter, “Jen Davis Interview.” 121 Gonzalez, “Interview: Jen Davis.” 122 Samantha Gebelle, “Self-Untitled, The Costume Change,” Samantha Geballe Photo, www. samanthageballe.com/artist-statements/. 123 Gebelle, “Self-Untitled, The Costume Change.” 124 Fraser, Losing It, 207. 125 Davis et al., Eleven Years, 115.

3 Eating Disorders

In the United States, there is a general awareness of eating disorders both in their destructive nature and their prevalence. This is made apparent in the recurrence of the disease as a plot device in all forms of media featuring young women, including their popularity in Lifetime cable network movies, the rise of eating disorder memoirs, and confessional features in magazines.1 The numbers regarding eating disorders are quite staggering, despite the fact that most people consider these numbers an underestimation of reality. In 1984, it was believed that one in every 200–250 women between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two suffered from anorexia, and as many as 33% of college women controlled their weight through vomiting, diuretics, and laxatives.2 Each decade since 1950 though, this number and this percentage have grown, and in 2012, eating disorders and disordered eating were affecting 1 in every 20 Americans.3 Around 90–95% of all anorexics are women, and, unsurprisingly, many experts agree that this disease is closely linked to women’s body issues.4 As studies of eating disorders have developed over the years, our understandings of the diseases’ complex symptoms, causes, and variations has shifted and grown. But until the 1980s, eating disorders were defined exclusively as anorexia. Described as “presence of starvation without evident organic cause,” the syndrome of anorexia is often described as a way that women assume an illusion of control over their bodies.5 For feminist sociologist Morag MacSween, self-control is “an essential feature of femininity and of women’s relationship with their bodies: women watch what they eat, how they dress, talk, sit walk and behave.” She contrasts that with the other side of self-control, which is “fear and disgust at the appetites which necessitate that control: women’s potential to overwhelm the boundaries of femininity and restricted feminine space.”6 Simply put, an anorectic woman sees success when her body becomes a smaller version of its original self. Much of the early scholarship on anorexia explored the motivations behind the anorexic’s desire to shape her body. Addressing this question, psychiatrist Arthur Crisp proposed that young women do not eat in an attempt to stave off the breast and hip development that marks puberty.7 Although Crisp’s theory has been challenged by MacSween and other psychiatrists, his ideas have helped shape what we know about the disease today.8 Crisp’s arguments concerning sexual development are based on the ways that women are more directly associated with their body and bodily functions than men. It is more nuanced than Crisp allows, as psychiatrists and sociologists have dissected anorexia as a multifaceted psychological, cultural, and physical disease.9 The anorexic’s desire to control the body is sometimes said to parallel a desire to control her female body. By stopping their periods and seeing their breasts shrink, anorectic

62  Eating Disorders women might be seen as trying to renounce their gender. Anorexia and eating disorders more broadly are understood increasingly complexly, with other causes tied to abuse, familial relationships, sexual identity and, as mentioned, societal pressures.10 This complexity is complicated by the fact that eating disorders are often practiced extensively in secret, as women try to starve themselves as long as possible without anyone intervening or trying to encourage treatment. Although doctors and society itself are increasing awareness regarding the causes, symptoms, and concerns regarding eating disorders, the statistics make clear that we are not making any progress on curbing the spread of the illness. Artists are also trying to come to terms with the prevalence of anorexia and other eating disorders. In the 1970s, we have seen how Adrian Piper’s and Martha Rosler’s work both engage eating disorders, dealing with the physicality of the disorder (Piper, Food for the Spirit, 1971) or the parent’s loss (Rosler, Losing: A Conversation With the Parents, 1977). In these works, the eating disorder is either the impetus or the effect, and not the focus of artistic endeavor. For example, instead of addressing the changes her fasting causes to her body, Piper is more interested in the philosophical reading and experiment. Whereas Rosler plays with the development and meteoric rise of the talk show, instead of dealing with the intricacies of eating disorders themselves. Although eating disorders appear in these works, and function importantly, there is a distance created between the ideas and concept from eating disorders themselves. These works, then, could be considered the first phase of artworks that address eating disorders (anorexia specifically). In the 1980s, a second group of artists emerges, and these artists are often concerned with the physicality of anorexia and bulimia. Through an exploration of three artworks of this time, I want to show how these artists are paralleling the increasing public consciousness of eating disorders, what we could consider the second phase of eating disorders in art. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the third phase, art about eating disorders, evolved to address the psychological issues of eating disorders as well as the sufferers’ desire for community. These women seek out other women who understand their own experiences but also reflect their ideal (extremely thin) body. The fourth phase is composed of the recent artworks of the late 2000s and 2010s and shed light on a need for understanding and companionship for those who suffer. These artworks both support and challenge the importance of communities to women with all kinds of eating disorders. Further, these artists begin to address the rise of online communities and the spread of pro-eating disorder websites. In the examination of the history of eating disorders in art, particularly these last two phases, we can see an evolution of how people have come to understand eating disorders and their connection to young women. Frequent dismissals of eating disorders and the women who suffer deny the insipient nature of the problem; anorexia and bulimia are just the extreme manifestations of disordered eating, and ignoring the severity of these issues only allows them to perpetuate. It is not as simple denouncing anorexia and bulimia while pushing for new and better kinds of treatment; the women who suffer need to be supported and the social causes for the disease need to be addressed.

The Physicality of Eating Disorders in Art Eating disorders are, by nature, extremely physical as the corporeal body figures prominently. Women who suffer are consumed with the desire to shrink their bodies.

Eating Disorders 63 Obsessions with food and eating are common, and the definition of eating disorders has expanded to include bulimia (induced vomiting) and binge eating disorder (eating extreme quantities of food rapidly). Other types of eating disorders including preoccupations with calorie counting or exercising (often described as eating disorders not otherwise specified, or EDNOS), which again are connected to the body directly. In the 1980s and 1990s, three artists logically chose to focus on the bodily experience of eating disorders. Vanalyne Green, Jana Sterbak, and Maureen Connor all address these ideas in their varied work. Vanalyne Green (b. 1948) is a pioneering video artist who studied in the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State and later in a version of the same program at the California Institute of the Arts. Her videos from the late 1970s and 1980s are often autobiographical and take advantage of the newness of the medium, much as performance artists did with performance. With its lack of historical precedent, women (and, by extension, people of color) could more freely articulate their experiences and positions.11 Her most widely recognized early work, Trick or Drink (1984), deals with both her body image issues and her problematic relationships with her alcoholic parents (particularly her mother). The 20-minute color video uses Green’s body and her narration as an organizing device, allowing her to talk about different moments in her life while explaining memorable occasions and her own feelings and desires. To begin the film, Green introduces viewers to her 1962 “Beauty Diary,” where she confessionally presents her age, height, weight, and shoe size. But this, as she proclaims, was “before.” Before she started cutting back on food and before cycles of successful dieting and binging relapses. She merges pictures of glamorous girls and women from stock and advertising photography with pictures of her youthful self. Further, she integrates images of her progress chart—recordings of her weight losses and gains. The narration, in the act of reading remarks written by her younger self, has now devolved into insults, “I’m a pig” and “I hope I can stay on my diet—If I don’t I think I’ll just die DIE DIE.” Green’s desultory comments about herself and her body are one manifestation of her eating disorder. The video cuts to a studio set in 1982, where Green tells the viewer that she wants to talk about children of alcoholics. The focus has shifted entirely to her family, though she continues her mix of imagery. She tells an anecdote about Halloween, where one year her mother wore a white shirt filled with holes, and, while carrying a wine glass, her mom repeatedly yelled “Trick or Drink,” the phrase that lent itself to the title of the work. Although some stories like this are mildly humorous, she also discusses her parents’ violent fights. She later segues into discussing how to get help and going to meetings for children of alcoholics. From these experiences, she has noted how children in these situations often experience commonalities, including seeking out approval, low self-esteem, fears of abandonment, having alcoholic partners, and/or becoming an alcoholic themselves. In the next segment, Green illustrates that those characteristics define herself. Her mother, who clearly influenced and affected Green, dies, leading her to a painful saga of both binging and purging. In graphic detail, she describes how she purged, including the fact that ice cream was ideal because it tasted good when eating it and when coming back up. Remarking she enjoyed the act of vomiting, Green might purge upward of four times a day. But the action took its toll, and she learned her esophagus was in danger. Ironically, her mother had died from the same issue, albeit because of her alcoholism. Green decides to get help, going to Overeaters Anonymous while speaking

64  Eating Disorders of seeking comfort. Returning to the idea of children of alcoholics, Green bonds with people in her same position, and it is in these meetings and with the bad coffee and the strangers, that she finds a home. The video then seems divided among the two (related) points: alcoholism and the desire for thinness and control over the body. In her visceral discussions of bulimia and binge eating disorder, Green provides one of the first artistic representations of these kinds of eating disorders, which were just then starting to be taken more seriously by doctors. In 1979, psychiatrists reclassified bulimia from being one of the symptoms of anorexia to being its own distinct diagnosis separate from anorexia, and in 1985, a year after Trick or Drink, bulimia was finally classified as a disease in itself.12 The film was originally planned as a performance, but she was advised to do it as a video, and certainly, in the way she was able to juxtapose her body and that of models in advertisements combined with documentation of her dieting, she was able to create a cacophony of powerful imagery and words about body dissatisfaction.13 Yet it is more than that. In her description of how it actually feels to force oneself to throw up, Green is letting her viewer in on a secret—one that few know or share, and one that speaks to the disorder’s power. Green’s frustration with her body grips her as early as fourteen years old, as the diary text demonstrates. With her familial life becoming increasingly destabilized, dieting and the occasional slipups shift into bulimia and binges. The complicated nature of eating disorders is made clear and mirrors the multiple causes that often contribute to the disorder. Most significantly, the viscerally described action of vomiting, the tastes and preferred actions, draw attention to the very physical action itself. Green is making bulimia tangible and real to an audience in the mid-1980s that is just learning about the realities of purging itself. In the act of creating visibility for this action and its connection to her body image concerns, Green has made an artwork that prominently addressed eating disorders at a critical moment in history. Jana Sterbak’s (b. 1955) best known artwork, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic (1987) similarly reflects the physical power of eating disorders. Born in Czechoslovakia but raised in Canada, Sterbak trained as a painter at the Vancouver School of Art, after which she began incorporating issues of identity and displacement when she began exploring sculptural work in the late 1970s. Vanitas is a sleeveless shift dress made of sixty pounds of half-inch flank steak sewn together like fabric. After it was formed, the dress was rubbed with over five pounds of salt, then displayed on a fiberglass mannequin. Over a period of five to six weeks, the meat dried and shrank, taking the form of the mannequin until it fell apart. As the exhibition went on, the dress would be remade as many times as needed.14 When the work was first made, Sterbak hired a model to wear the outfit for photographs, which are generally exhibited next to the dress. Although the work was not conceived as a performance, the photographs of the garment as worn by a woman, rather than merely displayed on a mannequin, emphasize the materiality of the dress.15 Sterbak has said the piece is loosely named after a blonde, thin, fair-skinned woman who haunted Sterbak’s neighborhood in New York.16 She did not know the woman, whose thin, pale characteristics she rhetorically exaggerated as an “albino anorectic.” But in the woman’s emaciated form, Sterbak was inspired to explore the eating disorder, combining it with other ideas hinted at in the full title: Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic. Meat, gender, fashion, and temporality converge, as Sterbak has emphasized the connection between the physicality of the female body and the flesh of the dress.

Eating Disorders 65 Sterbak is insistent upon calling her material in this piece flesh, and in her use of animal meat as her main material, she was influenced by the great German artist Joseph Beuys. By his account, he used animal fat in his work to recall how he survived in the Siberian wilderness.17 Yet Sterbak ultimately moved beyond Beuys’s symbolic fat, preferring to emphasize a direct correspondence to the cows whose bodies make up the flank steak she appropriated. Additionally, she thought of the flesh dress as a type of skin, similar to the flayed human skins worn by Aztec priests.18 Vanitas can be a second skin that emphasizes morbidity, for to create the second layer other creatures have to die. As curator Diana Nemiroff remarked, Vanitas is “a profoundly ambivalent object, it is both body and garment, interior and exterior, human and animal, eternal horrifying metaphor and decaying fleshly presence. The body as garment is an old image, expressing the dualism of body and soul.”19 By using decaying meat and including “vanitas” in the title, Sterbak engaged the tradition of vanitas still lifes. Her earlier education in art history informed this reference, as vanitas is a particular subject whose origins date to the fifteenth century. Vanitas still life paintings traditionally include images of objects such as human skulls, snuffed candles, or rotting fruit, symbolizing “a visual articulation of the consciousness of the end of time.”20 They also include symbols of fleeting pleasures like dessert or musical instruments, key in reminding the viewer to be weary of temporary happiness. Sterbak’s work rather presented the raw meat itself and, over the course of the exhibition, the work decomposed. The change in the meat’s color and the smell become a physical manifestation of a memento mori—a term Sterbak has used when describing this work and which can be associated with the idea of vanitas.21 A memento mori is a Latin term for “remember you must die” and a more general reminder of death—a recently blown out candle or a pocketwatch—and like vanitas, its imagery is used to remind people of the brevity of their own lives. Creating the life-sized dress made of meat served to encourage the viewer to contemplate their physical existence and the reality that nothing lasts forever and everything is constantly in flux. After all, the dress that was initially tangible and soft shrank and morphed into something tough and hard. When the dress is worn by a model as seen in the often-displayed photographs, the dead meat of the dress contrasts with the living flesh of the person underneath. The material of the dress ages as it dries and shrinks—somewhat like an anorectic does when losing weight. Curator Nancy Spector has elaborated, Sterbak’s meat dress, which literally shrinks, seeming almost to subsume itself, serves as a visual analogue to the anorexic’s misguided attempts to use mind against body in response to her inability—or refusal—to satisfy our culture’s demands of its women for self-restraint, acquiescence, measured ambition, maternal aspirations, and bodily perfection.22 The dress moves from an ill-fitting object to a defined shape that echoes the mannequin to an entity that eventually falls apart, recalling the way an anorectic body changes shape and eventually starts to deteriorate.23 The changing nature of the form is because Sterbak’s dress is composed of sixty pounds of rich steaks that would certainly never be a part of a strict diet followed by an anorexic. The dress represents an impossible temptation made all the more painful by the fact that the anorexic is unbelievably hungry. The dress thus simultaneously symbolizes both the desires and the repulsions of the anorexic.24 Additionally, the

66  Eating Disorders large quantity of meat used to make the dress could suggest other common eating disorder practices, such as binge eating and bulimia. Whether it is starvation or binging or both, the startling incongruity between the size of the mannequin or the model in the photographs and the steak that made up the dress helps to make this a pivotal work for discussions of female body image in contemporary art practice. Unlike Sterbak’s very serious take on anorexia, New York artist Maureen Connor (b. 1947) incorporates tactical humor in her work addressing the female body, as she explains, Rather than creating distance, I think humor can actually produce a kind of intimacy and become a way of making clear that I share certain cultural attitudes toward the subject matter I’m using with my audience instead of just confronting them.25 Combining humor with discomfort, Connor addresses larger societal issues and in the 1990s, she frequently focused on the preoccupations about female body size. The 1990 piece Thinner Than You is composed of a 60-inch tall metal stand approximating the height of a small human being. The stand—like an abstract stick figure—is clad in a sheer black dress draping from the “shoulders” to the floor, and cinched around the “waist” of the figure to less than ten inches, that is a comical extreme. Clearly, women’s bodies could never be shrunk to the size of a metal rod, allowing Connor to mock society’s completely unreasonable goals for women. Although one can see the dwindled figure as unattainable and ridiculous, some women might still be attracted to the slender form. In both Connor’s and Sterbak’s works, mannequins and dress stands are an integral part of the piece. Mannequins, after all, frequently imply idealization. Their basic function is to display clothing, but to do so successfully, the clothes must at least in some manner fit the shape of the form. So Sterbak places her work on a curvy dressform, whereas Connor uses the extreme, stick-like valet. These substitutes for the human body function as convenient ways to model clothing but can also be read as implying the ideal shape of, in this case, the female human body. The sheer garments that Connor used in Thinner Than You and other pieces from this time period were sometimes mistaken for then-popular body suits made by Donna Karan.26 Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the outfits were never intended to be worn. As Connor noted, “So first you accept the elegance and the appropriateness and acceptability of them, then you begin to wonder—what are they? Where do they come from? And finally, what are they doing to us?”27 For that matter, it is not initially clear what type of clothing we are looking at in this piece. Connor refers to it as a “body suit,” though it suggests the shape of a dress with the sheerness of a slip or piece of lingerie.28 Importantly, the mystery of how the garment functions does not preclude the viewer from reading it as clothing. Thinner Than You serves to reassert Connor’s willingness to call into question the ideal body type through exaggeration and humor. More than that, she wanted viewers to question their own experiences of their bodies: “I’m looking for an emotional response. Something that would push you out of your head and into your body.”29 The stretch of the nylon or the gathering of the fabric draws attention to the perceived problems of the “body.” Thinner Than You also speaks to Connor’s interest in manipulation of gender. At the base of the figure, she pulled the fabric tight by weighting the hem of the dress

Eating Disorders 67 down with pennies. Connor suggested that the shape of the fabric pooled at the base of the valet referred both to a testicle (a resemblance at best) and to ejaculate: “It is about a woman as depository, as container. Men ejaculate inside of the women. This is clothing, so it could represent her interior as much as a pocket.” When questioned why the “testicle” was close to the floor, she replied that it was weighing [the Thinner Than You figure] down, evoking anorexia. What anorexics do when they go to doctors is try to deceive them into thinking they have not lost weight. So they will put things in their pockets, wear heavy sweaters, as for the doctor not to put them into the hospital [sic].30 In this work, Connor interwove two main themes: a complicated notion of gender and the problematic issue of the size of the female body. The wire form became the frame of the anorexic, who pretended to add weight while still trying to shrink her body to her desired size. Throughout the 1980s and the start of the 1990s, these three artists, Green, Sterbak, and Connor, create work that reminds us of the way eating disorders affect the physical body. Although this disease is often connected to emotional or mental issues, the actions taken to shrink the physique are often grotesque, painful, and harmful. The cost for these sufferers is enormous, and these works confront the reality of their situation. Critical advancements were being made in both the understanding of the disease and treatment of disorders, so it is logical that these works are beginning to sophisticatedly address anorexia and bulimia, but still are focusing on the physical effects.31

Establishing Face-to-Face Communities: Vanessa Beecroft and L. A. Raeven Since the 1990s, the artists Vanessa Beecroft and L. A. Raeven (the professional name of twins Liesbeth and Angelique Raven) have used art to present their own problematic relationships with their bodies. Each artist incorporates her own body in her work in addition to hiring models to function as surrogates in performances and films. In this case, the artists seek out women to create “armies” of women who reflect their idealized body type.32 Their work is complicated by the fact that they allow other photographers, writers, and filmmakers to document their lives and their illnesses. Beecroft’s and L. A. Raeven’s objectification of other women in their work mirrors the way that the media has objectified their own bodies. To understand their art, we must understand their lives and even their bodies. And yet their artwork and the public image of their private lives often seem to undercut any critique of the mass media potential of their projects, making them instead seem to acquiesce to societal and media-driven prescriptions for how a woman should look. None of these artists seems to attempt to get better or to confront their eating disorders; rather, Beecroft and L. A. Raeven seek to justify their disordered eating and unhealthy bodies. In their art, they are making the case for bodies like their own, underdeveloped and malnourished bodies, with a view to both normalizing and promoting image of the unhealthily thin female body. Vanessa Beecroft (b. 1969) is undeniably beautiful, at least according to the modeling and fashion industry. To illustrate that point, she was photographed for a 2001Vogue article in black-and-white by one of her idols, iconic fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Wearing a Roberto Cavalli leather bikini and black stilettos,

68  Eating Disorders she stood in an open doorway, looking away, and presenting her body to the viewer. Her abundant curly red hair is gathered on top of her head and her body is marked by a number of tattoos: an anchor on her right forearm, a bird on the inside of her right bicep, a nude girl on her left forearm, and the tail of a dragon peeking out beneath her left breast and extending onto her side. The leather bikini top was too small, allowing her breasts to escape beyond the taut material. In the caption, she claimed to have been “Helmut Newtonized,” recalling the often sado-masochistic, black-and whitephotographic works of the famed photographer.33 In this photograph, as in many of Newton’s works, there is something vaguely uncomfortable about the positioning of the body; in particular, Beecroft avoids meeting the gaze of the viewer and appears resistant to displaying her body.34 In fact, Beecroft has had a troubled relationship with her body since her childhood. When she was four years old, her British father and her Italian mother divorced and she moved to Northern Italy with her mother, who followed an extremely strict diet and lifestyle. In 2001, Beecroft elaborated, “I was raised with no TV, no Coke, no chips, no bubble gum, no chocolate, no telephone, no cars—no pasta even. [My mother] was vegetarian, macrobiotic.”35 This introduction to highly regimented eating shaped her own relationships with food and her body, as she explained in 2005: When I was twelve, I started to become a woman and my body began to change. I was devastated because I couldn’t be a boy anymore. I lost my boyish look. When I started to become something else, I didn’t know how to keep it together. It was really painful—the more you eat, the more like a woman you become. That’s when my obsession with food started.36 At fourteen, Beecroft began keeping track of her exercise and everything she ate. Originally, she claimed to have started the diary to document how much or how little she ate because she thought she “was abnormal and not worthy to live,” and she hoped to give it to a doctor to analyze one day.37 The project evolved into an obsession, as she would constantly think of documenting every scrap of food she ate immediately afterward, and she continued even when she went to study in Milan at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera Scenografia in 1988.38 As the project grew and developed, she started keeping track of more information including her weight, which fluctuated between 57 and 61 kilograms (125 and 135 pounds). Furthermore, she began to note places, people, and events that were important to her. Oftentimes, she referred to her state of mind or mood, by recording brief phrases such as “I’m Dying, I Feel Bad, Horrible, I Can’t Sleep Anymore, Depression, Terrible Anxiety, Colitis, Happy, Disasters, Slut, Trying to Vomit, Dogged Bulimia, Making a Clean Sweep, Monster, Apathy, Fatigue, Fear, I’m Bursting.”39 This food log combined with derogatory sayings and names became a way that Beecroft defined herself. As Germano Celant explained, The daily account becomes a valuable, constant locus, that of the intimation and communication of a way of being and seeing oneself. Taking written possession of the act of intaking foods, linking them to the person’s internal and external situations, is a first attempt to control and construct a communicative personality.40 The systematic recording of her diet, weight, and feelings about her body, a practice she continued until age twenty-three, led her to produce a series of drawings beginning

Eating Disorders 69 in 1993. These works frequently depict human fragments such as limbs, heads, or hands. Sometimes Beecroft depicts the torso or figures that are vaguely human but lack any kind of specific information. Vomiting heads, figures with red hair, and disembodied arms or legs appear frequently in her work. Using a very restricted color palette, Beecroft often drew the figures in solid colors like orange or green, much like her experiment to eat only orange things to become orange herself. As she discussed in 2001, 41

I would write down what I ate every day, to see if I would turn green if I ate something green, or if I would turn orange if I ate carrots. That was an experiment, and the drawings went with it.42 The line drawings and watercolors with just one or two colors made an impact through the clear elucidation of their ideas. The vomiting heads became an expression of what Beecroft desired most—the ability to purge her food. Beecroft has discussed how she repeatedly tried to make herself vomit, much like her school friends who were purging to stay thin. Yet she never could throw up her food, as she explained, “Every other girl could and I couldn’t. I would try in the bathroom with my head in the toilet for two hours and eventually I’d start bleeding because I was hurting myself and I got scared. My best friend [at school] used to be obese, and then she looked like a model because she smoked cigarettes all day and threw up, and I was so jealous.”43 Beecroft’s drawings then become a way of purging her excesses. Because she could not vomit her food, at the very least she could purge her emotions. The drawings almost always seem gendered; the figures’ hair, thinness, and delicateness point to them as female. As Elizabeth Janus has articulated, These drawings always show a prepubescent female, often fragmented, filled in with garish colors, or covered with black markings. She may also have a wideeyed innocent face lost in masses of brightly colored hair; a contorted body; hands clutching at her throat; a mouth spewing black liquid; or arms gesturing defensively.44 Beecroft’s body of work is generally recognized to be a type of self-portraiture, and the drawings certainly do seem to draw on her experiences of attempted bulimia and excessive exercising and even to reference the colors of the food she eats.45 On one hand, the drawings are vibrant and lively, bold strokes of energetic color that depict hands and arms in motion. Yet the drawings often feel unstable. Beecroft’s repetitive and controlling impulses had appeared in her diary, and it is as if she transferred those compulsive tendencies to her mark-making. The drawings and the diary are an integral part of her first performance, later titled VB01 (using her initials and the number of the current performance). A professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera Scenografia invited her to participate in a group show in Milan at the Inga-Pin Gallery in 1993. She adapted her handwritten record of her diet, exercise, and mood to make the typewritten Despair (later retitled Book of Food).46 Beecroft placed the book in the gallery, allowing it to become the centerpiece of the performance. Twenty years later, she elaborated, I exhibited the diary because it was the only document that had a conceptual relationship with the drawings and that represented me at that moment. I had it typed

70  Eating Disorders and made into a book in the shape of a white cube, like a minimal sculpture, and installed it in the empty gallery.47 The book was just one component of the exhibition and performance. She hung her drawings on the walls but also placed some on the floor. The seemingly haphazard and scattered display, however, made them feel like an afterthought. For the performative element, Beecroft invited thirty women to be present in the gallery space to function as a “live sculpture” or a “live painting.”48 She sought out women whose bodies were similar to her own thin frame. Many of the women were fellow students whom Beecroft believed also suffered from eating disorders.49 The rest of the women came from the streets of Milan. In 2004, Beecroft described the performance at length, explaining her desired intentions: At the last minute I decided to bring in a “special audience” of thirty girls from the academy or the street. Some of them had very long legs, some were too pale or they were asymmetric. . . . I was fascinated by them. Before that day I had wanted to grab them but hadn’t known how and I didn’t really feel like a friend of theirs. I decided to invite them to the gallery. I brought a bag of my clothes for them to wear. They could wear what they wanted. . . . Since they were invited as a special audience they weren’t really under my control. I told them to hang out in the room with the book. They were at ease together and compact. They revealed themselves as a very strong visual material. There were no rules then. At the end some of them were screaming. It was chaos. People got uncomfortable and left or stood against the walls with a grin on their face. The girls took over the place. I was ashamed.50 Although the models’ appearance and their interaction with the gallery space was what she desired, the models acted of their own accord, in a way that Beecroft found distracting from her event. To add to her disappointment, she had hoped to have the piece photographed, but the photographer never showed up. The performance was documented only in a rough film (later titled Film). Overall, Beecroft was pleased with the fundamental idea of her performance but not with its enactment. VB01 was Beecroft’s first use of her “girls,” the term she uses to describe the thin and beautiful women that she has utilized in performances throughout her career. Using the belittling term for female adults stresses that regardless of their age or status in life, she views them as beneath her. Their presence in this initial work was intended as a visual reference to the Book of Food. She wanted young, thin models, including her schoolmates, because she was sure they must all be obsessed with food—just as she was and has remained.51 The Book of Food was occasionally exhibited again but separately from other performances. She would continue to use the drawings marginally as a complement to the performance events, often showing the drawings in an oversized format on the wall as a backdrop to the “girls.” Yet from this point forward, the models took center stage, and despite the rocky beginnings in VB01, Beecroft continued to create performances centered on her “girls” and based on her own body.52 This gathering of unhealthily thin women allows Beecroft to prioritize this type of body showcasing her ideal. As her work progressed, she stopped using her own clothes, preferring to style the women in matching clothing, wigs or hairstyles, and shoes. Notwithstanding the fact

Eating Disorders 71 that she incorporates a number of women of various ages and heights, to this day Beecroft often strives to make her “girls” look identical and all appearing rather slim. The similarly styled women appeared in VB02, VB03, VB04, and VB08 (all 1994), in which the models all wore bright red wigs (again, based on her own hair color, albeit an exaggerated version of it). Gradually, she decreased the amount of clothing worn by the models, so that by VB12 in 1995, they appeared only in white briefs, black bras, and yellow wigs. Beecroft’s major breakthrough came in 1998 with VB35: Show, held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This performance established Beecroft as an international sensation and prompted her to append to the project a rare subtitle, “Show.”53 Twenty thin, gorgeous women stood in Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous rotunda for about two hours. Fifteen wore rhinestone bikinis designed by Tom Ford of Gucci. The remaining five were nude. All the women wore identical 4-inch spiked heels. The makeup, which included body makeup and powdered hair, was intended to make the women look the same. VB35: Show was a huge production, one that betokened with Beecroft’s rise in fame.54 With increasing financial and production support in the mid-1990s, Beecroft’s performances became carefully choreographed spectacles.55 Instead of “hanging out,” as Beecroft described them in VB01, the women in VB35 stood in a loosely organized circular arrangement.56 To counter the chaos of that first performance, Beecroft had instituted a firm set of rules, which included the following: Do not talk, do not interact with others, do not whisper, do not laugh, do not move theatrically, do not move too quickly, do not move too slowly, be simple, be detached, be classic, be unapproachable, be tall, be strong, do not be sexy, do not be rigid, do not be casual, assume the state of mind that you prefer (calm, strong, neutral, indifferent, proud, polite, superior), behave as if you were dressed, behave as if no one were in the room, you are like an image, do not establish contact with the outside . . . alternate resting and attentive positions, if you are tired, sit . . . interpret the rules naturally, do not break the rules, you are the essential element of the composition, your actions reflect on the group, towards the end you can lie down, just before the end stand straight up.57 Beecroft’s rules evince the isolation to which her models are susceptible, because they cannot speak to anyone and their movement is restricted. Yet while Beecroft creates a strict code of behavior for her models, she also gives them some freedom to move and to interpret the rules as they see fit. She attempts to grant them a modicum of individuality while still maintaining control over the situation. With so much going on at her performances, it is easy to read them as filled with multiple meanings. Daryl Chin has proposed, Show, then, was a weird amalgam: part fashion show, part strip show, part art show. But in all cases, the meanings had been reduced . . . [Beecroft] has emptied out the meanings in her presentations, so that the human bodies on display become empty vessels. It’s a case of half-empty, half-full.58 Chin argued that she strips her models of their individuality and any possible meaning, though Beecroft asserts, “They’re about shame: the shame of the audience and, to

72  Eating Disorders a lesser extent, of the girls, but most of all my own.”59 Beecroft points to the shame of witnessing the models in a vulnerable position, the shame of the model’s nudity or of not having the strength to stand the entire time. Chin’s discussion of model’s as empty shells ignores the idea that the girls are actually people too. Two- to four-hour-long events involve a fair amount of preparation for the models, including grooming, makeup, and pre-performance photography.60 Before and during the performances, the models spend a large amount of time together and, reportedly, quickly form a kinship. As Meredith Drum, a model for Beecroft elucidated, I felt this intense sense of bonding, because we were all so raw and exposed. . . . there was this camaraderie. The switch for me was from this feeling of “oh, I’m not good looking enough to be around all of these women” to “oh, what the hell; we’re all here together.”61 The relationships among the models helped the women brave the painful performance. By the end of the evening, Beecroft’s “girls” had formed their own kind of community. Although they ended up creating similar groups of women as Beecroft has, Liesbeth and Angelique Raven (b. 1971) developed their own competitive and complicated relationship between themselves. Identical twins, the artists use their own struggles with eating and weight as subjects for their art. In Test Room (2000), for example, models answered a casting call orchestrated by the artists. Upon arrival at the Vienna Gallery in Milan, the models were stripped down to their underwear, measured, and when they did not meet the impossibly thin standards set by the artists, they were put into a room with other “rejects.” There, they were videotaped while also being watched through a window by onlookers.62 The artists stocked the room with food, beverages, and alcohol, while the women, still clad only in their underwear, talked about their careers, eating habits, and their uncomfortableness with the situation. As seen in the videotape, the women display increasing anxiety over the two hours they are left in the room without explanation. They attempt to make small talk, and several of them repeatedly approach the door asking for their handbag, cigarettes, or cell phone. Some women even try to leave the gallery—each time to be denied by the artists. In 2010, L. A. Raeven explained the Test Room project as a one-off study into the identity of “ideal figures.” We filmed the women while they were made to wait endlessly. Because of the length of the performance they gradually became more and more themselves; their professional model facades slowly crumbled. . . . It is in fact very animalistic.63 As with Beecroft’s performances, L. A. Raeven put their models in a situation where they had to endure a contrived environment and set of circumstances. For Test Room, the women were put on display so the public could watch how they reacted to the boredom, the poor treatment and, most of all, the feelings of rejection. One participant mused during the project, “It is really embarrassing with all these people. Is it really so interesting to watch us?”64 Like the models they used in Test Room, the artists themselves have always been extremely thin. The two are dependent upon one another, notwithstanding their early

Eating Disorders 73 attempts to live separate lives. As teenagers, they both expressed an interest in making art, but because they wanted to pursue separate careers, they decided to flip a coin. Angelique was the “winner” and got to pursue a career as an artist, whereas Liesbeth trained as a nurse. Ultimately, Liesbeth was dissatisfied with nursing, so she “obtained permission” from Angelique to enroll in photography studies in 1993.65 By this point, Angelique was finding success in Paris working for Jean-Paul Gaultier. In Amsterdam, however, Liesbeth was struggling emotionally. When living apart, the two had been relatively healthy. However, Angelique, who had suffered from anorexia on and off since age thirteen, regressed quickly when Liesbeth moved into her apartment in Paris.66 Returning to the Netherlands in the late 1990s, the two began to make art together. As they worked, Angelique became more ill, dropping down to sixty-three pounds (twenty-nine kilograms). She was sanctioned under the mental health act in the Netherlands and confined to a hospital, where she actually became worse and stopped eating entirely. Liesbeth visited Angelique every day, and it was only then that Angelique ate at all. The two made a pact to eat together always, and because she was stronger and healthier, Liesbeth was in charge of the food. For years afterward, Liesbeth and Angelique ate exactly the same food, carefully measured out by Liesbeth and monitored by their constant switching of bowls and plates.67 Many of their artworks feature thin, unwell, anorectic bodies much like their own. One of their first projects, and one for which they achieved a substantial amount of notoriety, was Ideal Individual (1999–2001). This piece was a product of a group the two founded in 1999 called the L. A. Raeven Analyse and Research Service, which they established to provide a feeling of legitimacy or credibility to their work.68 Combining the methodological and scientific processes Liesbeth learned in nursing school with their art backgrounds, the artists used the group to structure their projects. Hence, research questionnaires, documentation, preparatory work, and preliminary sketches accompany many of the videos and performances they produce. Yet it is more than a scientific credibility and respect they desire, as they used the formation of this group to attempt to justify their work: We established the L. A. Raeven Analyse and Research Service in order to profile ourselves as professionals and to conduct research centered on ourselves. We wanted to increase our influence (as outsiders) and create a future in which we would represent the ideal, the idea being that if we were the ideal, the whole world would conform to the standards we set.69 Ideal Individual set the tone for their art and for this organization by demonstrating that the ideal woman is the thinner version of Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven. Ideal Individual began with an advertisement that L. A. Raeven placed in a variety of types of European newspapers (Figure 3.1), including the free press The Big Issue in Leeds, the more heavily circulated Der Standard in Vienna, and the smaller Het Parool in Amsterdam. The ad defined the mission of the project and of their “research service”: “We are currently investigating new future life styles, changes in society, current trends in fashion and advertising. We are looking for an Ideal Individual.”70 Following the introduction, there were several requirements the “ideal individuals” should meet: height less than 170 centimeters (5 feet, 7 inches), waist less than 43 centimeters (17 inches), hips and chest less than 82 centimeters each (32 inches), and age less

Figure 3.1 L.  A. Raeven, Ideal Individual, 2001, video installation with files and advertisement Source: Courtesy of the artist and Ellen de Bruijne Projects.

Eating Disorders 75 than twenty-eight. Additionally, L. A. Raeven requested that if possible the individuals should also have “no full breast development,” “long and slender” limbs, “underdevelopment of secondary sex” characteristics, lack of pubic hair, “loss of hair,” and a general “infantile appearance.” Not only did they request that the applicants be childlike and androgynous in appearance, but they also wanted them to have unusual habits like disordered eating, regimented schedules, and an inability to make decisions easily or handle stressful situations. L. A. Raeven requested that each individual send in a picture with personal measurements and a curriculum vita. The ad explained that if people responded and met the requirements, they would go through a test investigation and be “registered” with a tattoo on the right upper arm. The Ideal Individual they were looking for was and is not the ideal for many, as the extensive list of requirements ended up defining an emaciated, sickly woman. Further, the ad suggested that the artists were looking for a young, prepubescent girl or underdeveloped women, but they actually based the text on the characteristics and symptoms of a woman with triple-X syndrome. One out of 1,000 women will be born with an extra X chromosome, the result of a genetic mutation. Although many women may show no signs of the syndrome, others may be rather tall, have a small head, delayed development, or weak muscle tone and, in rare cases, may have trouble producing eggs or develop malformed ovaries.71 Although L.A. Raeven exaggerate the problems associated with triple-X syndrome, they emphasize infertility to harken back to a prepubescent state, when women’s bodies are generally thinner, lacking hair, and without any sexual development (particularly a lack of defined breasts and hips). Recalling Beecroft’s dissatisfactions with puberty, these three artists are each echoing one of the common causes of anorexia, as described by Crisp earlier. The two drawings that L. A. Raeven produced to include with the advertisement reflect that same type of prepubescent body.72 One shows a topless woman, wearing only jeans, with arrows pointing to her height and the width of her shoulders. The other shows the torso and buttocks of a woman with short hair viewed from the side. Her loose tank top and jeans emphasize her long, thin arms, with an arrow pointing to her simple tattoo of two dark lines marking her as an “Ideal Individuals.” The drawings, based on sketches L. A. Raeven made of their own bodies, served as the visual identity for the entire project. These pencil drawings, with their repeated lines, are quite different in their precision and accuracy from Beecroft’s watercolors and drawings. Beecroft’s figures were made with bold outlines and a simple color palette different from the build-up of lines seen in L. A. Raeven’s depictions of the body. Furthermore, L. A. Raeven stress the thinness and boniness of the body, whereas Beecroft focused on the individual limbs and parts of the figure, along with the disembodied heads and vomiting. Beecroft focused on the process of losing weight, whereas L. A. Raeven focused on the desired effects. Drawings by each of the artists were expressions of their obsessive thinking about disordered eating and desired thinness. It is easy and appropriate to read these drawings as inspiration for the artists, for their audience, and especially for the women applying to be the Ideal Individual. Their advertisement and drawings were just one component of L. A. Raeven’s project. The artists also logged and filed all the responses to the ads, cataloging them almost scientifically. Later, they made a 35-minute video of the “test investigation” in which selected women were evaluated (Figure 3.2). To determine if they met the artists’ high standards, six women were given large white tank tops to change into and

76  Eating Disorders

Figure 3.2 L.  A. Raeven, Ideal Individual, 2001, video installation with files and advertisement Source: Courtesy of the artist and Ellen de Bruijne Projects.

were instructed to wear nothing else but their underwear. Lined up against a black backdrop, the women changed in front of the camera. The women behaved modestly, turning their backs to the camera when taking off their shirts. Yet in this movement they revealed the extreme thinness of their bodies, which was emphasized by their visible spines and bones covered by the taut skin.

Eating Disorders 77 Once they donned the appropriate uniform, L. A. Raeven, who are not in view, instructed them to line up directly in front of the camera. One after another they approached the camera, where L. A. Raeven assigned them each a case number (a way of identifying them without calling them by name), and they appeared to have their body fat measured by a skin fold meter. Instead, their arm is marked with two black stripes—the “tattoo.” After her measurements were taken, L. A. Raeven told each woman to report to the “non-selected room.” In the end, none of the women were selected to become an Ideal Individual, or part of what L. A. Raeven described as their “army.”73 The rejection was the point. Ideal Individual certainly recalls Martha Rosler’s Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (performance 1973, videotape 1977). In that performance, Rosler gradually took off her clothes as actors dressed as medical professionals took measurements of every imaginable part of her body. The extraordinary thoroughness of the taking of her dimensions emphasized the physicality of her body while it also drew attention to the power of the medical establishment. In the film, Rosler includes a voiceover that narrates a number of “crimes against women,” acknowledging the way that the measuring and sizing of a female body can have a negative impact on women. By incorporating the directness of recording the sizes of various body parts and types, these three artists used a pseudo-scientific process to gather information about the female body. In the end, however, the numbers do not mean anything for these artists. Rosler attempts to create a more universal narrative, using her body as an example for others, whereas L. A. Raeven find the bodies of other women inadequate for their project. Alexander Alberro notes that Rosler “shows how popular wisdom and scientific paradigm creation are both capable of implacable oppression of women, and people generally, simply by controlling the definitions of categories, leaving no room for self-definition.”74 L. A. Raeven echo that sentiment, though they take it further by actually degrading the models that they have solicited. The Ideal Individual project led to the previously discussed Test Room. In neither project could the artists find women who could meet their impossible standards for their perfect body, those same standards that became their brand. Jennifer Allen has argued that “the artists exploit advertising to make endless copies of their bodies.”75 This body branding would be based on their own bodies and the extreme thinness they prefer. Positioning themselves as trendsetters, L. A. Raeven elaborates, We consider ourselves outsiders in this society and live by rules and laws different than the customary. Trend watchers observe not only the mainstream but also society’s outsiders to discern trends and make prognostications. But why should one not be able to take oneself as the starting point to dictate trends?76 As their own starting point: “We do not try to change ourselves, but to try to alter the existing idealized image.”77 In not just mirroring their own bodies but striving for slimmer physiques, L. A. Raeven attempt to create a trend that presents an unhealthy thin as the most desirable body type. Beecroft and L. A. Raeven have used, and even exploited, their thin, potentially unwell models. Beecroft forced her models to stand for hours, whereas L. A. Raeven temporarily “branded” their models. For Liesbeth and Angelique, marking the women was not only crucial to their project but also “very ambiguous because tattoos are very cool and hip, but at the same time it also has an association with [cattle] branding.”78 Further, the videos of Ideal Individual and Test Room emphasize the models’

78  Eating Disorders degradation. L. A. Raeven does not refer to the models by name; instead, they give them case numbers in Ideal Individual and write numbers on their arms in Test Room, recalling the tattooing in the Holocaust or the tagging of animals. Although they wear uniforms of underwear and ill-fitting tank tops, L. A. Raeven induce a feeling of exasperation and frustration in the test subjects by putting them through endless and futile measurements and demeaning them throughout the process. Their rejection is pivotal, inspiring feelings of angst and anger. And yet the women are also not rejected in that they are actually cast in L. A. Raeven’s project albeit unaware of their role. In fact, some of Beecroft’s models showed the same feelings of failure when they lose control of their bodies, unable to stand for the duration of the performance as their bodies eventually gave in to sweating, shaking, pain, and exhaustion.79 The experiences of Beecroft’s models were documented when two members of Toxic Titties, a collaborative art group, infiltrated VB46 in 2001, Beecroft’s first show in Los Angeles. The members of Toxic Titties were graduate students at CalArts and originally enrolled in the project to make money (they would be paid $1500 for their participation), though they decided to take advantage of opportunity and try to make a statement about the exploitation of women by Beecroft. Now a successful artist in their own right, Cassils envisioned hiding an egg in her vagina and releasing it during the performance.80 Instead, realizing that the act would be too disruptive, Cassils decided to stand for the entire duration in protest Beecroft, who had told the girls to sit before they got too exhausted.81 Prior to the event, the models were prepped and photographed. Taken separately in the days before the performance, Beecroft was able to stage the environment and use the photographs to capture the ideal look of the performance, without the audience. Each model was to have the hair on her head and eyebrows bleached and the rest of her hair waxed off. The painful procedures, especially the waxing, were not fully explained to the models in advance, and yet, despite the pain, the constant fear of not getting paid prevented the models from leaving.82 Additionally, the women were given staggeringly high shoes to wear, many of which were the wrong size.83 Covered in white body paint and instructed to be careful not to smudge it, the models posed for fifteen hours the first day of the photo shoot and sixteen hours the second, much longer than the contract stipulated. At the performance the next day, the women struggled just to stand, and many were already shaking by the time the audience entered. Some women found that the buckles on their shoes started breaking because of their swollen ankles, which led to many of the straps on the shoes being cut off before the performance started to prevent loss of circulation.84 The models’ experience was tiresome and painful, and one of their coping tactics was to befriend the other women participating, with the hopes of making the project less isolating and more manageable. Photographs of the event, however, reveal no signs of the model’s taxing experiences. The broken shoe straps were edited out, just as sweat was made to disappear. Additionally, some women’s broad shoulders or waists were trimmed to suggest a more feminine shape.85 In the end, it appears that Beecroft’s models were not ideal enough either, which is made clear by her editing and modification of their bodies in the final photographs (such modification being, in any case, endemic in fashion photography). To Beecroft, another benefit of the photo editing process is that the bodies can be made more similar, creating and positioning a homogeneous group of women standing together in formation.86

Eating Disorders 79 Further evaluation of Beecroft and L. A. Raeven’s performances can relate them to what has been described as the performance of anorexia itself. As historian Patrick Anderson articulates: “Anorexia derives, concentrates, and facilitates its clinical and cultural power as a performance.”87 He organizes this idea around four major points, which he discusses in context with Chris Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece (1971), but which could also apply to L. A. Raeven and Beecroft’s performances. In his piece, Burden confined himself to a small locker for five days. Similarly, anorexia is durational, as the disease develops and builds over time. L. A. Raeven’s and Beecroft’s performances may last for just hours, but it is pivotal that time is incorporated into the work so that the models grow uncomfortable and allow the performance to really develop. Second, Anderson reads anorexia as an “embodiment of predetermined modes of resistance to a given set of alimentary norms.”88 Each artist is reacting to the ideal body—trying to achieve it or trying to be even thinner than the ideal. Furthermore, Anderson recognizes that the disease is manifested in a wide variety of genres and media, which can be seen in the range of artwork discussed. Last, anorexia is both an individual practice and a form of social movement, as can be seen in Beecroft and L. A. Raeven’s personal struggles with eating disorders as well as in the way they engage their models and their audiences.89 Not only do the artists seem to justify the existence of an anorectic body, but also their performances actually mirror many of the key characteristics and symptoms of their own eating disorders. Although anorexia is typically thought of as inflicted upon oneself, these works blur that premise because of their use (and abuse) of paid models. Speaking on L. A. Raeven, Zoran Eric´ articulates, With their radical way of problematization and display on the issues of identity in twinhood, of body ideals versus eating habits—the issues they are facing in their daily lives—L. A. Raeven are touching on neuralgic and traumatic aspects of society that are perceived with even greater empathy or repulsion once seen in a work of art.90 These works can be seen as violent and appalling not just because they are effectively demonstrations of eating disorders, but also because those disorders ensnare other people.91 In this act, the subject and the object is confused, which can also occur in anorexia, as discussed by Anderson: Playing perilously with the binaries subject/object and active/passive, self-starvation produces political subjects who attain positions of such demonstrative power precisely because they seize these techniques of bodily violence and hover treacherously on the brink of self-destruction. The meaning of self-starvation, and the force of its effects rests on the rearticulation of what is conventionally the object of bodily violence as both subject and object.92 These violent acts that are not solely self-inflicted may, then, serve to escalate the upsetting, or at least mixed feelings in the viewer. For example, L. A. Raeven’s work and appearance have been described as “painful to watch, but fascinating,” “repulsive . . . alluring,” and “insensitive.”93 Yet, despite their discomfort, the audience evidently stays, watches the performances, and even purchases the related drawings and photographs, as evidenced by

80  Eating Disorders the successful careers of Beecroft and L. A. Raeven. From giving their models all the same size shoes to calling them by numbers rather than names, Beecroft and L. A. Raeven strove to drive the focus away from the individual identities of their models and to bring the focus instead to their artwork and events, as well as the larger, unified group itself. Control of the models is crucial, as they might be forced to eat or drink, confined to a particular space, denied use of the bathroom, or restricted in their movements. This manipulation parallels the desire for control often expressed by those with eating disorders, as elaborated on by Caterina Brown and Karin Jasper: By exerting control over their bodies, women hope to gain self-esteem and an increased sense of power and control over their lives. Powerlessness and dissatisfaction can be replaced by the self-satisfaction, social approval, and sense of accomplishment won through weight and shape control.94 In order to maintain a grasp on all aspects of performance, the artists find it an imperative to establish clear guidelines. L. A. Raeven’s rules for behavior in a performance double as an application to be a member of the L. A. Army and include rules that define the desired patterns of behavior. Many of the rules are intended to unify the “army,” outlining how the applicant can become like the artists (or the rest of the unit). L. A. Raeven instruct the applicant on how food should be consumed, how it should be specifically portioned to match that of the others in the group, and how it must be eaten entirely. The artists leave a space for the member to sign the paper, creating a contract.95 Similarly, Vanessa Beecroft also establishes a contract and financial relationship with her models, which she claims “serve[s] the aesthetic function of uniting the girls as a group and therefore as a single image.”96 Beecroft also uses military terminology, referring to her “girls” an “army.” Keith Seward proposed that by using such terms Beecroft is “implicitly positioning herself as commander or general. . . . Her army of girls is not Amazonian, and her model ‘soldiers’ hardly seem ready for combat. Instead, their militarism consists in homogeneity, uniformity, and ability to follow rules.”97 Explaining the power her policies create, Beecroft noted in 2004: When I direct the girls and give them the rules, it is as if I was the man. I tell them to shut up, not to talk to me. . . . Maybe I reproduce life history, I act as their enemy, so that they won’t need fiction to interpret what I am trying to represent. I am the Fassbinder and the Helmut Newton with them, not a woman.98 In Beecroft’s, as well as L. A. Raeven’s, exertion of total control over their projects, their roles can almost be seen as usurping traditionally masculine roles of the leader and director. Ariel Levy has challenged this type of behavior, where women repeat male chauvinist behavior, explaining, It can be fun to feel exceptional—to be the loophole woman, to have a whole power thing, to be an honorary man. But if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress.99 In her reproduction of Newton’s own controlling and harsh modes of production, Beecroft reinforces a problematic side of feminism that emerges in the 1990s. Art historian Maria Elena Buszek has described Beecroft, in a way that also relates to L. A. Raeven:

Eating Disorders 81 There’s an ambivalence in her work that is present in the work of many of her contemporaries, which is the result of a culture that has both internalized feminist goals more than any generation that preceded it, and chafes against what it perceives as feminism’s restraints.100 This sense that feminism today is redundant is addressed by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in their pathbreaking book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (originally published in 2000), which is often seen as the pivotal text on feminism in the new millennium. After describing the many advancements that women have made over the past forty years, they declare, “The social-justice movement, formerly known as feminism, is now just life.”101 In refusing to call themselves feminist, Beecroft and L. A. Raeven can perhaps be seen as accepting the status quo. In fact, not only do they exploit the models they use, but also they work to reinforce the pressures put on women to be a certain size, going so far as to argue that women should be thin to the point of unhealthiness. Ana Finel Honigman has articulated an inherent contradiction in these works: “Appreciating anorexia as both debilitating illness and an act of rebellion allows the artists’ proclamations about their work and other critical readings to coexist and support each other.”102 By seeing anorexia as a defiant choice, it can become easier to dismiss that the artists are championing eating disorders. Because of their repeated public support of unhealthy lifestyles (combined with their frequent denial of their own eating disorders/disordered eating), scholars and the broader public have found themselves fascinated with Beecroft’s and L. A. Raeven’s personas and their bodies.103 L. A. Raeven have been the subject of two documentaries: an episode of the British Channel 4 series Cutting Edge called “Trapped by My Twin” (2006–2007) and the documentary film L. A. Raeven: Beyond the Image (2010). Indeed, both films focus almost exclusively on their lives, their eating, and their health and not on their artwork. By utilizing their drawings and videos only as a window into the relationship between the two women, the documentaries effectively de-emphasized their art. In fact, both films suggest that the most interesting thing about these women is their disease and disorder; their art is presented only as a manifestation of that disease. The public treatment of Vanessa Beecroft has often been similar to that of the Raevens, as evidenced by an infamous article by Judith Thurman for the New Yorker in 2003. Although intending to use the essay to introduce Beecroft’s art to the magazine’s audience, Thurman instead wrote more about Beecroft’s eating disorder and the way that it controlled her life. The article went into great (and often unnecessary) detail about Beecroft’s everyday experiences, noting, for example, Her bulimia—exercise bulimia—isn’t life-threatening. It isn’t like anorexia, which can lead to death. It isn’t even like the more conventional kind of bulimia, which involves vomiting, and which can lead to unpleasant physical conditions, such as gum disease, tooth decay, ulcers, etc. Thurman defended her agenda in an online interview with a New Yorker editor at the time of the article’s publication: I wanted to write something on art and bulimia, and I had heard about Beecroft’s [Book of Food]. I wanted to write about the motives behind it, and about eating

82  Eating Disorders disorders—a neglected and fascinating subject that ought to be addressed by more artists but, for mysterious reasons (having to do with courage, I suspect), isn’t. So that is the reason bulimia has such a prominent place in the piece. My initial interviews with Beecroft were all about food and eating.104 The article’s preoccupation with eating disorders, then, seems much more connected to Thurman’s own priorities than to the artist’s. Certainly though, Beecroft’s disordered eating is central to her life, as Thurman has acknowledged: Her obsession does, of course, “eat up” a tremendous portion of her life, daily and psychic. But it also apparently feeds her art. And she does see a therapist. As she says herself, she didn’t (and I think doesn’t) want to “waste herself” completely.105 Although eating disorders are integral to Beecroft’s work, Thurman, like the directors of the documentaries on L. A. Raeven, found eating disorders to be the most fascinating part of the person. Although Beecroft willingly participated in the interviews and talked to Thurman extensively about her eating and exercise patterns, she later spoke out about Thurman’s putative misinterpretation of her art and her eating disorders, saying that “she wrote an entire article about my bulimia while I never really had it. I had girlfriends who were sick. I was obsessed and still am, but it didn’t take me over.”106 These films and articles on Beecroft and L. A. Raeven created profiles of these artists where their work became inextricable from their personal struggles. Although they may be frustrated about their art getting less attention than their eating disorders, Beecroft and L. A. Raeven allow these conversations and discussions about their weight and eating disorders to take place, after all, and even encourage them by participating in interviews and documentaries. Furthermore, they perpetuate this focus by making statements such as in Beecroft’s case that she “wished demonically for something horrible to happen to me just to make me thin.” She further elaborated that she has weighed every one of my life’s experiences on the scale of how many kilos I have gained or lost from it. In the end, I don’t even care if people say I’m a good artist. I only care about whether or not I’m fat.107 It is also important to note, as Sean O’Hagan has, that L. A. Raeven’s and, by extension, Beecroft’s works are different from the time-based works of endurance artists like that of Chris Burden or Tehching Hsieh, among others: There is a crucial difference between an artist who decides to become thin for a time in order to make a political point about society and the media’s attitudes to women’s bodies, and an anorexic who finds a place to parade her illness in the slippery area that is conceptual art.108 Exploiting their own disordered eating, both L. A. Raeven and Beecroft conflate art and life in a way that O’Hagan feels is a manipulative, cheap tactic.109 But all three artists are themselves suffering, as O’Hagan and others often lose sight of, and in the act of being consumed by eating disorders, their life and their work revolve around their issues with the bodies and food.

Eating Disorders 83 Beecroft and L. A. Raeven reject any kind of suggestion of therapy or of a need for help in their work, which heralds the very thin body. By casting very thin young women, and even teenagers in their work, Beecroft in the 1990s and L. A. Raeven in the early 2000s have drawn attention to certain ways that women are encouraged to look in Western society while acknowledging that many of the women who conform to these ideals—such as fashion models—can do so only because they suffer from eating disorders. Furthermore, the rules the artists set for their models frequently parallel rules that they set for themselves. They have been complicit in the way the media discusses their bodies, largely allowing the media to shape the conversation in question. Their public identities and their work thus both hinge on blatant endorsement of disordered eating. In their seeking out others that match their too thin frames and casting them in their works, they also create physical face-to-face communities. Although these groupings may be contrived and short lived, they serve to unite women who might otherwise be isolated or withdrawn. In these “armies,” Beecroft and Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven find themselves with women who look like themselves and have repeatedly strived to create these communities. In these moments, women who face scrutiny and criticism for their body size and eating disorders take the spotlight and become desired models and the center of attention. If we can temporarily suspend the problematic furthering of eating disorders, we can see that these communities provide a visibility to women who are often not given a voice. Perhaps an unintended consequence, but important nonetheless, in drawing attention to this community, these works can also be seen as creating a space for conversation about eating disorders and an attempt to inspire calls for better types of treatment.

Engaging Internet Communities: Laia Abril and Ivonne Thein Sticks and stones may break your bones but food will make you fat. Sugar, carbs, grains and starches—of course you want that. One bite of food and you’ll be screwed. Put down the fork and knife. Let Ana in and you’ll be thin. She’ll steal your whole damn life.110 This anonymous quote was posted to a Tumblr called “My Best Friend Ana.” It had been re-blogged from another website and was subsequently re-blogged 233 times. These kinds of quotes and mantras that embrace anorexia and bulimia can be found all over the Internet, particularly on social media venues like Tumblr, but also Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Accompanying these poems and phrases are pictures of extremely thin women, in what has come to be known as “thinspiration.” Serving as aspiration for many, these photographs are often of models, celebrities, or other anonymous bloggers. Focusing on the female flesh, these images often highlight the midsection or the legs, drawing attention to protruding bones (particularly the clavicle, ribs, and the spine) or emphasizing the gap between the thighs. And, of course, thinspiration is almost always about the female body. Women are more likely to develop an eating disorder than men, and strikingly, the mortality rate of women ages 15–24 with anorexia is twelve times higher than for women of the same age from the general population.111 It is unsurprising, then, that these pro-eating disorder websites are overwhelming run by, maintained by, and visited by women.112 As these websites have become increasingly popular, continuing to gain notoriety every few years with rise of a new social media tool, artists like Laia Abril and Ivonne

84  Eating Disorders Thein have begun to challenge these sites and their ideas in their work. These artists, despite their willingness to engage in important conversations about eating disorders, face complications in that their photographs often appear on the pro-eating disorders websites they are critiquing. Besides raising awareness, it begs the question of whether there is any way to successfully challenge thinspiration without a chance of the art being coopted. To understand Abril’s and Thein’s work, the complicated nature of these pro-eating disorder websites must be fully explored. Thinspiration is just one part of the pro-anorexia/pro-bulimia websites that started popping up all over the Internet in the early 1990s. In 2006, there were an estimated 400 pro-eating disorder websites which, by all estimation, has grown significantly with the rise of the various social media websites. Although these sites multiply each year, it is harder to keep track of them with the advent of new forms of social media and the changing popularity of different sites and technologies.113 These blogs are easy to find once one knows the terminology, which includes the abbreviation of “thinspiration” to “thinspo” and “anorexia” and “bulimia” to “Ana” and “Mia,” respectively (these last abbreviations give these pages their more common name, pro-Ana and pro-Mia websites).114 Recently, there have been public calls to ban some of these websites, which are seen as promoting eating disorders and harmful behavior. Popular picture sites Instagram and Tumblr responded by disallowing the search of hashtags such as #proana, #thinspo, and #thinspiration. These restrictions can be easily circumvented, however. The women who run these sites are no strangers to hidden and deceptive behaviors (having lived much of their lives in secret suffering from eating disorders), and easily get around these blocks by intentionally misspelling the words (such as “thinspo” with a “y,” “Ana” with two “Ns,” and “anorexique” instead of “anorexic”). Instagram has been able to add a warning to many of these terms, even the misspelled ones, so that before one is able to see their search results, a cautionary label with a link to the National Eating Disorders Association pops up. Tumblr has attempted to incorporate the same and has even gone farther saying that it would ban these blogs, but a casual search shows neither have they succeeded, nor have they implemented a public service awareness program.115 The backlash against these bans have been significant, particularly because the women who run these blogs see anorexia as a lifestyle, emphasizing that restricting eating is a choice that they are making. The Social Issues Research Centre has explained that these women prioritize strength, will, and achievement all in the name of controlling their bodies. They continue: “Eating disorders are portrayed as a means of achieving perfection and of forming an elite, a group of humans who have successfully ‘mastered’ or ‘governed’ their bodies.”116 Often including message boards, chat rooms, or other ways of fostering interaction and support, the women making these sites are dependent upon the formation of a community. Although creating spaces for women to bond and develop friendships (when most of those with eating disorders suffer in silence), many studies have unsurprisingly shown that after viewing these websites, women suffer many negative consequences, including but not limited to lower self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and more generally becoming concerned about their appearance.117 Thinspiration dominates the visual aspect of pro-Ana websites, but these sites often include other key elements. Anonymous blogs and confessional diary-type posts are popular and provide voices to those who are otherwise hesistant to tell their stories about not only their struggles with eating disorders, but also about their desire to lose

Eating Disorders 85 more weight. Not only can writing itself be a therapeutic act, but also publishing the words online can actually create more catharsis. Michael Sayeau argues, Blogging emerges out of and as a compensation for a world in which deep interpersonal relationships are or at least seem to be harder to come by. . . . [Blogging] harnesses the faceless anonymity and contingency of interaction in service of a different model of human contact. That is, rather than affording a retreat from or a solution to alienated anonymity, it is alienated anonymity itself that both enables and defines contact in the first place.118 In the blogosphere, with an anonymous audience and lacking the directed, structured content or format, Sayeau finds a healing component from Internet users sharing their confessions and interacting with one another. Comments like these from Timmie, a college student, are familiar and common: “It’s been awhile, but I haven’t forgotten about y’all I’ve just been struggling a lot. My eating was through the roof last week when I got my period and I have been so ashamed to even talk about it to anyone except my Ana buddy. But I still want to include you guys in my Ana journey!”119 Ten months after the post was uploaded, there were still no comments. Yet in her blog, Life With My Best Friend Ana, Timmie is clearly speaking to an audience, sharing her pain and frustrations. She imagines and knows that people are reading, and that makes it worthwhile for her. Her experiences are similar to many of the other women on these blogs; they are seeking to be heard, even if it is just shouting into the huge void that is the Internet. On the occasion when people do respond and engage, these communities develop and grow. Moreover, these pro-Ana or pro-Mia sites can be used to attempt to lose more weight and to achieve various self-determined benchmarks. These young women often prominently display a number marked as their goal weight. As the women lose weight, they adjust their goal several times, creating what is frequently called an “Ultimate Goal Weight.” These numbers constantly remind readers of the blogger’s goals and progress while also providing a scientific and numerical representation of the photographs of the shrinking women. These websites then offer many ways of engagement, allowing young women to create powerful spaces to speak their mind and find other like-minded souls. Having undergone treatment for her own eating disorder, Spanish photojournalist and artist Laia Abril (b. 1986) wanted to try and find inspiration in her own 10-year battle with bulimia. Her work often straddles the line between documentary and art photography, with a particular interest in narrative and storytelling. Developing art about eating disorders was personal for her and was done at a time where she was in recovery but still processing what she had been through.120 Known for her extensive research on her projects, she was particularly interested in the prevalence of eating disorders, their commonality combined with their secrecy. She envisioned creating a series of works that engage eating disorders, broken up into smaller works she calls “chapters.”121 This project resulted in three chapters in three different states: a short video and a series photographs called A Bad Day (2010), a self-published artist book with a limited print run called Thinspiration Fanzine (2011–2012) with accompanying photographs and, last, a more mainstream and mass-distributed book, The Epilogue (2013–2014). The range of this project is intentionally diverse, as she deals with a very specific individual or family or anonymous women on social media sites. She

86  Eating Disorders is able to convey experiences not only of the sufferer, but also the family, the friends, doctors, and even outsiders/readers/viewers. In the first chapter, A Bad Day (2010), Abril focuses on a 21-year-old British girl named Jo. Following her throughout her daily routines, Abril films Jo dealing with her obsession with food and eating. Jo presents herself as “normal,” hiding her preoccupation with food from her friends and family. Abril emphasizes Jo’s loneliness and isolation, as she must live much of her life in secret. The title itself is based on Jo’s discussion of good days and bad days, with respect to her eating disorder. For example, a bad day can result in acts of binging and purging that can last all day and all night. Like many of the young women on the pro-Ana websites, Jo expresses how much she hates her body. Preoccupied with food, she makes near-daily trips to the supermarket. Predictably, then, Abril focuses the viewer’s attention on Jo eating, purchasing food, hiding food, and preparing food. In a short amount of time, the lengths of this obsession become clear. By contrast, Abril does not show the practicalities of bulimia. In the film, we do not see the purging; rather, we see her eating followed by going quickly to the bathroom and shutting the door. It is left up to the viewer to imagine the depths of Jo’s illness, which is how people with eating disorders exist in reality. For many, this disease and its myriad of forms are easy to hide—and, in fact—those suffering are often experts at keeping the disease and its symptoms secret.122 By limiting what she shows the audience, Abril also preserves Jo’s dignity, as Abril has explained, If someone’s daughter has bulimia and they don’t see the signs, that girl might die of a heart attack and they’d never know she’d had an eating disorder. Bulimia is also one of the most stigmatized eating disorders. It’s seen as shameful. My aim was to break these taboos.123 Abril shows Jo as a whole person, a young woman beyond her bulimia. Indeed, Jo does have aspirations and dreams—particularly to dance—and Abril shows her in poses recalling ballet moves. But Jo acknowledges that it is not a possibility for her. The disease has harmed her irrevocably. She describes constantly feeling cold, having severe headaches, and having problems with low potassium, which can affect muscle control and can cause damage to her heart. Despite the negativity emphasized by Jo’s own words in the film, Abril clearly desires to convey a hopeful sense for Jo, ending the film with her repeating, “I have hope.” Although there are these hopeful sentiments, they contrast with the visual documentation. The viewer does not get to see the signs of hope. Jo may express a desire for more good days, but she is not seeking treatment or preventing her negative behaviors. Abril outlines her goals of A Bad Day, which focuses on the psychological, by saying, “The lies and misunderstandings that surround bulimia are what convinced me to further develop this project. I would like my images to catch the contradictory feelings and behaviors that these girls have to go through day after day.”124 This piece is limited to its personal and individual subject suffering from the disease, giving us an intimate portrayal of one young woman’s life. Although this parallels the sharing of private details on a blog, Abril functions as a narrator and an editor. In this intimate portrait of Jo, this first chapter differs greatly from her second chapter, Thinspiration Fanzine (2011–2012, Figure 3.3), which shifts her focus to the perception and documentation of the physical effects of eating disorders. Here, Abril creates a book filled with images and quotes from these pro-Ana websites. “Fanzine” implies an admiration,

Eating Disorders 87

Figure 3.3 Laia Abril, Thinspiration, 2011–2012 Source: Courtesy of Laia Abril.

combining the idea of fandom with the homemade, limited-run nature of zines (short for “magazines,” which are often self-produced and directed toward limited audiences). This book certainly draws attention to the way that many of the women who view these sites behave. The more mentions and “re-blogs” a Tumblr entry receives, the more powerful the websites’ impact can be and the farther the reach of the blogger herself. Abril seems to create an extreme version of this, by re-photographing and re-presenting the images and quotes she sees on these sites and then presenting them in a book format. This book, then, could be seen as an ultimate sign of affection—a re-blog made permanent in printed form. The process of making this zine is significant. Abril searched out photographs on various pro-Ana and pro-Mia sites and photographed them directly on her computer screen giving them a blurry, indistinct effect. One two-page spread shows a torso of a

88  Eating Disorders young woman, who clutches her tiny waist with both hands so tightly that the hands meet. Focusing on bodies of the bloggers themselves (not professional model shots or advertising images), Abril emphasizes both the reality of how the disease affects women but also the extreme havoc the illness wreaks upon the body. Other photographs in Thinspiration Fanzine show typical characteristics of thinspiration selfies, like a picture of a thigh gap or the appearance of bones under skin. Abril started off the project more interested in the bodies that were being shown but became increasingly interested in the way that photography was significant to these anorexics.125 In her process of re-photographing them, she also repurposed and re-presented them, explaining, With thinspiration, because the primary images are so vernacular and simple, they don’t always reflect what the girls wanted them to. For instance, they want to show how separated their legs are but they take a picture where you can see the whole of their bedroom or the bathroom or whatever. So I focused in on what they wanted to show. I was curating their vision. Having those pictures in museums, as I have recently, is like an ironic expression of whether that is the ideal of beauty.126 Abril is showing these often underground or unacknowledged photographs in a public and prominent setting. By doing so, these women, these bodies, and these struggles are given new kinds of attention and exposure. These selfies that were posted online were these young women’s primary way of validating their weight and experiences and also could be their way of bragging about their accomplishments. Abril elaborates, “Interacting with their own cameras in a competition in which they portray their achievements in the form of bony clavicles or flat bellies, the pro-Ana have made Thinspiration evolve.”127 This visual language can be seen as validating for the anorexic, but it also epitomizes the disease in that it reinforces the competitiveness between women, increases the desire to lose more weight, and feeds into issues of body dysmorphia. Further, Abril reiterates these ideas by including text from pro-Ana websites in Thinspiration Fanzine.128 Upon opening the zine, the reader is presented with the “Thin Commandments” first. Appearing on many pro-Ana websites, variations of these statements provide “guidelines” or rules for behavior.129 Included in Abril’s version are phrases such as “If you are not thin you are not attractive” and “Being thin and not eating show the real strength of will and the level of success.” Immediately, Abril appropriates the conventions of the pro-Ana and pro-Mia websites, further reiterating the “fan” nature of the project. At the same time, Abril is showing the extreme and intense scenarios to the uninitiated viewer. Coupled with the text, the visual imagery in Thinspiration Fanzine evidences the extreme lengths women go to in attempts to shrink their physique. The introduction to the book, written by Silvia Omedes, reinforces that this project is not done in admiration of these bodies (as much as the focus on the thin frame may seem to suggest). Omedes describes, “Thinspiration as the symptom of a social problem is an unquestionable exchange of the great inspirational power that photography has, and at the same time, of its dangerous effects on certain image consumers.”130 Abril was shocked by the number of selfies she found on these pro-Ana sites, and not just images of models or actors. This realization inspired her to ask bigger questions, “I decided to photograph [the selfies] because I wanted to talk about the use of photography. The project is about how I felt when I was looking at those images.”131

Eating Disorders 89 Taking pictures of these selfies allows Abril to draw attention to their potentially destructive power. Later in the book and in her own short essay, Abril questions, Does photography help them to be aware of reality or has the camera turned into another trick for anorexia to help control their body and perpetuate the distortion of their own image? To what extent does photography influence the deterioration of their illness?132 By forcing the viewer to examine these appropriated selfies, Abril hopes to boost recognition of how the visual depiction of bodies can reinforce, if not encourage, the illness. Like many advocates, she does not feel that the press has focused enough on the problematic media depictions of the female body and, in particular, how images function as a primary focal point for anorexics and bulimics. Her journalist background has led her to feel morally obligated to try and actually shed light on the complicated intricacies of eating disorders.133 In her last chapter, The Epilogue (2013–2014, Figure 3.4), Abril provides her most complete and narrative work in the series. This elaborate hardbound book is sobering, as Abril makes vivid the story of Mary “Cammy” Robinson, a young woman who

Figure 3.4 Laia Abril, The Epilogue, 2013–2014 Source: Courtesy of Laia Abril.

90  Eating Disorders died from a heart attack as a result of years of binging and purging. Wanting to tell a story about someone who had died from their eating disorders, Abril sought out different families and foundations. As she notes, Before approaching a family, who would be in pain, I had to be clear about how I would do this. I decided to explain the girl’s story as a puzzle, with the pieces of her life supplied by her loved ones.134 She eventually connected with the Robinson family through the Mary Cameron Robinson Foundation, an organization that they started after their daughter’s death that works to prevent eating disorders. The Epilogue attempts to tell Cammy’s story, and yet the book really becomes a remembrance of her and her life, as told by her friends and family alongside photographs of her, memorabilia, and pictures of places she had been. The book is in three sections, divided by the dates 6/16/2013 (the present day, when the interviews were being conducted by the artist), 5/16/1979 (Cammy’s birthday), and the last, shortest section, 9/2/2005 (the day Cammy died). Immediately, the book frames Cammy’s life by time. Friends and family reminisce in past tense and the readers finds themselves searching for Cammy in empty landscapes and contemporary pictures. It is not until after ten pages that the viewer finally sees her, as a child with her younger brother hamming it up for the camera. On the following two pages, Abril includes Cammy’s newborn identification with her two footprints. Although Cammy appears as a child in this section, the text reinforces that her family and her friends have had to move on without her. They describe how hard the holidays are, especially Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Her family members are still processing their grief, struggling to move forward. Her father cannot bear to listen to music and her brother is trying to reconcile his anger. Ashley (Cammy’s good friend) elaborates, “I miss Cammy every day. It’s very hard to go through the rest of your life when you have done everything until this point with her [. . .] And from that second, it was a different life.”135 In the next section, 5/16/1979, Cammy’s image and lived life have a much larger presence. Her story, however, cannot be told without her death looming large. Because one cannot erase the way Cammy has died, her life story is being discussed through the filter of what happened to her. Little narratives like describing her size as a child, something that might not have even been included if she was someone else, are now inevitably considered in light of her frustrations with her body size. Cammy’s school years were not easy, as she struggled to fit in at her all-girls private school. Having swum competitively for many years growing up, her shoulders reflected her athletic body. And despite quitting the sport in high school, her body did not mirror her peers’ thinner forms. Additionally, she struggled in her relationship with her father, who had exacting standards. All of this was compounded by her depression, which was not diagnosed until later in her life. Cammy did not have a boyfriend in high school, and she did not go to prom. Although she had a consistent group of friends, she did have a falling out with one her girlfriends. Her weight fluctuated some, and in pictures, she appears slightly larger than friends. The textual narrative makes clear that while each event in isolation could be described as a typical challenging experience for a teenager or young woman, the accumulation of all these events wore on Cammy. She lost weight successfully with Fen-Phen, yet when the weight loss medication was banned because of troubling side effects, Cammy struggled to maintain her thinner body. By

Eating Disorders 91 the time she was in college, separated from her family and her friends, and without the drug to maintain her thinner size, she began binging and purging seriously. Cammy’s struggles are detailed, insomuch as their details are actually known. Her college roommate talks about the large quantities of food Cammy would consume in the bathroom when she was supposedly taking a shower. A photograph of a get well balloon is shown next to a report from her doctors about a heart attack after being extremely low in potassium. Throughout the book, but most prominently in this section, Abril includes facsimiles of handwritten letters that exist on smaller pages that fold and move beyond the book’s formatted size. This allows for the book to feel scrapbook-like, as if the viewer is with the artist, digging through the archives of Cammy’s life. A police ticket, rehab report, and notes from her doctors all dominate the material and discussion of her early twenties. But there is a spark of happiness that appears, as Cammy connected with a new boyfriend in the last year of her life, which seemed to stabilize her. They moved in together, and he was preparing to propose. Her friends described her as happier than she had been in quite some time, and they were hopeful for her, that she had actually beaten her bulimia. But in Abril’s interviews with Cammy’s family and friends, cracks appeared: her unhealthy skinniness, problems with her teeth, her continued secrecy. The end of this section deals with her parents coming to terms with their own denial, their belief in her promise that she had quit vomiting and, eventually, acknowledging finding hidden fast food receipts making clear that her binges continued. The final section, 9/2/2005 lasts only a few pages. Starting with a picture of a bridge that her brother, Tommy, crossed when going to the hospital, Abril somberly notes that this is where Tommy felt he saw her spirit. Cammy’s death certificate and a photograph of an isolated tree are shown as well. With no caption, the audience must gather their own opinion on the inclusion of the tree, whose top branches are washed out from a bright light from above. Intriguingly, The Epilogue actually has its own little epilogue. The book has a unique endpaper, where the pages on the left fold outward, revealing a hard-to-see printed photograph in black on a midnight blue paper. The picture of a mother, father, and newborn is explained to be Tommy’s new daughter, Sybil, born thirty-five years to the hour after Cammy’s birthday. The Epilogue vacillates between the devastating way that Cammy’s life was destroyed by her eating disorder and how her family was and is trying to recover. Struggling to find hope in an impossibly sad situation, the family attempts to reconcile what happened and find happiness as their lives move forward. More intimate than the other chapters in the series, The Epilogue invites the viewer into a young woman’s life, yet after reading the narrative, readers are clearly aware that Cammy’s voice is missing. The impact of eating disorders on the family of sufferers, recalls Rosler’s Losing: A Conversation With the Parents, but The Epilogue is infinitely more personal and specific, no doubt a result from its nonfiction status. Abril has thoroughly researched this young woman’s life, clearly doing as much as possible to create a portrait of Cammy Robinson, evident in the inclusion of such a breadth of material in interviews, old personal photographs, doctors’ reports, and new photographs of important sites. In comparing this chapter to Thinspiration, Abril has addressed that they both use “found” photographs but approach them very differently: I didn’t do anything to the found pictures. I photographed the present and the past I could reconstruct by going to her old high school but I can’t photograph

92  Eating Disorders her because she’s dead. So the re-photographed material is a tool for storytelling. Thinspiration was a conversation between my photography and their photography. Here it’s an archival process—I collect interviews, I collect my pictures, their pictures, documents.136 Although The Epilogue is so personal and specific, nothing can ever be fully resolved because Cammy herself cannot be interviewed. This ends up being similar to the way the viewer reacts to many of the pro-Ana blogs in that we are given very personal information about the bloggers, but we never can know them entirely because of their anonymity. It is clear, then, that Abril engages in the pro-Ana dialogue in The Epilogue but does so more specifically and directly in Thinspiration, where she is perpetuating and recirculating images in the same manner that the blogs do. Abril uses shock value specifically, wanting to push the viewer in Thinspiration so that they are appalled and horrified by what they see, but remains subtler in A Bad Day and more personal in The Epilogue, creating three different kinds of narrative throughout her project. These chapters provide different views of eating disorders, most often focused on bulimia. Abril maintains an interest in promoting recovery and emphasizing the nuanced and secretive nature of eating disorders. In her work, Abril draws attention to these ideas with the hope of promoting change—from detailing recovery information in The Epilogue to promoting awareness about online and hidden behaviors in all three chapters. Unlike works discussed so far, there is a moral purpose to Abril’s project. Because of this interest in drawing attention to the serious and destructive nature of eating disorders, Abril has managed to keep a distance from the pro-Ana movement itself, so that her artwork has generally not appeared on (or has not been coopted by) the blogs themselves. Unfortunately, that is not the case for German photographer Ivonne Thein (b. 1979), whose photographs dealing with eating disorders began as an art practice but have seen popularity on the pro-Ana websites. Thein was trained commercially first and began her career in fashion, photographing models. The series Thirty-Two Kilos (2006–2008, Figure 3.5) was completed after her return to school to commit to a more artistic practice. It made sense that she would combine her previous experiences in the commercial fashion industry with her new artistic endeavors.137 Here, Thein produced a series of photographs of extremely thin women, posed in exaggerated positions that seem to recall fashion images. Drawing on her work with models and fashion, Thein was interested in illustrating the fascination that some people have with these almost impossibly thin bodies. In particular, Thein wanted to draw attention to the problematic position of fashion designers, who repeatedly hire underage and underweight models.138 Yet in her photographs, these women are not, in fact, models; rather, they are friends of Thein digitally manipulated to look like they weigh thirty-two kilos, which Gary Tischler explains “is actually inspired by the weight of a French model—32 kilograms, or 70.4 pounds—who posed for ads condemning anorexia after nearly dying from it.”139 She had originally wanted to photograph women involved directly with the pro-Ana movement but found that it proved impossible to find women willing to participate. Instead, she decided to work with normal women and utilize computer manipulation. This proved not just useful to Thein, but also she appreciated the way that the use of digital modification recalled the practices that are commonly used in fashion photography itself.140

Eating Disorders 93

Figure 3.5 Ivonne Thein, Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos), 2006 Source: © Ivonne Thein and ARS. Courtesy of the artist.

Thein did not clothe her models in haute couture. Instead, she preferred simple undergarments embellished with medical bandages. The faces of the women are not shown, blocked by the pose or the model’s hair, so that Thein’s friends could maintain their anonymity. This group of photographs are all taken in a nondescript warehouse, with cement floors and white walls. In this anonymous space, nothing draws the viewer’s attention away from the figures. Other than the flesh of the bodies, no color appears. Shades of white and gray compose the environment; Thein provides no distractions, as it is abundantly clear that she intended to concentrate interest on the body itself. The sparse clothing and the bandages showcased the very thin physiques and emphasized the unhealthiness that accompanies this size of bodies in Thein’s photographs. All white or beige, familiar pieces like underwear, stockings, and belts appear. Even the underwear, various skirts, and pieces of clothing feel vaguely clinical. They are not fashionable undergarments; rather, the elements are basic and clearly concerned with

94  Eating Disorders their function. Subtly integrated in and blending with the color scheme, Thein includes wrapped bandages as tube tops, arm and leg cuffs, head pieces and more. There is no explicit nudity in any of these images. But the materiality, in its direct relation to the medical industry creates an unsettling discomfort. The only exception to this idea is when the women are photographed wearing shoes (a mix of flats and heels), which sometimes extend above the ankle. In these instances, the shows are filled with straps and ties emphasizing their restrictive qualities. In these ribbons, snaps, and bands, these elaborate shoes can be seen as demonstrating control over the model’s bodies. And yet the shoes, although varied, do not specifically recall any brands or concrete fashion statement, mimicking the blandness and lack of specificity in the clothing. Thein has clothed her models intentionally, so that in their references to the medical field and power, she is already establishing a reading of these women and their bodies as confronting ideals about power. Constrained by bandages and straps, these women give up control. The languor of the women in the pictures is further distinguished by their postures and positions, as Thein expounds, The way of staging these specific portrayals of the body in fashion photos is the linchpin of this work. . . . I looked specifically for positions that make arms and legs appear extremely thin. These poses appear very frequently in fashion magazines.141 The poses vary widely: an awkward leap with limbs akimbo, backs arched in uncomfortable ways, torsos suspended in mid-air with weight in her hands and feet, and a woman squatting and turned in on herself and taking up the least amount of space possible. In one photograph, the clothing clearly restricts movement through binding, and in another, the model tugs on the shirt to make more of it visible. In these instances, the domination of the fashion is made clear, whereas in others, the outlandish poses make that evident. Pointing to the positioning of these extreme and too-thin bodies, Thein draws attention to the problematic and widespread appearance of eating disorders in the fashion industry by making these images feel so familiar. Thein, however, does not feel that the fault lies with the models themselves. Like many, she recognizes that the expectations of body size in the industry have changed dramatically. Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman, whereas today she weighs 23% less. Fashion models are more prone to anorexia as well as drugs and alcohol. On top of that, most runway models meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for anorexia.142 Having spent time in the industry and working with models, Thein’s perspective is critical: I think that fashion clearly does create a specific lifestyle and that the choice of model plays a decisive role in that. But by no means is a natural body being shown. Even if it’s the real body of the model, specific girls are chosen who are exceptionally tall and extremely thin. That automatically leads to the creation of fictive bodies that cannot correspond to any real image of a woman.143 Thein, as well as Abril, have spoken out against the fashion industry, with Abril echoing Thein’s comments on the subject. Here, Abril responds to questions regarding taking down pro-Ana websites, saying, “I’d rather pursue fashion magazines that feature

Eating Disorders 95 anorexic models on the cover. Thinspiration is much more dangerous when you see it in the mainstream.”144 Although both artists acknowledge the problematic prevalence of eating disorders online and the pressures put on models to fit in, they recognize the power of visual imagery and support arguments that suggest a huge part of the problem is the circulation of fashion magazines and advertising imagery in print and online. The women seen in these photographs are so clearly not representative of the average woman. Editorial and commercial photographer Victoria Janashvili wanted to visually depict this discrepancy with a photo shoot she did for Plus Model Magazine in January 2012. She shows a plus size model embracing an “average-sized” fashion model. Allowing the viewer to see the varying difference of the physique, Janashvili attempts to illustrate the dramatic differences between the reality of the average size woman (as represented by the plus size model) and the thin (frequently underweight) model. Thein’s strategy is different but equally extreme. She has exaggerated the already thin, below “normal” body mass index models’ bodies by making them even thinner. This digital shrinking of the figures by Thein is troubling, but of course, it is happening in the industry itself with the rise of computer manipulation. Strikingly, Beecroft’s “girls” were not thin enough either, so that she had to modify her models’ bodies and edit her photographs after they have been taken.145 As artists, designers, and photographers have increasingly turned toward thinner (often unhealthy) women, they have also had to amplify the amount of editing of photos in post-production. Waists and stomachs are shrunk, blemishes and stray hairs are erased, and skin is lightened or darkened; the possibilities are practically endless. The public, however, is taking note, and more people are calling for warning labels and acknowledgment of computer modification.146 Further, various blogs and social media are also drawing attention to the overuse and misuse of digital manipulation. Feminist website and popular blog Jezebel, in particular, has focused on the cause, publishing the original, unretouched magazine covers of Lena Dunham and Faith Hill, among others. Each article was updated repeatedly, with information spreading widely via re-blogs across the Internet and television coverage.147 Not only can computers be used to make the models’ bodies thinner, because as the same women try to shrink their physical bodies to fit into the increasingly smaller sample sizes, retouching is needed to airbrush out protruding bones, among other problems. Cosmopolitan UK editor Leah Hardy details, “These underweight girls didn’t look glamorous in the flesh. Their skeletal bodies, dull, thinning hair, spots and dark circles under their eyes were magicked away by technology, leaving only the allure of coltish limbs and Bambi eyes.”148 Although the damage to their internal systems is severe, there are exterior side effects to being underweight such as dry skin, downy facial hair, skin discoloration, cuts or bruising on the hand, dental damage, and more.149 Now, editors do not just have to make women thinner, but sometimes they must actually make them look heavier and healthier. In fact, that is a criticism that many have levied at Thein herself. Because she used her friends and shrank their bodies after the fact—they aren’t visibly showing complications. Although her photographed women are impossibly thin, they do not look unwell. In challenging an exhibition of Thirty-Two Kilos, writers on the feminist blog The F Word critiqued, “Thein’s exhibit might get a brief tsk-tsking about the dangers of anorexia, but its lasting legacy will be more to serve as thinspirational images for girls and others hellbent on self-destruction.”150 This reaction was common

96  Eating Disorders throughout the blogosphere, and it quickly became clear that pro-Ana women were considering Thein’s pictures inspirational, variously commenting, “Those pics are so, so beautiful! I want to look like them! They look so fragil [sic] and like an angel.” and “I find this artwork beautiful, but I do not think that it should be used to incite how horrible the pro-Ana nation is. I am a proud pro-Ana believer, and it is how I live.”151 Thein was disappointed in this reaction, as she has said, What happened is that some of the pro-Ana sites ended up publishing photos on their sites, which I had not intended. . . . I meant these photographs to be interpretative, to be open enough to cause the viewer to think about what’s going on here, not to promote thinness.152 Hoping that her works would encourage the viewer to consider exploitation of the female body, Thein was rightfully concerned that her photographs may be seen as promoting thinness. Nonetheless, Thein is unable to stop people from reproducing these images on their websites. They have been swiftly appropriated and idolized by women with unrealistic (and often impossible) goals about their body size. Thanks to the ease of image dissemination online, it is impossible to stop the proAna distribution and admiration of these photos or the work of any of the artists discussed. Although Tumblr and Instagram may try to ban these sites, and ban the propagation of these works in support of eating disorders and self-harm, it is obvious that the women behind these blogs and websites will just find another way to form their communities. These women seek solace from others who are experiencing similar feelings and insecurities. They have a community that not only affirms what they do but also can provide helpful hints and instruction for maintaining their fasts. Women on pro-Ana and pro-Mia websites bond over similar feelings as they seek asylum, comfort, and camaraderie in sharing their own painful rituals. As evident by the attempts of Tumblr and Instagram to prohibit the formation of pro-Ana websites and dialogues, it is problematic to try to just stop the conversation with such censorial methods. As Stephanie Houston Grey insightfully argues, The projection of the eating-disordered individual as an inauthentic, failed woman has become so commonplace in the academic and popular culture that she has been reduced to a stereotype. This allows for continual repetitions of rejections where she is negated in an endless regress.153 Both Abril and Thein are insistent, though, that they are not propagating this stereotype, they are squarely trying to draw attention to the problematic nature of the disease itself. Abril has argued, similar to Houston Grey, that shutting down these sites not only does not work, but it will just push these women to another outlet. Abril continues, “You shut down a website and in an hour you have ten new ones.”154 Instead of blaming the women and abolishing the online communities, it is better and more effective to challenge the entities that are perpetuating a thin ideal female body image. We need to legitimize a variety of sizes of women’s bodies as well as accept and understand women’s experiences. Abril and Thein, unlike L. A. Raeven and Beecroft, insist upon the importance of recovery and the need for social changes, all while drawing attention to the little-known presence and understated impact of pro-Ana and

Eating Disorders 97 pro-Mia websites, which do allow for visibility of and a voice for women who often don’t speak up for themselves.

Conclusion By looking at the development of artwork about eating disorders, we can see that these artists are creating spaces for women who are often silenced to be heard. And yet this examination has focused exclusively on white women, who are certainly not the only people who suffer from eating disorders. Although it is overwhelmingly white women who suffer from this disease more than other races and more than men, the gap is shrinking. These discussions will become more common and more necessary only as a better understanding of men and people of color with eating disorders is developed. Hopefully, this topic is addressed seriously by artists in the future. All sufferers of eating disorders deserve validation for their experiences, and it has become clear that in their search for communities, these women are seeking just that. Perhaps instead of trying to ban these sites and images, we can seek to offer help and positive alternative communities. Meanwhile, the portrayals and the discussions of the female body in the media must be addressed and changed. From the dissection of celebrities’ bodies to the hiring of underage, unhealthy models, society’s privileging of the extremely thin body must be the first thing to change if we want to see more women and girls recover from eating disorders. These eight artists have explored a variety of topics related to the illness, but, now thanks to the work of Abril and Thein, more activist artists will rise to the occasion and continue to bring up such powerful topics persuasively.

Notes 1 For just a few of the many sources on this, see Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, The Cult of Thinness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Courtney E. Martin, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (New York: Free Press, 2007); Emily L. Newman, “ ‘She Needs Some Food’: Eating Disorders, Lifetime, and the Made-for-TV Movie,” in The Lifetime Network: Essays on Television for Women in the 21st Century, eds. Emily L. Newman and Emily Witsell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2016), 119–35. 2 Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 140. 3 Daniel Le Grange, Sonja A. Swanson, Scott J. Crow, and Kathleen R. Merikangas, “Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified Presentation in the US Population,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 45, no. 5 (July 2012): 711–18. 4 Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 15. 5 Morag MacSween, Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa (London: Routledge, 1993), 17. 6 MacSween, Anorexic Bodies, 193. 7 A. H. Crisp, “Anorexia Nervosa as Flight From Growth: Assessment and Treatment Based on the Model,” in The Handbook of Treatment for Eating Disorders, eds. Paul Garfinkel and David Garner (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 248–77. 8 MacSween, Anorexic Bodies, 31–3. 9 MacSween, Anorexic Bodies, 24–51; Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 11–42. 10 Julie Hepworth, The Social Construction of Anorexia Nervosa (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 79.

98  Eating Disorders 11 Alexandra Juhasz, ed., Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 153–62; Vanalyne Green, “Vertical Hold: A History of Women’s Art,” in Feedback: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art and Artist Interviews, eds. Kate Horsfield and Lucas Hilderbrand (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 23–30. 12 Walter Vandereycken, “Emergence of Bulimia Nervosa as a Separate Diagnostic Entity,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 16, no. 2 (1994): 105; Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 14. 13 Green discusses the work’s origination as a performance in Juhasz, Women of Vision, 160. 14 Pamela Caserta, Assistant Registrar, Walker Art Center, e-mail message to author, March 22, 2010. 15 Sterbak’s meat dress was not the first or the last of its kind, though Vanitas remains the earliest version in the art world. For a history of these outfits, see Emily L. Newman, “Fashionable Flesh: Meat as Clothing,” Fashion, Style, & Popular Culture 4, no. 1 (January 2017): 105–20. 16 Anneli Fuchs, Lars Grambye, and Jana Sterbak, Jana Sterbak (Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Særkatalog, 1993). 17 Jennifer McLerran, “Disciplined Subjects and Docile Bodies in the Work of Contemporary Artist Jana Sterbak,” Feminist Studies 24, no. 3 (1998): 538. For a skeptical discussion of Beuys’s story, see Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol,” Artforum 5, no. 18 (January 1980): 35–43. 18 McLerran, “Disciplined Subjects and Docile Bodies,” 539. 19 Diana Nemiroff, “States of Being,” in Jana Sterbak: States of Being = Corps à Corps, eds. Usher Caplan and Claire Rochon (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1991), 29. 20 Ivan Gaskell, “The Image of Vanitas: Efflorescence and Evanescence,” in The Story of Time, ed. Kristen Lippincott (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), 186. 21 Milena Kalinovska, “Jana Sterbak in Conversation With Milena Kalinovska,” in Jana Sterbak: States of Being/Corps a Corps, ed. Diana Nemiroff (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1992), 52. 22 Nancy Spector, “Flesh and Bones,” Artforum 30, no. 7 (March 1992): 98. 23 René Blouin, Sterbak’s Montreal dealer, worked with her to acquire the necessary meat and helped sew the original dress. Kalinovska, “Jana Sterbak in Conversation,” 52. Both the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) own editions of this work. In a recent installation of the work, the Walker Art Center chronicled the process of refashioning the dress; see Scott Donaldson, “Making Jana Sterbak’s Vanitas,” Walker Art Center Blog, March 16, 2011, https://walkerart.org/magazine/mak ing-jana-sterbaks-vanitas. In a comment posted March 18, 2011, associate registrar Pamela Caserta noted that changes in the curing process of the meat now allow the meat dress to last much longer in exhibition, with hopes that it will last three years in this latest version. 24 Lene Burkard, Jana Sterbak: Video Installationer (Odense, Denmark: Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, 2004), 13–14. 25 Maureen Connor, Maureen Connor: Narrow Escape (Munich: Kunstraum München, 1997), 35. 26 Kathleen Cullen, “Maureen Conner [sic],” Journal of Contemporary Art 6, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 22. 27 Cullen, “Maureen Conner [sic],” 22. 28 Maureen Connor, interview by author, New York, October 31, 2009. 29 George Melrod, “Lip Shtick,” Vogue, June 1993, 89. 30 Josefina Ayerza, “Maureen Connor,” Lacanian Ink, no. 8 (Spring 1994): www.lacan.com/ frameVIII14.htm. 31 Not only was bulimia being taken more seriously and granted its status as a separate disorder from anorexia as noted before, but Steven Levenkron’s seminal work in the field established important treatment methods and ideas. See Steven Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World (New York: Warner Books, 1978). A film of the same name aired on ABC in 1981, and for many people, this film provided their first introduction to anorexia (as well as its causes and treatments). 32 Keith Seward, “Classic Cruelty,” Parkett 56 (1999): 100; Jennifer Allen, “L. A. Raeven— What Appears Is Good: What Is Good Appears,” in L. A. Raeven: Analyse/Research, ed. Ellen de Bruijne (Zeppelinstrasse, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 79.

Eating Disorders 99 3 Dodie Kazanjian, “The Body Artist,” Vogue, April 2001, 372. 3 34 For more information on Newton, see Klaus Honnef, Helmut Newton: Portraits (London: Schrimer Art Books, 2004); Helmut Newton, Autobiography (New York: Nan A. Talese and Doubleday, 2002). 35 Quoted in Kazanijian, “The Body Artist,” 377. 36 Quoted in Nick Johnstone, “Dare to Bare,” Observer, March 13, 2005. 37 Vanessa Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” in Vanessa Beecroft (Senefelderstraße, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2004), 123. 38 Johnstone, “Dare to Bare,”; Germano Celant, “Vanessa Beecroft: Carnal Drawings,” in Vanessa Beecroft Performances, 1993–2003, ed. Marcella Beccaria (Milan: Skira, 2003), 21–2. 39 Quoted in Celant, “Carnal Drawings,” 21; also described in Johnstone, “Dare to Bare.” 40 Celant, “Carnal Drawings,” 23. 41 Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” 127. 42 Quoted in Munro Galloway, “I Prefer Nudity,” Art Press, no. 265 (February 2001): 28. 43 Quoted in Johnstone, “Dare to Bare.” 44 Elizabeth Janus, “Vanessa Beecroft,” ArtForum 33, no. 9 (May 1995): 92–3. 45 Jeffery Deitch proposed this idea in The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins, directed by Pietra Brettkelly (2008), DVD (IndiePix Films, 2009). 46 The first four years of the journal were lost when Beecroft hired a friend to type them. Only the last five years remain. Occasionally, the project has been referred to as her Diary of Food. See Johnstone, “Dare to Bare.” 47 Quoted in Marcella Beccaria, “Conversation Piece,” in Vanessa Beecroft Performances 1993–2003, 16. 48 Johnstone, “Dare to Bare.” 49 Beccaria, “Conversation Piece,” 17. 50 Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” 123. 51 Beccaria, “Conversation Piece,” 17. 52 She has done just a few performances that include men, dressed in US naval uniforms or formal attire, such as VB39 (1999), VB42 (2000), and VB65 (2010). 53 Galloway, “I Prefer Nudity,” 27–8. 54 In the 1990s, Beecroft established representation with Jeffrey Deitch, a banker turned art consultant. His gallery, Deitch Projects, opened with her performance VB16 in 1996. The gallery catered to young artists and professionals by frequently showing star artists as well as celebrities who engaged in art, such as Dash Snow, Björk, Terry Richardson, Michel Gondry, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Shepard Fairey, and David LaChapelle. Deitch’s openings were huge, lavish events where celebrities and art world luminaries gathered to be seen as much as to see art. Beecroft and Deitch worked well together, in part because both actively cultivate celebrity status and fame. Roberta Smith, “Critic’s Notebook: Standing and Staring, Yet Aiming for Empowerment,” New York Times, May 6, 1998. VB35: Show was possible because of Beecroft’s increasing status, as well as the curatorial consulting company Yvonne Force Inc., who produced the show, which was Beecroft’s most expensive project to date. 55 Claire Bishop notes how her performances have become entertaining events for high society: “VB43 was a perfect conflation of performance, sponsorship and private view: the fashionable throng assembled outside the gallery, the bouncers, the rumor of naked models—were all bound to get everyone in the designer restaurants opposite talking. And when you were finally admitted to the space, you were given a ticket exchangeable for a free cocktail in the bar opposite.”; Claire Bishop, “Vanessa Beecroft: VB:43,” Make: The Magazine of Women’s Art, no. 88 (Summer 2000): 31–2. Additionally, many critics reference her corporate sponsorship, remarking the names of celebrities and designers who work with her, specifically noting the way that these collaborations are beneficial for both parties. See Johnstone, “Dare to Bare,”; Jennifer Doyle, Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 121–40; Roberta Smith, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman,” New York Times, July 5, 2000. The most scathing commentaries on Beecroft often come from artists themselves, see Julia Steinmetz, Heather Cassils, and Clover Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft,” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 753–83; Lisette Smits, “Looking for Trouble: Interview With L. A. Raeven,” Casco Issues, no. 6 (2000): 34–6.

100  Eating Disorders 6 Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” 123. 5 57 “Instructions for VB46,” in Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 753. 58 Daryl Chin, “Models of Fashion,” Performance Art Journal 20, no. 3 (September 1998): 25. 59 Judith Thurman, “The Wolf at the Door,” New Yorker, March 17, 2003, 116. 60 Although the event is the main performance, the photographs were produced just prior to the event, after which the artwork was then sold. It is possible and, in part, necessary to see the performances as advertisements for the photographs, which provided the income needed to sustain Beecroft’s career. 61 Quoted in Vanessa Beecroft and Michael O’Neill, “My Body,” New York Times, November 14, 1999, SM100. Drum was one of the models Beecroft gathered for a concept performance and photo shoot for the New York Times, which also interviewed Drum and another model about their experiences. 62 Ellen de Bruijne, ed., L. A. Raeven: Analyse/Research (Zeppelinstrasse, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 31. 63 Tanja Elstgeest, “Wild Zone: A Conversation With L. A. Raeven,” From, no. 4 (2001): 56. Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven give interviews as a pair, and their individual voices are often indistinguishable. Occasionally, the speaker will be identified as one of the sisters, but in the majority of interviews, they speak on behalf of L. A. Raeven. 64 The transcript for Test Room is published in Ellen de Bruijne, ed., L. A. Raeven: Analyse/ Research (Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 45–50. 65 Zoran Eric´, “Identity in We: On L. A. Raeven’s Thematization of Body Ideals and Twinhood,” in L. A. Raeven, 98. 66 Biographical information is culled from “Cutting Edge: Trapped by My Twin,” Agnieszka Piotrowska, aired April 4, 2007, on Channel 4 (UK); L. A. Raeven: Beyond the Image, directed by Lisa Boestra, DVD (Viewpoint Productions, 2010). 67 Until 2010, the artists ate their meals together, making sure to eat the same amounts of food. See L. A. Raeven: Beyond the Image. 68 de Bruijne, L. A. Raeven, 7–8. 69 Quoted in de Bruijne, L. A. Raeven, 7. 70 Reprinted in de Bruijne, L. A. Raeven, 25. 71 “Triple X Syndrome,” Mayo Clinic, August 17, 2010, www.mayoclinic.com/health/ triple-x-syndrome/DS01090. 72 One major newspaper refused to publish the advertisement for L. A. Raeven’s project, which caused a minor scandal in England. Citing concerns regarding child pornography, The Guardian felt it best not to run the images and descriptions. Francesca Gavin, “Mixed Doubles,” Blueprint, no. 192 (February 2002): 30–2. Liesbeth and Angelique later responded to the censorship by drawing attention to the complicated closeness of the sick and the putatively ideal body, saying, “Apparently, a certain imaginary line between the desired, ideal body and the ‘sick’ body had been crossed as disordered eating is conventionally presented as ‘sickness,’ and, moreover, ‘sickness’ reserved for women.” Eric´, “Identity in We,” 97. That disordered eating is indeed sick, by definition, seems to have eluded them. 73 de Bruijne, L. A. Raeven, 19. 74 Alexander Alberro, “The Dialectics of Everyday Life: Martha Rosler and the Strategy of the Decoy,” in Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World, ed. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 98. 75 Allen, “L. A. Raeven,” 79. 76 de Bruijne, L. A. Raeven, 7. 77 Elstgeest, “Wild Zone,” 55. 78 Smits, “Looking for Trouble,” 35. 79 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 774. 80 At the time of the Beecroft performance and the Toxic Titties exposé, Cassils identified as Heather Cassils, but now prefers to go by Cassils, as they describe themself: “Cassils is a gender non-conforming trans masculine visual artist. Cassils uses plural gender-neutral pronouns (they, them, their) and a single name (as opposed to first and surname) and asks that journalists do likewise when referring to them. This singularity of name and plurality of gender reflects through language the position Cassils occupies as an artist.” “About,” Cassils, http://cassils.net/about-2/.

Eating Disorders 101 81 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 757, 775. 82 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 762. 83 Though each model was asked her shoe size at the casting, the shoes handed out for the performance were all size 10. During a break from the photographing, the women discovered this inconsiderate action, which helped to unite them by providing a common grievance. 84 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 764. 85 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 776. At her events, Beecroft customarily takes pictures of her models before the performance and also poses for photographs with the audience at the event. The sales of the photos are used to finance future projects. 86 Keith Seward, “Classic Cruelty,” 100. 87 Patrick Anderson, So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 38. 88 Anderson, So Much Wasted, 38. 89 Anderson, So Much Wasted, 38–9. 90 Eric´, “Identity in We,” 100–1. 91 For an example of this type of commentary, see Sean O’Hagan, “Hungry for Fame,” Observer, February 17, 2002. 92 Anderson, So Much Wasted, 10. 93 Sam Wollaston, “Last Night’s TV: Trapped by My Twin,” Guardian TV and Radio Blog, www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/may/08/tvandradio.comment; Barry Schwabsky, “Focus: L. A. Raeven: Institute of Contemporary Arts, London,” ArtForum 40, no. 10 (Summer 2002): 169; Bill Leak, “Is L. A. Raeven for the Birds?” ABC Radio National (Australia), www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/nclub/stories/s486106.html. 94 Caterina Brown and Karin Jasper, “Why Weight? Why Women? Why Now?” in Consuming Passions: Feminist Approaches to Weight Preoccupation and Eating Disorders, eds. Caterina Brown and Karin Jasper (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1993), 17. 95 This is discussed in, among other places, Allen, “L. A. Raeven,” 75–9. 96 Quoted in Seward, “Classic Cruelty,” 100. 97 Seward, “Classic Cruelty,” 100. 98 Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” 146. Given this statement, it is ironic, then, that when she worked with Helmut Newton in 2001, Beecroft was upset by the objectification she felt. While being photographed by Newton, Beecroft seemed to realize the parallels between her treatment of her models and Newton’s treatment of her. She later said, “It was a tiny, trashy [swimsuit] but I do the same to my girls. So I cannot complain . . . He said, ‘I am the father of your performances.’ It came out in such a violent way. It made me feel embarrassed. It was as though he was saying, ‘You show girls. Here it is. How does it feel?’ He kept saying, ‘Stretch, feel tall, as if you are the tallest in the world. You are the bride of Count Dracula’ . . . I lost all my intellectual confidence in that moment and I became an object. I felt decadent. He completely Helmut Newtonized me, so I wasn’t myself anymore.” Kazanijian, “The Body Artist,” 406. Just as Beecroft accepts her loss of self in the service of art, and particularly that of her idol, Helmut Newton, she also demands acceptance and compliance from her models. 99 Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005), 117. 100 Quoted in Johnstone, “Dare to Bare.” 101 Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Tenth Anniversary Edition (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), 321. 102 Ana Finel Honigman, “Enabling Art: Self-Expression/Self-Harm in the Work and Reception of L. A. Raeven,” Third Text 28, no. 2 (2014): 185. 103 Beecroft’s justifications for her concerning behaviors are addressed in Judith Thurman, “The Wolf at the Door,”; Johnstone, “Dare to Bare,”; L. A. Raeven’s denials about their problems with food and body image are presented throughout Honigman, “Enabling Art,” 177–89. 104 Matt Dellinger, “Q&A: Reckless Perfectionism,” New Yorker, March 17, 2003, www. newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317on_onlineonly01. 105 Dellinger, “Q&A: Reckless Perfectionism.”

102  Eating Disorders 06 Beecroft, “Interview by Thomas Kellein,” 152. 1 107 Thurman, “The Wolf at the Door,” 114. 108 O’Hagan, “Hungry for Fame.” 109 The clearest discussion of their preoccupation with food and their eating disorders can be found in Thurman, “The Wolf at the Door,”; L. A. Raeven: Beyond the Image. 110 This was a quote and image circulating on numerous different pro-Ana blogs, despite following many “image credit” links, I was unable to find a direct source. “Untitled,” My Best Friend Anna, May 28, 2013, http://terrifiedoffood.tumblr.com/image/51600691126. 111 Patrick F. Sullivan, “Mortality in Anorexia Nervosa,” The American Journal of Psychiatry 152, no. 7 (July 1995): 1074. 112 In their study, Dina Borzekowski found that 98% of the pro-eating disorder websites that they looked at were maintained by women. Dina L.G. Borzekowski et al., “e-Ana and e-Mia: A Content Analysis of Pro-Eating Disorder Web Sites,” American Journal of Public Health 100, no. 8 (August 2010): 1528. 113 David Giles, “Constructing Identities in Cyberspace: The Case of Eating Disorders,” British Journal of Social Psychology 45 (2006): 464. 114 Mark Norris and others have proposed the key components of the websites to be as follows: 92% of pro-eating disorder websites have thinspiration, 75% have poems/stories/ creative expressions, 67% offer various methods of calculations including body mass indexes and calorie info, and 67% provide tips and tricks on how to diet, restrict calories, and so forth. See Mark L. Norris et al., “Ana and the Internet: A Review of Pro-Anorexia Websites,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 39, no. 6 (2006): 445. 115 For Tumblr’s statement and policy on “Self-Harm Blogs,” see Tumblr Staff, “A New Policy Against Self-Harm Blogs,” Tumblr, February 23, 2012, http://staff.tumblr.com/ post/18132624829/self-harm-blogs. Just two examples of the media’s response to these changes in policies and their general ineffectiveness can be found in the following: Lauren Duca, “Can Thinspiration Really Be #Banned from Instagram?” Huffington Post, August 28, 2013, www. huffingtonpost.com/lauren-duca/thinspiration-banned-from-instagram_b_3829155.html; Denise Restauri, “Tumblr to Pinterest to Instagram: The Self-Harm ‘Thinspo’ Community is House Hunting,” Forbes, April 16, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/deniserestauri/2012/04/16/ tumblr-to-pinterest-to-instagram-self-harm-thinspo-community-is-house-hunting/. 116 “Totally in Control: The Rise of Pro-Ana/Pro-Mia Websites,” Social Issues Research Centre, www.sirc.org/articles/totally_in_control2.shtml. 117 Anna M. Bardone-Cone and Kamila M. Cass, “What Does Viewing a Pro-Anorexia Website Do? An Experimental Examination of Website Exposure and Moderating Effects,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 40, no. 6 (2007): 545–6. See also “The Truth About Online Anorexia,” The Truth About Beauty, aired April 9, 2009, ITV Productions. 118 Michael Sayeau, “Blogging,” in Rethinking Therapeutic Culture, eds. Timothy Aubry and Trysh Travis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 196. 119 Timithia Aislinn Quinn, “To Be Honest,” Life With My Best Friend Ana, February 10, 2016, https://lifewithmybestfriendana.wordpress.com. 120 Rachel Segal Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration Photos are Unbearable,” Vice, September 13, 2014, www.vice.com/en_us/article/laia-abril-on-photographing-eating-disorders-222. 121 Laia Abril, “Work,” Laia Abril, www.laiaabril.com/project/chapter2-thinspiration/. 122 For more information on the pervasive secrecy, see Eda R. Uca, Ana’s Girls: The Essential Guide to the Underground Eating Disorder Community Online (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2004); Walter Vandereycken and Ina Van Humbeeck, “Denial and Concealment of Eating Disorders: A Retrospective Survey,” European Eating Disorders Review 16, no. 2 (March/April 2008): 109–14. 123 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 124 Laia Abril, “A Bad Day,” Burn Magazine, May 7, 2012, www.burnmagazine.org/ essays/2012/05/laia-abril-a-bad-day/. 125 Anna Mola, “Laia Abril: Thinspiration,” Private Photography and Writing, October 3, 2012, www.privatephotoreview.com/photoessays-online/laia-abril-thinspiration/. 126 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 127 Laia Abril, Thinspiration Fanzine, 2012.

Eating Disorders 103 128 Renata Bittencourt Grasso, “A Portrait of Self-Destruction,” Guide to Unique Photography, July 24, 2012, www.gupmagazine.com/blog/123-a-portrait-of-self-destruction. 129 Borzekowski, “e-Ana and e-Mia,” 1529–31. 130 Laia Abril, Thinspiration Fanzine. 131 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 132 Abril, Thinspiration Fanzine. 133 Laia Abril, e-mail message to author, October 7, 2013. 134 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 135 Laia Abril, The Epilogue (Stockport, England: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2014). Ellipses are in original text. 136 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 137 The photographs in this series do not have individual titles; rather, they are all simply called Thirty-Two Kilos or Zweiunddreißig Kilo, depending on the context in which the work is being shown. 138 For more information on the connection of eating disorders to these fashion practices see: Amy L. Ahern, Kate M. Bennett, and Marion M. Hetherington, “Internalization of the Ultra-Thin Ideal: Positive Implicit Associations With Underweight Fashion Models Are Associated With Drive for Thinness in Young Women,” Eating Disorders 16, no. 4 (June 2008): 294–307; Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). 139 Gary Tischler, “Thein’s Thinly Veiled Message,” Washington Diplomat, February 2009, www.washdiplomat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6312:the ins-thinly-veiled-message-&catid=974:february-2009&Itemid=259. The model Tischler references is Isabella Caro, who participated in an Italian advertising billboard campaign for the brand Nolita in 2007. A frequent appearance on pro-Ana sites, Caro was also repeatedly drawn by L. A. Raeven. Caro died at the age of twenty-eight in 2010, her anorexia (of which she battled since she was thirteen) was most likely a significant factor. 140 Ivonne Thein and Heide Häusler, Zweiunddreißig Kilo (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2008), 37. 141 Thein and Häusler, Zweiunddreißig Kilo, 38. 142 Madeline Jones, “Plus Size Bodies, What Is Wrong With Them Anyway?” Plus Model Magazine, January 8, 2012, www.plus-model-mag.com/2012/01/plus-size-bodies-what-iswrong-with-them-anyway/. Statistics referenced by Jones were from “Media Influence,” Rader Programs, www.raderprograms.com/causes-statistics/media-eating-disorders.html. See also, Edward Lovett, “Most Models Meet Criteria for Anorexia, Size 6 Is Plus Size: Magazine,” ABC News, January 12, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/01/ most-models-meet-criteria-for-anorexia-size-6-is-plus-size-magazine/; Paolo Santonastaso, Silvia Mondini, and Angela Favaro, “Are Fashion Models a Group at Risk for Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse?” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 71 (2002): 168–72. 143 Thein and Häusler, Zweiunddreißig Kilo, 45. 144 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.” 145 Steinmetz, Cassils, and Leary, “Behind Enemy Lines,” 776. 146 Shiela Reaves, Jacqueline Bush Hitchon, Sung-Yeon Park, and Gi Wong Yum, “If Looks Could Kill: Digital Manipulation of Fashion Models,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 19, no. 1 (2004): 56–71; Ashley O’Neil, “A Call for Truth in the Fashion Pages: What the Global Trend in Advertising Regulation Means for U.S. Beauty and Fashion Advertisers,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 21, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 619–41. 147 See Moe, “Here’s Our Winner! ‘Redbook’ Shatters Our ‘Faith’ In Well, Not Publishing, But Maybe God,” Jezebel, July 16, 2007, http://jezebel.com/278919/heres-ourwinner-redbook-shatters-our-faith-in-well-not-publishing-but-maybe-god; Jessica Coen, “Here Are the Unretouched Images From Lena Dunham’s Vogue Shoot,” Jezebel, January 17, 2014, http://jezebel.com/here-are-the-unretouched-images-from-lena-dunhamsvogu-1503336657. Their initial postings about digital editing mistakes proved so popular that they followed them up with attention-grabbing stunts. In the hopes of acquiring the unretouched photos of Dunham for Vogue, Jezebel offered $10,000. It took only two hours for them to receive the original photographs.

104  Eating Disorders 148 Jim Edwards, “Three Decades of Thin: How the Fashion Business Promotes Anorexia,” Business Insider, March 7, 2012, www.businessinsider.com/three-decades-of-thin-howthe-fashion-business-promotes-anorexia-2012-3?op=1#ixzz2ZjEZxiJb. 149 Claire Pomeroy and James E. Mitchell, “Medical Complications of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa,” in Eating Disorders and Obesity, Second Edition: A Comprehensive Handbook, eds. Christopher G. Farburn and Kelly D. Brownell (New York: Guilford Press, 2002), 27885. 150 Rachel Richardson, Charlynn Schmiedt, and Greta Gleissner, “Anorexia Awareness Art Exhibit: Helping or Hurting?” The F Word, January 10, 2009, http://the-f-word.org/blog/ index.php/2009/01/10/anorexia-awareness-art-exhibit-helping-or-hurting/. 151 myself?, comment, March 18, 2008 (12:40), on “32 kilo,” Pure Ana (blog), March 28, 2008, http://pureana.blogspot.com/2008/03/32-kilo.html; Aubrey S., comment, January 23, 2009, on “Art or Bad Example?” Lemon Drop, January 21, 2009, www.lemon drop.com/2009/01/21/thin/. 152 Gary Tischler, “Thein’s Thinly Veiled Message.” 153 Stephanie Houston Grey, “A Perfect Loathing: The Feminist Expulsion of the Eating Disorder,” KB Journal 7, no. 2 (Spring 2011): http://kbjournal.org/grey. 154 Hamilton, “Laia Abril’s Thinspiration.”

4 Self-Harm

On November 19, 1971, artist Chris Burden was shot. In an unprecedented act titled Shoot, Burden had his friend fire a gun, shooting him in the arm as performance art. Just prior, in April of the same year, Gina Pane ascended a ladder that had razor blades in the rungs. Escalade nonanethesie continued until she could no longer climb because of her injuries. Vito Acconci used a candle to burn off his chest hair on one pectoral in Conversions in the summer of 1971. Once he has removed the hair, he tugs at the flesh trying to pull his chest outward to resemble that of a woman’s breast. In her 1974 project Sorry Mister, Ulrike Rosenbach hit her leg for a sustained period of time, as a deep bruise develops on her thigh. Similarly, Marina Abramovic´ tested her willpower in Rhythm 10 (1973), when she played the risky game of stabbing a knife into the ground between her fingers repeatedly. Each time she cut herself, she would switch to a new knife and moan loudly in pain.1 These shocking performances, experiments in extreme studio art practices, dominated much of the early 1970s performance art. In courting repulsive reactions, these artists sought to destroy what few remaining boundaries existed in the contemporary art world. Kathy O’Dell has written about many of these masochistic performances and events in depth, articulating that these artists “were moved to create metaphors for a type of negotiation—contractual negotiation—that might bring balance to the war-induced instability they were experiencing.”2 In their painful performances, these artists broke new ground artistically but were also finding new ways to interact with the dramatically changing world in the 1970s. These artists all force the viewer to not just question their expectations of art, especially performance art, but to further consider their complicity in witnessing painful actions and, in some ways, providing de facto support. With enough repeated attempts to explore pain and mutilation, viewers were increasingly fatigued, especially as masochistic artworks continue to be created. Germaine Greer powerfully took these artists to task, saying, “Deliberately disfiguring and damaging strong, healthy young bodies is a work of supererogation if ever there was one.” She continues, referencing Burden’s (in)famous Shoot: When an artist decides that the work will be purely carnal, it is as if he makes an agreement with himself to be uninteresting. What did Chris Burden imagine would happen when he got his assistant to shoot him in the arm in 1971? Luckily for him, the wound was superficial; the bullet didn’t bounce off a bone and kill a bystander, nor did it lodge in his brain.3

106  Self-Harm Greer’s derisive viewpoint is certainly too inflammatory, as this type of performance art can contribute to larger conversations about the body, but it is worthy to consider, as artists’ repeated destructive events on the body feel repetitive and reductive. Having oneself shot or climbing up a ladder made of knives can certainly be read as self-harm practices, yet they need to be distinguished from self-harm practices that are associated with mental illness, with which this chapter will concern itself. Experts have estimated that with at least 4% of the population will practice self-mutilating, and more people are self-harming than ever before.4 Non Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) is a broad category that includes cutting, biting, bruising, burning, scratching, scraping, and hitting. In the first book-length study on the topic, which was published originally in 1987, Armando Favazza defined self-injury as “the deliberate, direct alteration or destruction of healthy body tissue without an intent to die.”5 Self-injury is importantly distinct from suicide as well as excessive dieting, anorexia, risky behaviors, or even cosmetic surgery. Significantly, although NSSIs have received important medical evaluation only in the past forty years, Favazza has worked to trace the history of selfmutilation back centuries, showing that, in fact, self-injury had been a key practice of religion and rituals across the world.6 Renowned psychotherapist Steven Levenkron has explained that women who cut are using physical pain to ward off emotional pain.7 Essentially, NSSIs become a form of self-medication, working to help regulate emotions. Favazza elaborates, Most acts of self-injury counterintuitively provide relief from distressing situations and from deep troubling emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. The relief is usually short-lived. . . . self-injury may at times be a proverbial “cry for help” or an attempt to influence others (e.g., a lover, a therapist, or prison personnel). In addition to providing relief, self-injurious acts may “tap into” the ancient human potential for healing, for spiritual gain, and for providing social and personal order.8 Simply, the relief that comes when the physical pain stops can help end the emotional pain.9 NSSIs are notoriously hard to document and study, as self-harm is often practiced in private and kept secretive. A “typical” sufferer who practices habitual mutilation is a 28-year-old Caucasian female, who started self-harming at age 14. She prefers skin cutting, though also practiced skin burning and self-hitting, injuring herself at least fifty times. Additionally, she has or had an eating disorder, drinks heavily, and although she has sought out medical treatment, she has not been successful.10 Several experts have found that around half of all those who self-injure suffer from eating disorders, and about 20% have a history of episodic alcohol abuse.11 Because NSSIs can accompany other medical issues or mental health diagnoses, it has often been treated as a symptom of another issue. Most scholars and doctors have argued against this, preferring for and necessitating that NSSIs be treated and diagnosed distinctly.12 People who harm themselves struggle constantly, as Favazza has expounded, saying, Self-injurers have a difficult life. . . . In addition to disfiguring scars, most repetitive self-injurers usually feel empty inside, misunderstood by all, a burden to others, and scared when close to anyone. Put simply, no one loves self-mutilators. Their very presence seems to threaten the sense of mental and physical integrity of those around him.13

Self-Harm 107 As clinical researches and doctors have learned more about NSSIs, these patients are finally starting to be better understood as their actions and motivations become clearer. Journalist Marilee Strong has drawn attention to the painful corollary between childhood neglect and sexual abuse and self-injury. She has advocated for listening to the patients and their stories, arguing that only then can self-injurers be effectively treated. Elaborating on motivations for NSSIs, she explains, Cutting may serve as a way to reclaim control over one’s body, as with anorexia and bulimia. Or it may allow the tortured individual to play out the roles of victim, perpetrator, and finally, loving caretaker, soothing self-inflicted wounds and watching them heal. For others, the sight of blood is literal proof that they are alive, drawing them out of terrifying dissociative states.14 By understanding why people hurt themselves, better treatment can be prescribed. But because of both the sensitivity and the secrecy of NSSIs, not only is it hard to know how many people practice self-harm, but also it is hard to know what percentage seeks treatment. This complicated subject is hard to talk about in its own context; NSSIs rarely figure in popular culture, unlike the other topics in this book. Aside from the rare Lifetime television movie, cutting and self-mutilation are both very hard to deal with in a short time frame but also extremely graphic and difficult to watch. It is not surprising that NSSIs do not prominently enter artistic practices. Besides the previously mentioned artists, cutting and self-harm has figured in the work of other artists, though often in the service of other issues.15 Artists such as Lisa Steele, Cynthia Maughan, Barbara T. Smith and Nancy Buchanan, Sanja Ivekovic´, and Kiki Kogelnik begin to connect to idea of cutting and NSSIs, focusing on the cut itself or the tools used for injury, while creating a narrative. Often, though, these ideas are addressed in just a singular work of their much larger oeuvres, without the sustained investigation to sufficiently deal with this nuanced illness. But in their willingness to be specific and address the topic, as well as moving beyond the artists interested in forms of bodily destruction, these artists open the door for future artists who can sophisticatedly address NSSIs. Jenny Saville, Catherine Opie, and Jo Spence begin to examine these larger issues, placing them in broader contexts. Spence, in particular, connects and advocates for the use of art as a kind of therapy. Performing cutting in public, Gina Pane, Marina Abramovic´, and Kira O’Reilly force a confrontation with the actual act of cutting and self-harm, and yet do not connect the action to broader mental health concerns. These six artists all establish, if not legitimize, self-harm. Moving beyond the physical, artists are beginning to deal with the pathology of self-mutilation. By addressing the instances of self-harm as pathological, these artists (or, in some cases, audience members) are able to see self-mutilation exist as its own condition instead of a symptom. Yet even as these ideas surround the works, both blood and the act of marring the flesh still take priority in these works. In the twenty-first century, the issue of self-harm is addressed much more thoughtfully and in a precise manner. Unsurprisingly, it is younger female artists who are addressing the rise of self-harm, often through their own experiences, the practices of their friends, and other similar-minded people they have sought out. The work of upand-coming artists such as Chen Zhe, Laura Hospes, and Kristina E. Knipe addresses

108  Self-Harm self-harm, via the newer (albeit limited) amount of research on NSSIs in large part because NSSIs are more broadly discussed in the public sphere. These works, through more direct references to the act of cutting and its scars, to institutionalization, and to their inclusion of others who have also experimented with NSSIs, provide a much fuller and fairer picture of this neglected issue in the art world. In recognizing these under-discussed artists and artworks, we can draw attention to both the pervasiveness of self-harm and the increasing need to continue discussing and making art on the issue itself. For many who practice self-harm, making, viewing, and collaborating on art about self-harm contributes to their healing. Visualizing something so secretive and painful, and then seeing it brought out into the public space, gives more people the strength to discuss the very act itself, helping themselves and others to seek treatment and end the harmful behavior.

Beyond Shocking Performances Before examining the artists who deal with NSSIs specifically and in detail, it is worth examining how other artists have utilized self-mutilations in their artistic output. Through brief discussions of particularly relevant artwork, we can see how artists attempt to deal with cutting, scars, and various types of self-harm allowing for the younger artists to move beyond the surface of the issue. In other words, these first artworks that deal with self-harm allowed for the topic itself to become a viable subject for art making. This discussion is, of course, not complete, as self-mutilation in the arts is a much larger topic; instead, I have made every attempt to focus on the artworks that are most germane to the broader idea of self-harm and mental health. Ulrike Rosenbach and Vito Acconci: Repetition and Pain In the 1970s, as artists were exploring the possibilities of their bodies as media for their artwork, two artists emerged who engaged ideas connected to self-harm broadly. The work of Vito Acconci and Ulrike Rosenbach can be seen as important forbearers to those who would later address NSSIs in depth. Acconci (1940–2017) created some of the most shocking and transgressive performance art of all time, until 1975 when he shifted his to focus to other areas of art and architecture. Pushing his body to his breaking point was a critical component of this early work (late 1960s–1975), evident in the previously described Conversions and Rubbing Piece (May 1970). For this performance, Acconci sat alone in a booth at the then-popular Max’s Kansas City Restaurant in New York City. With his left sleeve rolled up, he rubbed his left forearm with his right hand. For one hour, he rubbed steadily and swiftly without pause, gradually creating a red sore on his arm. Of this project, Acconci said, “Making my mark here can mark out place for me. . . . Performer as producer (I give myself the sore)—­ performer as consumer (I receive the sore)—performance as circulation.”16 For Acconci and many other explicit performance artists like him, these early intense actions and events often utilized the body in an extreme fashion to question the very idea of art. By refusing to use traditional materials, these artists were addressing contemporary issues with their physical forms, building on performative developments but challenging their bodies in increasingly new and painful ways. Frequently, Acconci relied on a straightforward starting point, but then repeated the idea/action over and over, such that a simple act would end up rubbing the skin raw or physically exhausting the

Self-Harm 109 artist or the viewer. The simple movement of rubbing his arm just once would do little harm, but after an hour, Acconci had wounded himself. That repetition reappears in Ulrike Rosenbach’s (b. 1943) pathbreaking videotaped actions, which witness her willingness to harm her body. Although her larger career has utilized video, photography, and performance art to challenge the traditional role of women in society and in art history,17 her 1974 project Sorry Mister involved her performing a piece that drew on the repetitious painful actions of Acconci. Repeatedly and rhythmically, the German artist smacked her upper thigh for over ten minutes, as Brenda Lee’s version of the song “I’m Sorry” plays. As the video progresses, unsurprisingly, a painful bruise develops on her leg.18 Like Acconci, this work uses a simple action multiple times. The repeated movement is at once mesmerizing, but also traumatic. Rosenbach alludes to both issues of domestic violence and women’s own complicated relationships with their bodies, which she has explored throughout her oeuvre. In this video, as she violently beats her own leg, the sweet voice of Brenda Lee apologizes repeatedly, continuing, “I was such a fool—I didn’t know love could be so cruel.”19 As the song progresses, Lee sings about a “you” that tells her she made mistakes, which she seems to confirm with the chorus in that she begs him to accept her apology. To a more modern listener, the lyrics of the song recall situations of domestic abuse, wherein the wife is being scolded by the husband but she wants to resolve the fight. Lee’s voice seems to appeal to the listener (presumably the husband), begging for forgiveness but also as a plea to make peace (and possibly an attempt to prevent further violence). This piece, then, emerges as one of the first artworks that uses selfharm in the context of larger societal issues. Sorry Mister represents one of the key problems with examining NSSIs in depth because self-harm is used in the service of larger issues, often connected to issues concerning women, in particular, abuse, pressures on women to look certain ways, health concerns, and issues of identity. In one of her most well-known works, Don’t Believe I’m an Amazon (1975), she combined her portrait with Stefan Lochner’s Madonna of the Rose Bower (c. 1450), after which she then shot fifteen arrows into the double portrait.20 Oftentimes, in her work, Rosenbach is both the victim and the subject, as she provides larger commentary that can invoke not only social issues, but also political, religious, and art historical texts. Whereas Acconci focuses more on the idea of self-harm itself, Rosenbach recalls the frequent reading of NSSIs as symptoms and not their own distinct diagnosis. Lisa Steele, Cynthia Maughan, and Barbara T. Smith and Nancy Buchanan: Early Video Art and Razorblades As mentioned earlier in this book, one of the key strategies utilized by feminist artists was to tell women’s stories, and film, as a newer medium, became the perfect place to explore these ideas. Lisa Steele, Cynthia Maughan, and Barbara T. Smith and Nancy Buchanan create narrative videos that incorporate elements of self-harm and pain, though these works represent only moments in their much longer careers. Women’s voices and experiences needed to be shared, and it was natural that as the primary practitioners of self-harm, these artists might be more inclined to share stories of selfinjury and self-inflicted pain. Canadian filmmaker Lisa Steele (b. 1947) addressed the idea of scars and marked skin in an autobiographical video Birthday Suit: Scars and Defects in 1972. An early

110  Self-Harm piece in her long career, the 12-minute, black-and-white film shows Steele, naked, examining each of her scars in chronological order. Catherine Russell significantly reads the piece as tell[ing] the story of Lisa Steele’s body, tracing a narrative from her scars, the signs left on the surface of the body by a series of domestic and childhood accidents. Each scar stands for a memory that Steele retells in a deadpan voice as she gently rubs the mark on her body.21 Although she isn’t addressing cutting per se, she is evaluating the marks on her body, the remains of stumbles, clumsiness, and the removal of a tumor. This project is tied to her body, her narrative, and her identity and the marks made upon it. Her career would go on to address women’s stories and spaces, much like Rosenbach. Steele was able to explore a broad spectrum of narratives in her early video work and then later in her more than 30 year collaboration with Kim Tomczak (b. 1952).22 Sexuality, pain, violence, and death are all filtered through personal experience and interpretation of Steele (and then later with Tomczak), so although Birthday Suit can be seen as vaguely dealing with the effects of cuts and scars, it does not really address the issues of NSSIs. Similar to Steele, Cynthia Maughan (b. 1949) creates video work, of which she made over 300 short films from 1973 to 1980, during and after completing her MFA (1974) from California State University, Long Beach.23 Often the films feature her prominently, as she speaks or acts directly to the camera. These videos offer glimpses of a wide spectrum of little stories, some dealing with her and her body specifically and others telling stories about sticks or various objects. Like Steele, she uses both her body and her appearance, though she alters her body through a fake scar or embellished disfigurement, smartly allowing the grainy black-and-white film to make things appear more realistic.24 In Scar/Make-up (1974–1975, 2 minutes) and Scar/Scarf (1973–1974, 2 minutes, 51 seconds), Maughan has added a scar to her face and her neck, respectively. Both films involve a consideration of the blemish, with the entire length of Scar/ Scarf spent with Maughan trying to hide the scar from view. Maughan is clearly drawing attention both to the way that women present themselves in public and the way that a scar can become a distracting disfigurement, potentially disrupting a woman’s life. Whereas Steele addresses the way that the scars tell her life (and her body’s) stories, Maughan fictionalizes events and moments documenting these struggles in these brief films—her role as creator-artist-actress-narrator all blending into one. Laura Cottingham positions Maughan at a critical juncture of feminist work, characterized by raw energy, female and feminist points of view, and various taboo subjects. She continues, “The shorts produced by Cynthia Maughan . . . disrupt the conventional use of moving imagery by allowing inanimate objects like puppets, pills and alphabetical letters to stand in for the actors or the artist herself.”25 Nowhere is this more poignantly done than in Suicide (1973–1974). In this 2-minute film, the camera is focused on a basin, and at the beginning of the film, a razor blade is dropped into water by someone who is never seen but who is present by the sound of loud, deep breathing. As the razor sinks, blood flows into the water, gradually seeping into the clear water so that a dark, ominous cloud forms. The deep, struggling breathing continues, as drips of blood continue to fall into the sink. By the end of the film, the dark color takes over most of the frame; as the dripping slows, the breathing itself slows. The macabre suicide is complete.

Self-Harm 111 Death, darkness, and razor blades recur throughout her videos, as themes of selfharm and suicide are important narratives for Maughan to explore. She explained her interests: “Not death itself, but the practices and trappings and beliefs that accompany it, the strange horror movie stuff, the romanticizing and sentimentalizing of suicide.”26 She takes the razor blade, a painful object that she has tied to suicide and pain, and turns it into jewelry in her short 1-minute video Razor Necklace (1975–1976). The film focuses on a woman’s body, showing only her mouth to her torso, as she places a necklace made of five razor blades around her neck. The light catches the metal, simultaneously reflecting brightness and casting shadows on her skin. Carefully, the woman adjusts it ever so slightly, before fixing it behind her neck. The viewer can just make out various grimaces, evincing the pain the necklace causes. Maughan encourages her viewers to reconsider both their positions and their understandings of objects and space; a necklace often used to enhance a person’s beauty now becomes a weapon. Her videos are simultaneously personal but allow viewers to project their own ideas and positions into them. Utilizing both tools of pain and the scars they leave behind, Steele begins to create works that engage a dialogue regarding pain and self-harm. Nonetheless, these tools and scars do not provide viewers with any case or context that connects to the concepts of NSSIs. Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931) and Nancy Buchanan (b. 1946) used razor blades to tell a sinister narrative, building on the same ideas that Steele and Maughan are exploring in terms of sharing women’s stories. Both California artists were strong feminist advocates who played important roles in the development of the influential Women’s Building in Los Angeles. Their project, With Love From A to B (1977, 8 minutes, 44 seconds), tells a would-be charming little love story, with stand-ins for people represented as hands (Buchanan is hand ‘A’ and Smith is hand ‘B’). All the important markers of a relationship are introduced. The hands meet, ‘B’ seems smitten with ‘A,’ requesting a photograph of ‘A’ and providing gifts, while ‘A’ continues to brush off her suitor ‘B.’ The film takes a sensual turn, as ‘B’ seductively grabs ‘A,’ massaging the hand, despite ‘A’ reading a miniature book with her other hand. When the massage ends, ‘A’ disappears for a bit, only to reappear to wave goodbye to ‘B.’ Clearly, ‘B’ is anguished, grabbing at the tablecloth. From off screen, ‘B’ grabs a box of razor blades, eventually pushing the blade into her forefinger to the shock of the viewer. It sticks there, as both ‘B’ hands collapse on the table, before they are pulled off. The razor blades here are used by ‘B’ to commit suicide, allowing for blood to convey the seriousness of the action.27 Although Smith and Buchanan used hands as stand-ins for people, this film creates a sense of drama and intrigue, and the viewer is pulled into this brief story of unrequited love. But as each of these artists tells these stories, including Steele and Maughan, they are sharing narratives that are by and about women. Further, they are some of the first to show the more familiar side of self-injury: scars and the act of cutting oneself. Although these smaller moments and tangents in much broader careers are less focused on the idea of NSSIs themselves, they are, nonetheless, important trajectories in the history of artworks concerning self-mutilation by providing visualizations of the tools and the acts themselves. Sanja Ivekovic´ and Kiki Kogelnik: Cut-Ups Whereas the earlier artists began dealing with the physicality of cutting, Sanja Ivekovic´ and Kiki Kogelnik address the context and the reasons behind the actions, particularly

112  Self-Harm by exploring the ways women modify their bodies with makeup and material things. Croatian artist Ivekovic´ (b. 1949) has been encouraging viewers to challenge commercialism, in particular, the way that advertising presents feminine ideals to the public. She critiques these ideas through marking and mutilating flesh (both real and photographed). In the video piece of Instructions No. 1 of 1976, she draws lines on her face in the direction and position of how she would apply makeup to her face. Resulting in a face covered in arrows, this piece makes transparent the changes that makeup can have on a person’s look. Marring one’s flesh is made even more evident in her series Paper Women, begun in the same year. In these images, Ivekovic´ slightly modifies beautiful and idealized advertising shots of women, often taken from women’s magazines.28 She scratches or tears the surface, allowing a white background to peek through. By utilizing the advertising photograph’s content, the position of the model’s hands often creates disturbing images where the women are mutilating or disfiguring themselves. Ranging from subtle to unrealistic, the altered images disrupt the perfect women in the ads. In one particularly disturbing photograph, Ivekovic´ focused on the lower half of a woman’s face and her neck. Bright red lips match long, bright red nails, but the bold color is upset by long scratch marks down the face which seem to be caused by the attractive nails. Here, she allows the prettiness of the form to be disrupted by the pristine fingernails, which certainly contribute to the attractiveness of the image but are also clear reminders of advertising. The scratch marks function as challenges to the perfection of the cosmetic industry (and the larger advertising industry by extension), but also are brutal, self-destructive scrapes. Ivekovic´ creates a violent tension in Paper Women, and, when coupled with Makeup (1979), it provides a clear investigation of the media’s depictions of women.29 In Make-up, pins are inserted into the surface of a black-and-white image of a woman who wears dramatic eyeshadow, perfectly defined and shiny lips, and lovely jewelry. The pins are subsequently embedded into the skin of the model, interfering with her deliberate and satisfying makeup. Threaded through the surface of the paper, the pins recall self-harm practices undoubtedly, but combined with Ivekovic´’s carefully curated images of marketing photographs, it is impossible to tell exactly who is causing the harm to the model? Herself? The artist? Society? Addressing similar themes in the 1970s, Austrian Kiki Kogelnik (1935–1997) explodes the subtlety of Ivekovic´, creating a number of collages and drawings focusing on fashionable women with comically oversized scissors. Sometimes the women hold the scissors, whereas other times they are in the process of being attacked by the shears. Here, cutting is made literal, perhaps even humorous. Yet with the appearance of her chic women, who recall fashionable women in magazine or advertising photography, Kogelnik seems to mirror many of the same, early feminist ideas that Ivekovic´ expresses about women’s choices to manipulate their appearance. In 1971’s Untitled (Women’s Lib), the central woman resembles the artist herself, wearing a fashionable trench coat, hat, oversized circular sunglasses, and boots. Legs spread apart, the artist clutches the giant scissors whose length extends from her pelvis to the floor. Susanne Längle has compared this woman to superwoman, saying she appears “passionate, self-assured and assertive—that look on her face does not say prey, but hunter.”30 Standing defiantly or proudly over brightly colored silhouettes of human bodies, this hunter stares almost confrontationally at the viewer. These figural forms recall Kogelnik’s own practice of making collages and even life-size cutouts of bodies

Self-Harm 113 made in sleek vinyl; the scissors, then, become a large, visible reminder of her artistic process. For Kogelnik, her scissors are as much about creation as they are about destruction. Though Kogelnik’s work is often playful, it is hard, if not impossible, to not think about pain and assault in her It Hurts . . . series (1974–1976), as the title implies. In these works, the scissors or pliers attack and pierce the chic female bodies, as the figures move and walk in ways similar to runway models. These paintings feature flat planes of color, with the women and their clothing in black and white and the scissors in a bright, bold yellow. In It Hurts With a Scissor (1974–1976), the scissors are lodged in the side of the model’s body, and with her arms outstretched, she drops the flowers she was carrying. Her dynamically moving body mirrors the poses of models while at the same time seems to be pushed into that position by the scissors. Kogelnik wants the connection to fashion to be clear, as she includes details like a patterned belt and high heels. This series incorporates fun and fashion, color and dynamism, and yet the scissors add a much darker, serious element. Disturbingly, the scissors pierce the female body—disrupting what would be a playful or light-hearted moment. Although neither Ivekovic´ nor Kogelnik always connect the self to the cause of the harm, by leaving their artworks ambiguous, it is hard to avoid the question of selfharm. Further, by using poses made famous by models (or even directly utilizing the advertisements), many historians have read these works as being critical of the lengths women will go to beautify themselves (from pounds of makeup and expensive fix-itall lotions to cosmetic surgery).31 Although distinct from self-harm’s association from emotional release through physical pain, the ability for women to punish their bodies certainly resonates. Jenny Saville and Catherine Opie: Writing on Skin Carving, marking, and scarring the flesh can be made by cutting but can also be temporarily done with markers or other writing utensils. These actions, permanent or temporary, can be utilized by artists to make a statement—thereby combining the principal idea of self-harm with phrasing that can add context and meaning. Among Jenny Saville’s (b. 1970) paintings, one specific work importantly relates to this topic, amid an oeuvre that has consistently challenged societal beauty standards. For her, then, making large paintings of women—especially those focused on herself or a single figure—helped her to explore her interest in approaching art from a feminist perspective, particularly in the 1990s. In pieces like Prop (1992) and Plan (1993), Saville painted views of women presented at angles that could be considered unflattering, which is her way of drawing attention to the problematic perception and discussion of the female physique. Removing idealism, Saville encourages a broader and more realistic view of women’s bodies. Saville then was able to address the pressure women feel to look a certain way, as she emphasized, A lot of women out there look and feel like that, made to fear their own excess, taken in by the cult of exercise, the great quest to be thin. . . . I’m not painting disgusting, big women. I’m painting women who’ve been made to think they’re big and disgusting, who imagine their thighs go on forever.32

114  Self-Harm It could be argued that Saville is actually depicting body dysmorphia, a mental illness where someone imagines their body to look drastically different in actuality (for example, a thin woman believing herself to be much larger). This is further encouraged by works like Plan, where she shows circular marks around larger parts of her body, much like a surgeon would draw on the figure before liposuction, or Trace (1993– 1994), where the bra and underwear have left red indentions on the female flesh. Saville’s paintings, especially Branded (1992), show this vulnerability explicitly, where people cannot adequately comprehend the size and shape of their bodies and how they process feelings of inadequacies. Further, in this painting, she appears to “carve” text on the flesh of her body. Words like “supportive,” “decorative,” “petite,” “irrational,” and “delicate” are all incised in various depths across her torso and breasts. Saville’s various pink and purple flesh makes certain letters stick out and appear as if they have been freshly carved, whereas other words feel like faded scars. For someone like Saville, who uses paint to create detailed and textured flesh, the words appear to be doubly carved into the surface of the skin and the surface of the paint itself. The cutting and the marring of the flesh are a much more direct and visual interruption of her form than Saville usually pursues. Perhaps addressing self-harm was too painful or she wanted to pull back from strong feminist ideas; regardless, she has not returned to this subject in her career, despite trauma and violence figuring prominently in her later paintings. American artist Catherine Opie (b. 1961) more directly addresses cutting in two prominent photographs she made in the mid-1990s: Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993) and Self-Portrait/Pervert (1994). These were Opie’s first forays into self-portraiture where she embraced her own identity. Inspired by her work taking portraits of her friends who were members of various queer subcultures, she felt it both necessary and fair that she turn the camera on herself, wanting to depict herself honestly and truthfully. In her first self-portrait, Opie was reeling from a tough breakup and afraid that she would never be able to find and create the family she desired.33 She had a painter, a good friend, slice a simple design to her back for Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993). The carving recalls childlike drawings, with a house, a sunny sky, and two stick figure women (their sex made clear by their triangle skirts) holding hands. This family of two women, with their neat little house and sense of belonging, was a dream for Opie, unsure it could ever be a reality. Unlike Saville’s paintings, this photograph shows a real cutting, the rawness of the act emphasized by the drops of blood apparent on her skin. Specifically, it was more of a scratching than a cutting, and in fact, no scars remain from the event.34 By contrast, the cutting in Self-Portrait/Pervert was done by a professional and meant to be permanent. Like Opie’s earlier self-portrait, the focus is on her flesh, her torso specifically, and her face is not shown. She speaks about Self-Portrait/Pervert, but her remarks could also apply to Self-Portrait/Cutting: I didn’t want the self-portrait to be about my face, I wanted it to be about what was on my body, the existence of that word and what that word meant. I would inscribe it on my body and that would be where the politics lie, not in a look in my eyes.35 In Self-Portrait/Pervert, she wears leather pants and a leather face mask, as her arms are poked by numerous needles and the word “Pervert” has been artfully carved in

Self-Harm 115 her flesh with a delicate font and in such a way that the scar would permanently stay on her body. Representing a fetish subculture to which she belonged and, in particular, her own interests in leather, this work was made at the time the Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms was publicly attacking and demeaning art that could be seen as representing or engaging homosexual themes.36 Opie shares a part of herself by showing her body and connecting it to homosexual subcultures for the first time. She also bravely takes a word that is used as a slur and places it prominently on her chest, challenging the associations with the word “pervert” and proclaiming her queerness. These two photographs, then, are explorations of Opie’s identity, via carving into the surface of the flesh. Saville and Opie engage the process of cutting but don’t actually deal with Non Suicidal Self-Injury in relation to mental health as language and image-making taking precedence over the cuts themselves. Saville uses a painting like Branded to draw attention to pressures put on female body size. On the other hand, Opie’s use of cutting is connected to her politics and her identity, and it engages the use of cutting and bloodletting as connected to social practices. Both artists tell stories and make statements with their use of self-harm, but they do not speak to the actual issue of self-mutilation itself. Gina Pane, Marina Abramovic´, and Kira O’Reilly: Performance Bleeding At the beginning of this chapter, extreme and painful performances were briefly described. A few of these performers, notably female, use cutting and self-injury in live performance events frequently to challenge viewers, much as O’Dell has described. Certainly, a shock value was critical too, and these three artists engage this idea as well. But in each of the works described in this section, these artists, by physically cutting their flesh in front of an audience, are also making the very private act of cutting public—an important statement on its own. In 1970, French artist Gina Pane (1939–1990) used a razor blade to cut a piece of a paper, then cut a piece of fabric, and finally, to cut her finger. This piece, Theoretical Wound (1970),37 was the first piece in which she used razor blades, leading to her more painful (and arguably well-known) actions like Unanesthetized Escalation (1971) and Sentimental Action (1973).38 Living in France post-1968 protests,39 Pane repeatedly connected her performances to politics, particularly protesting the Vietnam war (her reference to climbing and ascending were intentionally recalling the escalation of the war).40 Her actions frequently incorporated various elements of self-harm, as Jennifer Blessing has explained, “She delicately cut her skin with a razor blade—at various times on the lips, back, hands, stomach, tongue, scalp, feet, ears, and above her eyelids.”41 These wounds worked as an exchange for Pane, as she wrote, “If I open my ‘body’ so that you can see your blood, it is out of love for you: the other.”42 Pane’s actions took place in front of audiences of varying size, in places like her house but also major international exhibitions like Documenta. Many, many people witnessed firsthand the act of her self-harm and further have seen it through her extensive documentation. Sentimental Action exemplifies this, as she uses both razor blades and the thorns from roses to mutilate her arm. The action is performed twice, once with red roses and then white roses. After a series of movements, she eventually stuck the thorn of a rose into her arm, then sliced her palm with the blade. Dressed in white in an area surrounded by white, her blood from the cuts drips, interrupting the

116  Self-Harm sterility of the environment. While ideas of martyrdom and religiosity are certainly apparent here, for our purposes, the use of the razor blade both in the action itself and the documentation gives visualization to the act of cutting, directly paralleling the same practices of those who self-injure. Marina Abramovic´’s work, like Pane’s, visualizes the act of self-injury, amid a host of other issues and concerns. But more than that, they are connected through the way that these works harm their bodies. Petra Kuppers has thoughtfully articulated this idea: I argue that pain experiences, and the transgression of physical or psychical envelopes, can become invested with other forms of meaning, other forms of (political) signification. . . . I figure the wound as scar: as the knitting together of life and disruption, as not only a spatial site but also a temporal journey that highlights survival.43 Yugoslavian-born Abramovic´ (b. 1946) has built a long career creating memorable, sometimes interactive, performances. Yet in her early works, before her well-known long-term collaboration with Ulay, she creates intensely vulnerable works. Although many of her works are like Rhythm 0 (1974), where there is a potential for violence in that she often includes weapons or knives in her performances, this section will focus on just one of her works, where Abramovic´ committed the violent act on herself. Thomas Lips was performed in 1975 in front of an audience at Krinzinger Gallery in Innsbruck, Austria.44 The event begins with Abramovic´ undressing, after which she hangs a picture of a man with long hair on the back wall of the gallery space. The man was a Swiss artist named Thomas Lips, whom she had met when participating in a Hermann Nitsch performance, and to whom the title of the piece ultimately refers.45 She then draws a five-pointed star around the picture, after which she takes a seat at a table where she slowly and methodically drinks a bottle of red wine and eats a kilo of honey. Then, with her back to the audience she stands and returns to the picture, where she carves a five-pointed star into the skin of her stomach. As her stomach bled, she took a whip, knelt down, and flogged herself, until her back was bleeding as well. After such painful actions, she lays down on ice blocks, in the shape of a cross. A heater hangs above her stomach, causing her to bleed more. After lying there for thirty minutes with no end in sight, some spectators intervened, removing her from the ice and wrapping her in coats. The nearly 2-hour performance had ended, leaving the audience to contemplate the religious symbolism mixed with the physical pain she both caused and endured.46 Abramovic´ suggests that religion and pain are intricately linked through her shocking performance that builds on the work of Acconci and Burden. But those ideas are not for this discussion. However, unlike any other piece mentioned so far, the self-injury and the blood overwhelmed the audience, forcing some of the viewers to end the event.47 Whereas Abramovic´ repeatedly worked on a stage, or a separated performance area, London-based artist Kira O’Reilly (b. 1967) often worked among gallery visitors as they attended an opening or a reception, preferring to call these performances “movement works.” Like Pane and Abramovic´, O’Reilly cuts herself in public during one of her earlier works, Sssshh . . . Succour at the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow in 2001. But O’Reilly distinguishes herself by her orderliness, approaching the cutting precisely, almost surgically. Sitting naked on a white chair, on

Self-Harm 117 a white towel, on white sand, she uses a mirror to make eye contact with many of the viewers before starting the action. Critic Keith Gallasch described the performance: Throughout the forty-minute performance the tempo is regular, more deliberate than matter-of-fact, a quiet ritual, as O’Reilly tapes her left leg from the ankle to top of the thigh in perfect circles and then with long lines down the leg, creating small rectangles of protruding flesh. She unpacks a scalpel and carefully slices a red diagonal across each space. Only here and there does the flesh release a trickle of blood, the rest glint in clean red parallel lines.48 Using the minimalist grid but activated with her flesh and blood, O’Reilly’s orderly approach differs from the more lively and passionate moments of the earlier mentioned performance artists. After she completes her legs, she repeats the grid form on her torso. She presses pieces of gauze to her bloody flesh and then places the fabric on the sand. After a brief pause, she wipes her body with the towel, smearing blood all over her figure. After one last look at the audience, she gets up and leaves. O’Reilly compares the work she does in Sssshh . . . Succour to an artistic process, writing in the program for the event, Using processes of measuring and cutting, the skin is (re)marked, like a text or a drawing, etching a history that can be followed on the surface of the skin, like a palimpsest. Tenderized, it brings sharply into focus a visual and visceral vocabulary that invokes notions of trauma (a wound) and stigma (a mark) towards a “spoiling” and opening of the body to explore an alterity or otherness.49 O’Reilly, like Pane, is opening up to the audience, giving of herself. Throughout this performance, an open chair sat next to her, waiting for anyone who might join her. Even in her use of “succor” in the title, she implies that there will be assistance or support available and/or given. But no one helps or interrupts O’Reilly. She performs her event and her cutting as work, evenly and without stopping.50 In her actions, O’Reilly carefully considers the aesthetic appeal. Rebecca Stevenson elaborates, She is concerned with the slight bulge in the flesh each square of tape creates, like the sections of a quilt, with the viscosity and color of the blood, with the texture of the skin as it heals to scar tissue, the pattern of the cuts on the limbs like the slashed silk of an Elizabethan sleeve.51 Continuing to explore the appearance and effect blood can have on the body, she harms her body in a few other pieces including Untitled (Syncope) in 2007, where she uses a scalpel to slice an x-shaped incision on each calf moving about so that the blood falls down her legs and onto her red high heeled shoes before hitting the floor as she performs intricate movements, as well as in Wet Cup (2000), where she makes small cuts in her body before covering them with warm glass cups, exacerbating the bleeding and causing bruising and swelling. The action and what changes and effects it has is what is important here; the harming is not the main priority. There is never any justification for the self-mutilation other than its purpose in the performance and the art. In fact, in Untitled Actions for Bomb Shelter Kuopio (2003), she offers the scalpel

118  Self-Harm up to her visitors; by allowing others to cut or mark her flesh, the piece is obviously no longer about self-harm. For O’Reilly, in her interest in the flesh, the biological, the fluids, and the marks, she concedes that it is more about what it looks like and the performance itself than actually addressing NSSIs themselves.52 In these actions, performances, and movement works, three artists have physically cut and hurt themselves, thus immediately calling to mind self-injurious practices. Yet these are surface cuts, and the blood is used to dramatically affect the viewer who is watching the self-mutilation. Each of these artists uses self-harm in the same way that an actor uses an accent—their goal is to use the blood and actions as part of the performance, not a psychological condition. Self-harm and its associated mental health issues play no role in these artworks, despite that fact that each artist performs the mutilations themselves. Jo Spence: Art/Therapy As we have seen, marking or writing on the flesh can recall self-harm practices of cutting, scratching, and marring the flesh, though it is perhaps less distressing than performing cutting. British photographer Jo Spence (1934–1992) marked her own flesh in her mature work, particularly as she was trying to come to terms with her advancing cancer. Although her work had often been biographical, as her disease worsened, she used photography to express her complicated emotions about what was happening to her. In her photograph The Picture of Health? (1982–1986), she writes words on various parts of her body to convey her dismay and disbelief with situation. Against a green background and across seven different photographs of fragments of her body, like her palm, forehead, and back, is the haphazardly arranged phrase “how do I begin to take responsibility?” There is one larger black-and-white photograph of the artist looking into a mirror with her back to the viewer. In the reflection, the artist clasps her hands at heart level, as we are allowed to see her naked torso. Spence is questioning how she can process her illness, where to place blame, and how she can move forward—questions that most people inevitably would have when diagnosed with such an illness. Spence further developed this inquisitive action in a series of photographs called Narratives of Dis-ease (Excised, Exiled, Expected, Expunged, Included), which she created with Dr. Tim Sheard in 1990. The photographs were taken during a therapeutic session, wherein Spence conveyed different stories to her doctor as he took photographs of her acting out the narratives. In these works, she writes on her body her feelings that express her ideas about her lived experience. Exiled, the most powerful piece of the series, shows Spence naked, with her breast mutilated from the various surgeries she endured. The word “monster” is written across her chest, and a mask partially obscures what is visible of her face. Her negative feelings about her misshapen breast are made apparent through the text on his flesh. Recognizing the importance of this photograph and, in particular, its use of marking the body, Petra Kuppers argues, But different from many performance artists, Spence’s “altered body” is nontheatrical—the cuts are not made in the name of art. The boundaries of theatricality still stand untouched by cutting or piercing, momentary incursions into the stability of the “normal” body that, given time, will heal.53

Self-Harm 119 The marks and the cuts, both the text and the surgical alterations, fade and heal, but Spence’s body bears the effects. Building on these experiences, Spence began working with fellow artist Rosy Martin to develop a practice that they called photo therapy, which are sessions that develop between two people who use the process of staging and taking photographs to work through psychological issues. Describing this process, Martin and Spence wrote, We are talking initially about changing the images in our heads and hearts. . . . by using reframing as a technique anything can potentially be turned on its axis, words and images can take on new and different meanings and relationships and old ideas can be transformed.54 Their photo therapy practices often involve a retelling of the past, and which by reliving traumatic events, the hope is that a patient can move past them. By marking her body and processing her harrowing cancer experiences, Spence hoped to metaphorically heal her cuts. Spence articulates the need for her, and potentially others, to combine therapeutic practices to help heal very real conditions. Unlike the more conventional ideas of art therapy, which has been practiced in various forms since the 1940s, Spence and Martin advocated for the combining of art and therapy with the distinct result being that of museum or gallery quality high art. Spence, and later Martin, opened doors for artists to explore their self-harm with a therapeutic intent.

Considering Self-Injury as a Subject While the works previously mentioned all deal with self-injury in some way, it is not until the 2000s that the specificity of NSSIs are addressed. To speak fully to the actual severity of the injuries caused by NSSIs, it becomes clear that most artists have to work in a narrative fashion and often include text. It is not enough to show a cut on human flesh, because there are so many potential causes—most of which are not connected to intentional self-injury. The artists in this section have worked to establish a clear point of view, and along the way, many of the artists have found their own healing. Laia Abril: Self-Injury Within an Eating Disorder Conversation Although her work has gained more notoriety for its thoughtful consideration of eating disorders and is discussed at length in that earlier chapter, Laia Abril (b. 1986) does include acknowledgments of NSSIs in these pieces. In both photographs and a short film, A Bad Day of 2010, Abril focuses on a youthful bulimic woman.55 Self-injury and cutting are described in the film but never shown. Abril recalls the connection between eating disorders and self-harm, which is fairly common,56 as Marilee Strong has articulated, The two behaviors share many of the same roots and serve many of the same function. . . . Both behaviors are impulsive, secretive, ritualistic, and ridden with shame and guilt. And they each involve attacks on the body, a disturbance in body image, and an attempt to control body boundaries.57 It is natural, then, for Abril to see these patterns of behavior while doing her project on eating disorders, and these nods to self-harm importantly visualize the connection

120  Self-Harm between eating disorders and NSSIs. Yet by not showing her young subjects’ scars or self-harm actions, Abril maintains the privacy of her subject while keeping their NSSIs secretive. Self-harm is more clearly depicted in her second project, 2012’s Thinspiration Fanzine, which shifts her focus to the perception and documentation of the physical effects of eating disorders. Here, Abril creates a short book filled with images and quotes from pro-anorexia websites. Images of scars and even the word “fat” appear on the skin. These images in their directness force the viewer to consider the sheer brutality that NSSIs take on the body. But these mentions and photographs are exceptions in the much larger project focused on anorexia, bulimia, and the cultures surrounding eating disorders. Laura Hospes: Letting Viewers In Emerging Netherlandish photographer Laura Hospes (b. 1994) achieved Internet fame in 2015 when her photographs taken inside a state mental health institution went viral. In these black-and-white images (many untitled, with the series named UCP-UMCG after the hospital where she was staying), Hospes depicts herself trying to recover from serious depression and a suicide attempt.58 Her artist statement that accompanies these works is blunt and clearly articulates her goal while making these images: I’m portraying myself in a very difficult moment of my life: I’m depressed and suicidal. My self-portraits are a direct reflection of my emotions, which I can’t show in real life. My camera is my consolation and listens to me better than anyone else. I want to share the difficulties and loneliness I feel right now. I want to let you feel the pain and fear I feel, even if it’s just a fraction. I want you to be with me in my situation so that I feel less alone.59 In the photographs, Hospes is always alone, often engaging with the camera. A wide array of emotions (sometimes extreme) appear: she cries, screams, shouts. Other times, she is reserved, quiet, still. The clothing, reflective of the hospital, is minimal. Many times, she wears just an oversized, short-sleeved T-shirt; sometimes there are big, gray sweatpants. She uses these items smartly. Grasping the shirt tightly at the hem, she expresses her frustration by pulling it away from her body (Scream I, 2015, Figure 4.1). Or she sits on the bed topless, with the pants pulled up high over her stomach, her arms pushing straight against the bed. The simple clothing is matched by the undecorated hospital room where these photographs are shot. The muted environment and attire allow for a focus on every detail of her actions, her body positioning, and the amount of light entering the frame. Although Hospes plays with nudity, it is unsurprising that these are not sexual. She is vulnerable, certainly, but she is not considering the display of her body for anyone but herself and the camera. Often, these photographs feel like a conversation, a story unfolding between the artist and the machine. Relatedly, in terms of the discussion of self-harm, Hospes’s repeated documentation of her flesh allows the viewer to see the marks, the scars, and the pain on her skin. In a few images, she appears with bandages on her wrists/arms. In another, a drop of blood drips down her skin, but her body is so abstracted it is impossible to tell where the cut is actually located on her form. In one

Figure 4.1 Laura Hospes, Scream I, 2015 (series: UCP) Source: Courtesy of Laura Hospes, www.laurahospes.com.

122  Self-Harm of the most powerful photographs, and a rare one with a title, Death Feather (2015, Figure 4.2), she shows only her left hand and wrist. Toward the top of the wrist is a scar that is at least two inches in length across from which is a tattoo of a feather. Smaller scars between the larger scar and the tattoo are also visible. Her hand is filled with tension, as her forefinger points directly down, the thumb pushes outward, and the rest of the fingers curl up toward the side opposite the thumb. There is the flex and extension of the finger and even the muscle of the wrist appears. At once, the viewer is simply looking at a hand but also sees a record of trauma (the scars), with its matching symbol of recovery and perseverance (the feather). Prior to her institutionalization, Hospes worked as a model. This has clearly given her a particular awareness of her body as well as piqued her own interest in photography. Because she was able to work her angles and position her body toward a camera, she felt that she was then better able to photograph her feelings and emotions as she was trying to come to terms with her mental illness. As she has said, “I already knew what to do in front of a camera and slowly I learned what to do behind it.”60 These photographs move away from all pretense of a fashion or advertising image. Hospes appears without makeup, her long, dark curly hair often appears unruly—gathered in a messy bun or left free—and when clothed, her plain, cotton attire is decidedly the opposite of haute couture. Further, in sharing her narrative, both about being a model and being institutionalized, she allows viewers to understand her arc and her story. This is someone who struggled with mental illness, and through her camera and her willingness to document a painful time in her life, she has created a body of work that has appealed to a large number of people. Successfully, Hospes uses social media to engage with her audience. Frequently posting pictures to a variety of social media sites, many of the images focus on Hospes’s face, but as the series progressed, more of her body was shown, including more bandages and references to physical pain and not just emotional turmoil. Some viewers were quick to ask if she was OK, leading her to eventually clarify that some of the photographs she had posted were taken in the past or that yes, she was fine. What is remarkably evident is that people respond to these images, and by reaching out to her and telling stories of their own experiences, viewers are able to make a connection. Smartly, Hospes recognizes the power of both her story and her images, noting, At first, I made this complete series for myself, to deal with the difficulties and express my feelings. After that, I want to inspire people who are or have been in a psychiatric hospital. I want them to see my pictures and recognize themselves in it. I hope they feel taken seriously, less crazy and less alone.61 Finding oneself in Hospes’s images is not hard, as she obscures specificity for generalities, allowing viewers to project themselves onto her photographs. She takes photographs of herself almost entirely in shadow. In others, she is seen only from behind or only a fragment of her body (her legs, her feet, her hands). Further, as she explores moving in front of the camera, she creates images that are blurry and sometimes hard to read. For example, she is shaking her head and her hair is flying or her body moves across the frame and it becomes hard to decipher where her figure begins and ends. Feeling dejected, abandoned, frustrated, and contained, Hospes documents a huge variety of human emotions. In an empty room, often isolated, Hospes was left to actually deal with herself, perhaps finding relatable moments for her viewers. For much

Figure 4.2 Laura Hospes, Death Feather, 2015 (series: UCP) Source: Courtesy of Laura Hospes, www.laurahospes.com.

124  Self-Harm of her hospitalization, she was allowed only one personal item, which she rotated between her camera, her laptop, and her phone.62 Her photography was her lifeline. Chen Zhe: Dealing With the (Un)Bearable Two projects, The Bearable (2007–2010) and The Bees (2010–2012), are Chen Zhe’s investigation of her and others’ struggle with self-harm. They are also her first major artistic projects. Born in 1989 in Beijing, these two series represent one of the most brutal, yet simultaneously the most well-rounded, projects on self-injury. For years, Chen took pictures of her self-injuries, a practice she had started in high school in 2004. As she describes, Photographing always came after the self-harm. I used to file these photos in a junk folder on my computer. I never thought anybody would ever want to look at them. I only kept them because they looked beautiful to me.63 These pictures would end up becoming the root of The Bearable, about which Einar Engström has pointed out, “Chen compounds the act of self-injury by recording it, augmenting its psychological dimensions for both spectator and self-harmer by offering it to the public sphere.”64 But these pictures were not intended for others to see, and Chen kept them secret for years. She decided to leave China and pursue her education in the United States—­ California, specifically. Running out of time to finish a self-portrait assignment, she turned to her junk folder and printed two blurry self-portraits of herself in a trancelike state. Her professor pushed her, sensing she had something more to say with these images. With the support of her teacher, she started showing more of the photographs. As she says, “I was like a pin on the paper, trying desperately to balance myself. And [the professor] saw it and said it’s okay to be imbalanced too.”65 In 2010, after six years of self-harm and in the middle of her college career, she went back to China, with the intent of pursuing a follow-up project. The resulting series, Bees, involved her seeking out others who also practiced self-harm. She found people online, hoping to figure out what their lives were like and what their motivations were for self-injury. Calling these self-harmers “Bees,” she was interested in the idea that when a bee stings, they actually end up dying. She explains this in depth: I find this inherent paradox of a bee’s activity very alike to what I see in my subjects and myself, too. More often we feel the need to hurt ourselves in order to endure life. I’m also more comfortable using a poetic term to refer to my subjects instead of pointing to them simply as patients of some diseases. There is a flattening effect in that naming that I’ve strived to avoid. Every subject is an individual, not just “one of them”—his or her life cannot be predicted or dictated by a social construction.66 For Chen, connecting to other people who struggled in the same way that she did was hugely beneficial. To earn their trust, she had to show her own scars. Making these ties to other sufferers inspired Chen to stop cutting. After having dinner and spirited conversation with one of her Bees, Chen came home and made a series of cuts on her forearm. Like she was wont to do, she took a picture (one that figured

Self-Harm 125 prominently and importantly in The Bearable). That was the last time that she hurt herself. Describing that moment, she says, “It felt like I had made the crucial shot, a sublime moment, a perfect finale, both aesthetically and personally. I felt very content. One more attempt would make it redundant.”67 This photograph effectively ended The Bearable, her self-harm practices, and thus her documentation of her self-harm. She completed the Bees series two years later, exhibiting the project and publishing a well-received artist’s book that included both series.68 Importantly, not only were the photographs included, but Chen also incorporates snippets of various texts, correspondences with the Bees, and notes. The book serves not only as a record of her and the Bees’ self-harm, but also as a document of Chen’s interactions and engagement with both photography and fellow self-injurers. Chen’s photographs are graphic, bloody, painful, heart-wrenching, horrifying, and unbelievable. Engström has argued that these intense photographs encourage the viewer to become aware of their own humanity in the discomfort of losing at her work. He explains, When we see the wounds on these people’s bodies, we helplessly recall the wounds we ourselves have sustained in life: when we first fell down and scraped our knees, when the nurse first took our blood, when we got our first tattoo . . . (More precisely: we come into contact with the inexplicable “essence” of these memories.).69 Perhaps, yes, viewers can connect with their memories of personal pain after seeing these photographs, but that negates the experience of the people in the images as well as the actual practice of self-harm. These are not pictures of knee scrapes; rather, these are pictures of deliberate self-mutilations. To think of them as anything else marginalizes NSSIs, a common historical practice (grouping them with other disorders, not taking them seriously, etc.) that also serves to continue to avoid a conversation about self-injury. Chen is not trying to skirt the issue; instead, she wants the viewer to confront the idea of self-mutilation. In fact, publishing the letters and notes that she and her Bees have written allows insight into a disease that so few people talk about, let alone acknowledge. Significantly, not only does Chen include their letters, but also she incorporates the handwriting of her Bees, allowing for a feeling of authenticity.70 They express vulnerabilities to Chen, share their deepest secrets, and admit not to just selfharm, but also feelings of inadequacy, suicidal tendencies, and depression. The imagery also matches this range of emotions and experiences. Naturally, there are many explicit pictures including both raw cuts bleeding and the aftermath (scars, bruises, burn marks, bloody tissues and scissors), but she also brings in more contemplative moments in Bees. In one image, a woman sits on a bed, with the camera behind her, so that as she looks in the hand mirror, the viewer sees her face there too. In another, a person stands on a roof, overlooking a gray skyline. A woman at a café reads a book but is interrupted by the camera and stares right at the lens. These three images each have a strikingly bold use of red: the sheets the woman sits on, the hoodie the person wears on the roof, the hat the woman wears while reading. When seeing these photographs in line with cut arms and bloody tissues, the red becomes inescapable. There are also a few images that have primarily cool colors: two lush, green outdoor scenes and a woman playing her violin in a teal room. Yet it is the red in the images that jumps out and ties the project together.

126  Self-Harm The most memorable, and undoubtedly the most disturbing, imagery consists of the bleeding wounds. In one picture, a young person stands in front of curtain, visible from the waist up.71 The long hair blends into the background, and their chest is covered in drying blood. One arm is bent, and in that hand is a razor blade. The other arm has numerous fresh cuts; drips of blood trail down the arm. A bloody handprint is on their face, which shows no emotion. Although this photograph is shown in exhibitions and on the artist’s website, an edited version where only the curtain and the top of the person’s head is visible appears in the book. Here, the figure is blocked with a paper on which the phrase “dead end” is written in Chinese. In print, Chen chooses not to show this extremely bloody and unsettling image, which could easily be a still from a horror movie. Instead, however, this is a dead end, a horrifying scene of intense self-mutilation. The letters and writing associated with these projects can be just as painful as the photographs. Some letters can be seen as cries for help, as this one illustrates: How can I tell them that the reason for my lethargy is neither fatigue nor exhaustion, but a self-hatred so violent that it leaves physical scars on my body?. . . . and that I wish I were dead not because I really want to die, but because I know my existence is a burden to everyone and a plain waste of resources?72 Here, suicide is considered, though the writer is conflicted, alluding to the idea that suicide is not necessarily an option, though it does guide the thinking of the writer. These texts are just one part of a dialogue, but the reader never gets to read Chen’s response. The anonymous Bees spill their hearts out, admitting to her things they have not told anyone else. In poems and letters, they attempt to explain and deal with their own existence. Because of the nature of this project, it is logical that many Bees are trying to understand their own feelings about self-harm and are interested in exploring their own behaviors, as another person expresses, Self-harm. I have had experiences and I think about it occasionally still. But I always have my reservations towards it. Maybe it’s because now my heart is not as pure anymore. When I look back on those days, nothing bad comes to mind. Self-harm is in fact rather uncomplicated.73 For this anonymous writer, self-injuring seems to be in the past, and they are trying to reconcile their feelings regarding it. Another Bee wants to try and explain the interconnectedness of all of these people who have come together via online forums and Chen’s work. They say, “ ‘We’ consistently tried to keep holding on to our determination, striving to lead a ‘normal life’—calm, content, and even happy. I’m not gonna quit. Whenever I think about giving up, I tell myself that I’m a fighter.”74 Perhaps, more than anyone, Chen Zhe was a fighter. The Bearable documents her long history with self-injury, which was not just cutting, but also pulling out hair and eyelashes. Often the pictures in this series are taken of the parts of her body that are injured and bleeding, though there are the few blurry self-portraits that she turned in to her professor in college. Her work varies from color to black and white, though when she does use color, the red is as amplified and dramatic as it in Bees. In none of the works can the viewer see what she looks like; instead, Chen gives only blurry glimpses, individual fragments, bloody tissues, and pulled-out hairs.

Self-Harm 127 Although Chen does not always share specifics of herself or her Bees, what she is able to still do is to create a portrait of self-injurers—through their words, environments, bodies, and injuries. Never before has an artistic project created such an in-depth exploration of this topic. Even the book is stitched and stapled together, recalling the actual process of how deep cuts and injuries might actually be treated. Kristina E. Knipe: Seeking Self-Injurers Like Hospes and Chen before her, Kristina E. Knipe (b. 1990) brings her own experiences with NSSI to her art. Her photography is richly colored and saturated, frequently outdoors or, if inside, filled with homey and country interiors. Incorporating items and moments that create feelings of nostalgia, her imagery is sumptuous and appealing. When she applies this style to her work on self-harm, it can at first be jarring or unsettling. Knipe, however, works to create a reliability to these narratives of self-mutilation, which many people might have a hard time understanding. Her own experiences with self-harm tie her intimately to her project, Artist Seeks Self Injurers (2012–2015). She explains, I was 14 the first time I self-harmed. I took a Swiss Army knife and slit open the top of my forearm in short diagonal cuts. I was searching for something in that moment—exhilaration, consciousness, proof I had the strength to withstand pain.75 Part of her experience with self-harm involved her looking at other people cutting, seeking out these pictures in Internet image databases. Eight years after her first selfmutilations, she posted an ad on Craigslist titled “Artist Seeks Self-Injurers.” Although she had a few contacts she knew of who practiced NSSIs, she used the ad to meet new sufferers. The ad was simple, stating, I am looking for individuals who have engaged in self-harm and are interested in working on a collaborative project. I am an artist working primarily in photography. I started this project two years ago and have worked with 8 individuals so far, only one in New Orleans as I have just moved to the area. If you would like more information and/or are interested in participating please send me an email. I cannot offer monetary compensation. Although she received around 100 responses, she eventually met with around fourteen to fifteen people, which was narrowed down to ten who ended up being involved in the project. After e-mailing back and forth and getting to know each other, Knipe met with a few of the respondents and eventually started taking their pictures.76 Yet Knipe’s photographs are not always the expected pictures of self-harm. She was insistent about not including photographs of self-harm actions and mutilations. Not only did she not want to be around these circumstances with her own history of NSSIs, but also she always was concerned about what images she was putting out into the world, saying, I was very concerned in the beginning about creating images that were triggering— I wanted to avoid this. Another thing I talked to subjects about and researched in

128  Self-Harm general was the culture of self-harm online—how community is created but also how this behavior is encouraged and negative feedback loops are created.77 Instead, she takes pictures of objects and material things, sometimes connected to the personal meeting of Knipe and the respondent, whereas in other instances, the objects are specific. For example, Smashed Birthday Cake (2012) was taken on a walk with Leannet and shows a destroyed cake. Not directly connected to self-harm, the photograph shows the remains of a violent act or a clumsy move in the fallen cake on the sidewalk. Yet no people appear. Instead, the picture serves as a memory of a conversation between two self-mutilators, one of whom was the artist. In two other pictures of Leannet, however, the subject appears physically. Her face is never shown, instead her body is fragmented and left without any clear identifying signifiers. In Leannet’s Arm (2012, Figure 4.3), the young woman’s arm is framed fairly centrally in the photograph, as she holds it up above a field of wildflowers. Various length scars at all angles appear on her arm, though one particularly long cut is emphasized by its fresh stitches. In a later photograph, Leannet’s Arm Healed (2013, Figure 4.4), the viewer is shown more than just an arm, rather Leannet is shown from just below her neck to above her knees. She is in a pink tiled shower, wearing a bright

Figure 4.3 Kristina E. Knipe, Leannet’s Arm, Leannet after she received 17 stitches, Queens, NY, June 2012 Source: Courtesy of the artist.

Self-Harm 129

Figure 4.4 Kristina E. Knipe, Leannet’s Arm Healed, Leannet in her bathroom, 11 months after the stitches, Queens, NY, May 2013 Source: Courtesy of the artist.

yellow top gathered around her breasts. Her injured arm is healed, though the scars are still quite prominent and the most recently stitched up cut appears a purplish-red color that almost matches the color of the shower. A key element in these photographs is that Knipe involves her sitters. Almost a collaboration, her models are shown the prints and are allowed to be involved in the process of making the artworks. Leannet elaborates on her experience, Kristi had shown me the work in progress throughout, as well as the final prints before the show, so it helped make the actual show feel comfortable and natural to be physically a part of instead of scary or nerve-wracking.78 Perhaps, even more significantly, Leannet saw these pictures as a way of dealing with her self-injurying and helping her to move forward. She continues, It was a breakthrough in the healing process . . . This project was the single best therapeutic endeavor to help with my self-injury . . . Kristi took the photo of the

130  Self-Harm last cut and captured the healing process, which I think helped crystallize the real life healing.79 There is at least one more picture of Leannet in the series—Leannet in the Rain (2012– 2013). Here, she is shown from waist up, wearing a bright red sweater and a bold yellow scarf (which recalls her wrap in the shower). Her dark hair contrasts with the lightness of the scarf, and half of her face is in shadow. Although it is called Leannet in the Rain, she is actually in an undecorated white room, next to a window that is just slightly open. Through it, a rainy, overcast day is visible. Is this Leannet before selfharm? After the storm? Knipe leaves it ambiguous, allowing the viewer to make up their own mind but also showing just a bit more about Leannet. Knipe herself chooses not to appear in the works, afraid that her own history with self-harm might read as distracting not only from the larger project, but also from her own recovery. Although the viewer might not see her, they find her presence throughout in the series. These stories might be those of other people, but their experiences parallel her experiences, as she elaborates, In the process of connecting with those that I met and photographing I am in the images. It was always about making connections with others, creating my own sort of community who I could relate to. . . . There is also overlap in the subjects’ stories that I met—some images in my mind refer to more than one person’s story. My experiences are in there as well.80 Knipe’s presences and experiences are felt and understood without being expressly seen. In another revealing photograph, Erick and His Archive (2014), Erick is shown lying on the ground, in front of his bed. Between him and the camera is a mass of photographic prints. Clearly visible to the viewer, these are pictures of flesh. Not pornographic, this is, rather, Erick’s collection of photographs of bodies that have been mutilated. The bright red splashes of blood are visible and distinct, even though these photographs are just a small part of Knipe’s larger image. No scars or marks are visible on Erick himself, but the teacup in front of him has two little stubs where the handle should be attached—an obvious metaphor for self-injury. This smart use of objects, like the teacup and the cake, serves to make the entire series more palpable for the viewer. In Raggedy Ann (2012), the classic doll is lying on a piece of floral furniture. Her dress is pulled up, revealing a red printed heart with the phrase “I love you.” Although not carved and not bleeding, in the context of Knipe’s series, it is impossible to not compare it to cutting. In another, a green box is perched on a windowsill with the handwritten description of “Courtney’s special things” upon it. But the title transforms an image that looks like a special childhood memory box and, in fact, makes it into something much more sinister. Courtney’s Razors (2012) does not include fun little trinkets, but rather it focuses on the toolbox that holds instruments used in self-harming. Unlike Chen, Knipe had no interest of showing the act of cutting. Instead, the photographs show everything but. Her reasons are clear, explaining, I knew that I would never photograph someone bleeding. The project spiraled out of that act but would never depict it. Instead it became about the process of

Self-Harm 131 recounting—of trying to understand what can be intensely hard to speak about— and about looking.81 In many ways, Knipe engages with the tools of the trade—showing the inspirational photographs, the place where the blades are hidden, the healing wounds, and life’s little frustrations. Artist Seeks Self-Injurers is filled with a variety of photographs that address much of the variety of conditions surrounding self-harm. On one hand, these photographs can be seen as providing awareness, but on the other hand, they also create an engagement with, and perhaps even an empathy for, the people in the images. Knipe sees an important connection between self-harm, photography, and memory. Although cutting might be used as an escape from a painful moment or situation, it can also create a scar and a permanent record of that experience. She continues, “This is another parallel between photographs and self-harm, in so far as how they both relate to memory, and can override memory, and jolt memories up out of your consciousness.”82 For each of these artists—Hospes, Chen, and Knipe—who are struggling to heal and process their own experiences with self-harm, photographs offer a way to confront and handle the memories. With documentation, the artists can see their experience and confront the reality of their situations, with the goal to heal and end their NSSIs. Although these photographs are their artwork, which presumably involves exhibitions and financial gain, they are simultaneously intimately personal and work toward each artist’s desire to end their self-harm practices.

Self-Harm as Art/Art as Self-Harm To fairly address self-harm in the art world, artists such as Hospes, Chen, and Knipe surround their work with context. NSSIs cannot be addressed abstractly; rather, the viewer has to understand how and why the cuts are made. Yet there is an important connection between marring one’s flesh and visual documentation. After all, much of self-harm involves a visual practice; in the act of injuring oneself, a person could bleed, bruise, or alter some part of their body in some manner. Their actions literally can leave a mark. For many, that is part of the experience, to see their control manifested on the flesh, and this could easily be connected to the way Hospes, Chen, and Knipe have documented their own injuries. In his analysis of the visual imagery of self-injurers, Hans T. Sternudd has astutely summarized many of the common characteristics of self-harm pictures that are posted online: Dominating the centre of the photographs, as a visual focal/nodal point, was a cut-up, bleeding body part, usually with a series of parallel cuts signifying control and order. Blood’s intriguing effect during the act was also notable in the photographs. Arms were held in certain positions so that the blood could run along them in red streams, or color papers or the water in basins and tubs.83 These descriptions easily apply to the work of the three artists discussed in depth, and in fact, in each artist’s series, there is a significant image that meets his description— there is an arm that is centralized in the frame, with repeated cuts, and fresh blood. For Chen, in particular, this is the photograph that marks the end of The Bearable and

132  Self-Harm the last time she practiced self-harm. Recognizing that some of the cutters thought this kind of imagery as desirable and beautiful, Sternudd acknowledges that the process of cutting and watching the cut itself can be a way to evoke feeling and to reach a calmer state, noting, “Blood makes the inner experience visible (and thereby compressible) or it can be a vehicle that transports the inner experience out of the body.”84 In fact, both Chen and Knipe mentioned saving and repeatedly looking at self-injury photography online. These two artists mirror many other self-injurers, including those they photographed. Sharing imagery online and with other people is complicated, as it can both be a cry for help and an attempt at healing or a way to engage in the practice, share ideas, and perpetuate self-injury. Speaking about Flickr, though this could easily apply to other, more recent sites online, Yukari Seko postulates, In expressing themselves via visual and verbal channels, the uploaders formulate and share their own realities and identity narratives against stigmatizing discourses. . . . For these Flickrists, to take a photograph of self-inflicted wounds is to acknowledge their own vulnerability and “healability,” so as to shift their injured body from the domain of mental illness to the realm of advocacy and recovery. Uploading wounds on Flickr is, in this light, appears to be an ambivalent practice that renders the experience of self-expression as a paradoxical mix of personal catharsis and social performance.85 Online, under ambiguous screen names, people can post anonymously and continue to keep their behaviors secret. So, similar to eating disorder communities, these groups of people can create a camaraderie,86 though the visual imagery and photographic documentation distinguishes self-injury from eating disorders community. These images are incredibly specific and also very limited in their scope. Further, they are arguably some of the most intense imagery to examine, so although eating disorder communities have gained notoriety and press attention, little discussion exists of self-injury websites in mainstream media. As Chen, Hospes, and Knipe have all dealt with their own self-harm practices in a photographic manner, Chen and Knipe have worked with others. It begs the question, though, of whether these two artists are exploiting others with NSSIs. Chen and Knipe very carefully consult, if not collaborate with, their models. Discussion, correspondence, and even sharing ideas and pseudo-collaborating are parts of their process. Anonymity is often preserved, though sometimes faces are shared and first names are given. Both artists attempt to humanize their subjects while keeping a respectable amount of distance. The only way to discuss and engage with the ideas of NSSIs is to tell the stories and to share the narratives. And despite their efforts to avoid any kind of harm or exploitation, because of the deeply personal stories and actions by the subjects, these artists are willing to engage in a modicum of exploitive behavior if necessary to fully address the complicated nature of self-mutilation. Artists since the 1970s have been addressing ideas of self-harm in a variety of types of mediums, as I have explored. But it is not until the past ten years that artists such as Chen, Hospes, Knipe, and even Abril have successfully created an art that brings this tough subject to light. By moving it out of the shadows, this secretive practice can begin to be explored with the hopes that more people will seek help. In fact, as I have researched these artists and explored this topic, many people have come up to confide in me and share their stories. Often feeling isolated and alone, self-injurers

Self-Harm 133 hurt themselves in secret, and therefore are anxious to find others and a community to share their histories. Self-harm is far more prevalent than most anyone is aware of, and it is time that more people start talking about it.

Notes 1 She had ten knives and went through the entire set twice. 2 Kathy O’Dell, Contract With the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1998), 75. Original emphasis. 3 Germaine Greer, “Artists’ Self-Mutilation Is Dull,” The Guardian, February 10, 2008, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2008/feb/11/artistsselfmutilationisdull. 4 John Briere and Eliana Gil, “Self-Mutilation in Clinical and General Population Samples: Prevalence, Correlates, and Functions,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 68 (1998): 609–20; and Elizabeth Lloyd Richardson, Nicholas Perrine, Lisa Dierker, and Mary L. Kelley, “Characteristics and Functions of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in a Community Sample of Adolescents,” Psychology Medicine 37, no. 8 (August 2007): 1183–92. 5 Armando Favazza, Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, 3rd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 197. 6 Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 1–194. 7 Steven Levenkron, Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998), 105. 8 Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 197. 9 This documentary features numerous women who describe their experiences and includes interviews with doctors and experts. “Self Inflicted,” Monica Zinn, March 13, 2015, vimeo. com, https://vimeo.com/122132677. 10 Armando Favazza and Karen Conterio, “Female Habitual Self-Mutilators,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 79, no. 3 (March 1989): 283–9. Building upon Favazza’s work, Dusty Miller and Marilee Strong fill their psychological studies and evaluations with narratives of young women sufferers, see Dusty Miller, Women Who Hurt Themselves: A Book of Hope and Understanding (New York: Basic Books, 1994); and Marilee Strong, A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain (London: Virago Press, 2000). 11 These studies are discussed in Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 217. 12 Digby Tantum and Jane Whittaker, “Personality Disorder and Self-Wounding,” The British Journal of Psychiatry 161 (1992): 451–64. 13 Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 244. 14 Strong, A Bright Red Scream, xviii. 15 Because of their physical conditions, I argue that the important artists Ron Athey and Bob Flanagan do not fit into this conversation regarding mental illness and self-harm. Athey and Flanagan incorporate painful acts in their works addressing their incurable diseases, HIV and cystic fibrosis respectively. For more information on these artists, see O’Dell, Contract with the Skin, 75–84; Dominic Johnson, ed., Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (Bristol, UK: Intellect Live, 2013); Andrea Juno and V. Vale, eds., Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist (New York: Juno Books, 2000). For a particularly strong analysis of their works, see Petra Kuppers, The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performance and Contemporary Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 78–94 and 111–13. 16 Vito Acconci, Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body 1969–1973 (New York: Charta, 2006), 178–9. 17 Ulrike Rosenbach, Ulrike Rosenbach: Video and Performance Art (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1983); Johannes Birringer, “Video Art/Performance: A Border Theory,” Performing Arts Journal 13, no. 3 (September 1991): 54–84. 18 This repetitious beating of her leg mirrors the later video Barbed Hula (2000) by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau (b. 1969). In the 2-minute video, which is focused on the artist’s nude body from torso to knees, Landau uses a hula hoop made of barbed wire. As the film progresses, her stomach is repeatedly cut and becomes redder with blood. This work undoubtedly engages the idea of self-harm yet, like most of Landau’s work, is tied to politics and location, as she says, “This is a personal and senso-political act concerned with invisible,

134  Self-Harm sub-skin borders, surrounding the body actively and endlessly. All my work relates, in one way or another, to a loss of orientation.” Sigalit Landau, “Barbed Hula,” Sigalit Landau, www.sigalitlandau.com/barbedhula. Her work blends artistic exercises by engaging with Middle Eastern politics, and while pain and harm inevitably play a role in Barbed Hula, it is not the focus of this piece or her larger career. For more, see Sigalit Landau, One Man’s Floor Is Another Man’s Feelings (Paris: Kamel Mennour Les Presses du Réel, 2011). 19 Brenda Lee, “I’m Sorry,” by Dub Allbritten and Ronnie Self, 1960, Decca Records. 20 Ulrike Rosenbach, Ulrike Rosenbach, www.ulrike-rosenbach.de; Noemi Smolik, “Review: Ulrike Rosenbach,” Frieze, June 14, 2017, https://frieze.com/article/ulrike-rosenbach? language=de. 21 Catherine Russell, “The Lisa Steele Tapes,” in North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980, eds. William Beard and Jerry White (Edmonton, Canada: The University of Alberta Press, 2002), 431. 22 For more on their partnership, see Paul Wong, ed., 21st Century Art of Steele + Tomczak: The Long Time (Vancouver: On Main and VIVO, 2012). 23 In the 1980s, Maughan pursued her interests in indie punk rock and has only recently considered returning to video making after a resurgence of interest in this early work. For more, see Fatima Helberg, “Artists at Work: Cynthia Maughan,” Afterall, March 20, 2013, www. afterall.org/online/artists-at-work-cynthia-maughan#.WV0kA8aZMxE. 24 Glenn Phillips, ed., California Video Artists and Histories (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 164. 25 Laura Cottingham, Seeing Through the Seventies: Essays on Feminism and Art (London: Routledge, 2002), 170. 26 Phillips, California Video Artists, 164. 27 In the original film that was made, Smith did cut her finger and drops of blood appeared. Upon hearing about unsettling reactions that the organizer of the videos who had commissioned the project had experienced, Smith insisted upon remaking the film. Originally black and white, the new version, which is also the one that is exhibited, is in color. Phillips, California Video Artists, 59. 28 Sanja Ivekovic´ et al., Sanja Ivekovic´: Selected Works (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2008), 91. 29 Slicing up the bodies of models while occasionally alluding to violent acts on herself, Ivekovic´ also works in video, like her project Personal Cuts (1982). Yet, in this instance, and arguably looming over all of her work, are politics often connected to the region of Yugoslavia. Her work mirrors an important piece by Milica Tomic´ called I Am Milica Tomic´ (1998–1999). In this piece, Tomic´ proclaims her name and nationality in over thirty languages (matching the nationality to the language spoken). Each time she says a different identity, a bloody scratch appears on her body. Tomic´, who is Serbian, is drawing attention to the political arrest in her own country, much as Ivekovic´ is confronting the violence and army politics throughout her entire body of work. These pieces are certainly significant but do not fit into the scope of this project. For more on these works, see: Roxana Marcoci, Sanja Ivekovic´: Sweet Violence (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011); Sanja Ivekovic´, Public Cuts (Ljubljana: Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., 2006); Branimir Stojanovic´, The Work of Art in the State of Exile (Belgrade: Center for Contemporary Art, 2003). 30 Susanne Längle, “The Many Faces of Kiki K.,” in Kiki Kogelnik: Retrospective, ed. HansPeter Wipplinger (Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2013), 30. 31 See the essays in, for example, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, ed., Kiki Kogelnik: Retrospective (Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2013); Marcoci, Sanja Ivekovic´; and Nataša Ilic´ and Kathrin Rhomberg, Sanja Ivekovic´: Selected Works (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2008). 32 Hunter Davies, “Interview: This Is Jenny and This Is Her Plan,” Independent, March 1, 1994, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview-this-is-jenny-and-this-is-her-plan-menpaint-female-beauty-in-stereotypes-jenny-saville-1426296.html. 33 Jennifer Blessing et al., Catherine Opie: American Photographer (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008), 72. 34 Avgi Saketopoulou, “Catherine Opie: American Photographer, American Pervert,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 14, no. 3 (2013): 246.

Self-Harm 135 35 Juliette Melia, “Creating a New Iconicity: An Interview With Catherine Opie,” Transatlantica 1 (2013), https://transatlantica.revues.org/6430. 36 Blessing et al., Catherine Opie, 73. For more information on Jesse Helms’s virulent behavior and ultimately failed censorship attempts, see Richard Meyer, “The Jesse Helms Theory of Art,” October 104 (Spring 2003): 131–48. 37 Regarding the titles of her work, I am using the English translations of her French titles as found in Blandine Chavanne, Gina Pane (Dijon, France: Les Presses du Réel, 2011). At the time, this was the largest retrospective of her work and the first in France, and the museum worked closely with her estate and the FRAC des Pays de la Loire, who have 149 works of hers on permanent loan. 38 “Action” is Pane’s preferred term for her performances. 39 Beginning with student strikes but later spreading to workers, Paris was repeatedly occupied by protesters throughout May 1968. Violence erupted on May 10th, pitting the police against students. There is debate about what exactly spurred the events, but the occupation of the Sorbonne, a spirit of anti-authoritarianism, and frustrations with capitalism certainly were at the forefront. Eventually, President Charles de Gaulle worked toward calming his citizens and arranging for new elections to be held. Although the protests did not seem to accomplish much long term, the legacy of the enthusiastic resistors persists. 40 This is thoughtfully addressed in depth in Frédérique Baumgartner, “Reviving the Collective Body: Gina Pane’s ‘Escalade Non Anesthésiée,’ ” Oxford Art Journal 34, no. 2 (2011): 247–63. 41 Jennifer Blessing, “Gina Pane’s Witnesses,” Performance Research 7, no. 4 (2002): 15. 42 Quoted in Chavanne, Gina Pane, 33. It is important to note that all of Pane’s actions were accompanied by what she called constats, which functioned as the documentation/remains of the performance. Aware of the temporality of performance, Pane collaborated with a photographer and often a videographer, so that her work was extensively documented. This is discussed in depth in Blessing, “Gina Pane’s Witnesses.” 43 Kuppers, The Scar of Visibility, 76. 44 This piece has also been variously credited as Lips of Thomas. I am using the format of the title that Marina Abramovic´ herself uses in her autobiography, see Marina Abramovic´, Walk Through Walls (New York: Crown Archetype, 2016), 74–5. 45 James Westcott, When Marina Abramovic´ Dies: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 82. 46 Described in detail in Marina Abramovic´, 7 Easy Pieces (Milan: Charta, 2007), 33. 47 The audience members who saved her were actually led by performance artist VALIE EXPORT. Along with the gallery owners, they arranged for her to go to the hospital, where she had to get stitches in her finger from injuring it when breaking her wine glass (her stomach, on the other hand, was fine). Abramovic´, Walk Through Walls, 74–5. 48 Keith Gallasch, “National Review of Live Art: Blood Lines,” Real Time 52 (December– January 2002): 32. 49 Quoted in Gallasch, “National Review of Live Art.” 50 O’Reilly has moved away from this type of work to focus on a number of issues including but not limited to dance, technology, and the relationship between science and art. Interested in pushing the human body to its limits, she has explored the understandings and composition of DNA, as well as the bond between humans and animals, to name just a few pieces. For more information, see Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves, eds., Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies) (Bristol, UK: Intellect Live, 2017). 51 Rebecca Stevenson, “Sculpture Is the Body: A Journey Through the Work of Kira O’Reilly,” in Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies), eds. Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves (London: Live Art Development Agency and Bristol, UK: Intellect Live, 2018), 196. 52 In a powerful essay, Shannon Bell argues that much of O’Reilly’s work can be seen as dealing with anxiety, both in the idea that is about anxiety but also produces anxiety in the viewer. Although perhaps this may be true of her larger career, I am not convinced the works mentioned here present their content as being about anxiety itself. However, these works absolutely cause anxiety and discomfort in the viewer, of which she includes many references and quotes. This is perhaps most evident in Untitled Actions for Bomb Shelter Kuopio (2003), where the viewer is given the choice of cutting the artist directly. Given

136  Self-Harm control, the viewer must decide how they want to act and behave in a tense situation. For more information, See Shannon Bell, “Kira O’Reilly: Techné of Anxiety,” in Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies), 114–35. 53 Petra Kuppers, Disability and Contemporary Performance (New York: Routledge, 2003), 20. 54 Quoted in Jo Spence, Putting Myself in the Picture (Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1988), 173. 55 Both A Bad Day and Thinspiration Fanzine are discussed in depth in the Eating Disorders chapter of this book. 56 Levenkron, Cutting, 72–9. 57 Strong, A Bright Red Scream, 117. 58 Laura Hospes, UCP (Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Lecturis, 2016). 59 Laura Hospes, “Artist Statement,” Lens Culture, 2015, www.lensculture.com/articles/ laura-hospes-ucp-umcg. 60 Alexander Strecker and Laura Hospes, “UCP-UMCG,” Lensculture, 2015, www.lenscul ture.com/articles/laura-hospes-ucp-umcg. 61 Sarah Schuster, “Laura Hospes Documents Her Stay at a Psychiatric Hospital With Powerful Self-Portraits,” The Mighty, August 19, 2015, https://themighty.com/2015/08/ laura-hospes-shares-photos-from-dutch-psychiatric-hospital/. 62 Schuster, “Laura Hospes Documents Her Stay.” 63 Nora Utterlinden, “Finding Resonance: An Interview With Chen Zhe,” GUP Magazine, March 25, 2017, www.gupmagazine.com/articles/finding-resonance-an-interview-withchen-zhe. 64 Einar Engström, “Chen Zhe: Punctuated by a Gaze,” Leap, May 10, 2017, www.leapleap leap.com/2013/05/chen-zhe-punctured-by-a-gaze/. 65 Utterlinden, “Finding Resonance.” 66 Utterlinden, “Finding Resonance.” 67 Utterlinden, “Finding Resonance.” 68 Chen Zhe, Bees & The Bearable (Ningbo, China: Jiazazhi Press, 2016). This book has an important and understudied comparison in the Ibasyo Book Journey Project (begun 2003), a photographic endeavor by the Japanese artist Kosuke Okahara (b. 1980). Documenting the lives of six young Japanese women, he wanted to share their stories, focusing, in particular, on their struggles with self-harm. He further explains, “The first aim was to tell the story of these girls. I hope that their stories can serve as a window into the world of those who suffer from self-harm. Also all of the girls I photographed told me that they want to see themselves through someone else’s eyes. It can help them reevaluate themselves.” Unable to get his book published, he decided to self-publish six copies and mail them around the world, leaving half of each book blank so that messages could be shared. Okahara is an outsider to the group and has mentioned his own feelings of conflict about taking advantage of the young women’s struggle. However, he sees the necessity of sharing the book and creating awareness regarding self-harm as outweighing those drawbacks. Although it has been seen across the world, the project itself has had a more limited reach than others discussed in this chapter. However, this looks to change with the publication of the entire project, including responses from viewers of the book, intended to be released by Kosakusha Publishing House by the end of 2017. For more information, including the previous quote, see Kosuke Okahara, “About Ibasyo Book Journey Project,” Ibasyo Book Journey Project, 2017, http://ibasyobook.com/en/. 69 Engström, “Chen Zhe.” 70 The main part of the book, including the images, are all in Chinese. However, English translations of all the text is included at the end the book. 71 There is nothing in the photograph that allows gender to be distinguished. 72 “Anonymous letter #21,” as quoted in the translated text at the end of Chen Zhe, Bees & The Bearable. 73 “Anonymous letter #18,” as quoted in the translated text at the end of Chen Zhe, Bees & The Bearable. 74 “Anonymous letter #10,” as quoted in the translated text at the end of Chen Zhe, Bees & The Bearable. 75 Jenna Garrett, “Quiet, Haunting Images of Those Who Struggle with Self-Harm,” Feature Shoot, February 4, 2014, www.featureshoot.com/2014/02/kristina-knipe/.

Self-Harm 137 76 Kristina E. Knipe, e-mail message to author, June 14, 2017. Originally, the ad ran with the title “Photographer Seeks Self-Injurers,” though she later changed it to “artist” because she wanted to emphasize that there would be collaboration, and that the term “artist” might be clearer to the public. 77 Knipe, e-mail message to author. 78 Charlie Tatum, “Eyes On: Kristina E. Knipe,” Pelican Bomb, May 4, 2015, http://pelican bomb.com/art-review/2015/eyes-on-kristina-e-knipe. 79 Tatum, “Eyes On: Kristina E. Knipe.” 80 Knipe, e-mail message to author. 81 Tatum, “Eyes On: Kristina E. Knipe.” 82 Knipe, e-mail message to author. 83 Hans T. Sternudd, “ ‘I Like to See Blood’: Visuality and Self-Cutting,” Visual Studies 29, no. 1 (January 2014): 26. 84 Sternudd, “ ‘I Like to See Blood,’ ” 26. 85 Yukari Seko, “Picturesque Wounds: A Multimodal Analysis of Self-Injury Photographs on Flickr,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 14, no. 2 (May 2013), www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1935/3546#g6. 86 For more information, see Jamie M. Duggan et al., “An Examination of the Scope and Nature of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Online Activities: Implications for School Mental Health Professionals,” School Mental Health 4 (2012): 56–67; Kate Daine, “The Power of the Web: A Systematic Review of Studies of the Influence of the Internet on Self-Harm and Suicide in Young People,” PloS One 8, no. 10 (2013), http://journals.plos.org/plosone/ article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077555.

5 Fatness1

In 1984, Debbie Notkin and Laurie Toby Edison organized a series of panels entitled “Fat, Feminism and Fandom” at science fiction conventions across the United States.2 Filled with discussions about fat oppression and fat liberation, these sessions were immensely popular. Outside of their collaboration on the sessions, the two began to work together. A thin woman who weighed about 120 pounds, Edison made jewelry based on the human figure.3 Notkin, a fat woman, modeled for Edison, who ultimately found the bronze pieces based on Notkin too expensive to make. Edison also felt that she was unable to adequately convey a clear sense of acceptance concerning body size in jewelry, which led her to pursue photography and its documentary capabilities with Notkin as her first model. The photographs were taken at Notkin’s house, and eventually, one of these photographs, Debbie Notkin (1994, Figure 5.1), would grace the cover of Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, a 1994 book of photographs of women from diverse backgrounds. In Debbie Notkin, Notkin lies on her side in a corner of her couch, with the sunlight streaming through the blinds creating stripes over her face and body. The photograph is taken from above, so we see the curve of her hip, the shape of her breast, and even the dimples of her flesh. This photograph became a centerpiece of the slide shows that the two women presented throughout the country to raise money to publish the book. These lectures helped them publicize their work while they also continued to advocate for the inclusion of respectful images of fat women in the media and the art world. In their work, Edison and Notkin wanted to show all types of women, not just fat women but also women who were young, old, black, white. Their subjects ranged in age from twenty-two to fifty-six, and over 40% were women of color. Additionally, they included women with different medical histories, such as a woman in a wheelchair, a diabetic, and a woman who had undergone a mastectomy.4 As Notkin explained, “The most important thing I learned was the one that should have been most obvious: the label ‘fat woman’ tells you only two of the hundreds of things you need to know about a person to understand her.”5 One of Women En Large’s main purposes was to give women a space to view the myriad natural types of women beyond the thin, white women most often shown by the mainstream media. Notkin elaborates, Being fat is important enough to give fat women in this culture a set of shared experiences, especially shared pain. Being fat is a gestalt of experiences that start before you are five and never end till the day you die . . . But the fat woman herself is rarely shown at all, and virtually never shown as beautiful, or real.6

Fatness 139

Figure 5.1 Laurie Toby Edison, Debbie Notkin from Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, 1994 Source: © Laurie Toby Edison, 1994.

Women En Large was one of the first endeavors that sought to display woman in a dignified manner that treated the fat body as a form to be celebrated. However, the impact of the book was limited. As artist Tee Corinne explained, Because this is content-driven work it functions outside of the codifications and language of academic theories. The photographs are closer to documentary practice than to traditional art historical discourse. . . . Women En Large expands the visual dialogue, the repertoire or catalog of stored images upon which aesthetic understanding rests. So Notkin and Edison opened the door for larger bodies to function as a legitimate subject and, as Corinne said, to “establish a right to a territory.”7 In terms of having

140  Fatness a long artistic life in the museum or gallery world, Women En Large failed to gain traction. Although they might not have been familiar with Edison and Notkin’s book, photographers Laura Aguilar, Ariane Lopez-Huici, Leonard Nimoy, and Haley MorrisCafiero have all undertaken artistic depictions of fat women. Each of these artists seeks to insert imagery of fat women into the contemporary art world. By presenting their work in galleries and museums, outlets with greater status than informal slide shows or a self-published book, these artists gained a larger audience for their photographs, creating a broader impact. Using recognizable allusions to artistic traditions, these photographers sought to align their work with historical precedents. More importantly, these artists’ works—which depict a range of fat people, including members of lesbian Latina groups, burlesque entertainers, disabled citizens, and selfportraits, for instance—are primarily about showing fat female bodies with respect and dignity, and so often ended up embracing acceptance. But the initiatives of Aguilar, Lopez-Huici, Nimoy, and Morris-Cafiero would not have been possible without the work of fat activists such as Edison and Notkin, who tirelessly advocated for the inclusion of fat women in mainstream and art world imagery. These activists helped voice the frustrations of many fat women who felt that they were erased from the visual field of society. When fat women appear in commercial media, they are commonly described in language with negative connotations, such as “chubby,” “porky,” “rotund,” “plump,” “heavy,” “flabby,” “chunky,” or “corpulent.” Making insightful commentary about word choice, Taffy Brodesser-Akner elaborates, Fat people went from being called fat (which is mean) to being called overweight (a polite-seeming euphemism that either accidentally or not accidentally implies that there is a standard weight) to being called zaftig/chubby/pleasingly plump (just don’t) to curvy (which seems to imbue size with a sexuality and optimism where it should just be sexually and emotionally neutral) and back to fat (because it’s only your judgment of fat people that made it a bad word in the first place, and maybe being fat isn’t as bad as we’ve been made to believe).8 Even the more scientific terms, “overweight” and “obese,” no longer seem appropriate. Overweight implies that there exists a normal, correct weight, and therefore is rather questionable.9 Obesity, a diagnostic term used by doctors and health professionals, suggests a disease, which is not always applicable to body size. The definitions of these words are constantly changing, as the determining guidelines for the obese and morbidly obese are in flux.10 To make matters worse, Americans are continually being threatened with an “obesity epidemic.” At the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference on Obesity in 1985, obesity was defined as a “killer disease.”11 If the definition of obesity is ever changing, how can there be an epidemic? A classification of obesity predicated on weight alone also precludes any space for fat people who are comparatively fit and healthy. Indeed, overweight and obese are inadequate terms to describe people and often result in discriminatory practices. Nonetheless, from 1960 to 1980, 25% of adults in the US were defined as “obese,” using the criterion that they were 20% over their normatively desirable weight. Since 1980, that number has grown to include one-third of American adults.12 Today,

Fatness 141 employers can use obesity as a determining factor in denying insurance to employees.13 Activist Marilyn Wann elaborated on the problem of using the marker of “obesity” to determine care: Weight is an inaccurate basis for predicting individual health or longevity, much less someone’s eating or exercise habits. For example, the majority of people categorized as “obese”—seven out of eight—are not diabetic. . . . “Health” can be used to police body conformity and can be code for weight-related judgments that are socially, not scientifically, driven. “Health” can also cover a whole range of beliefs and behaviors (eating disorders, moralizing about food or fitness, alienation from one’s own body) that reinforce social control around weight and can be very damaging to well-being. Like the F-word, health is a term that calls for a conscious project of reclamation.14 Fat activists have had to not only reclaim terminology by reinstating “fat” as the appropriate descriptor, but also explain the ways the healthcare system and society have neglected the bodies of those who are fat. Studies have shown that doctors often have a pro-thin and anti-fat basis; doctors regularly jump to the conclusion that that their fat patients are lazy, stupid, or worthless instead of addressing other issues or concerns that might be causing health problems.15 As more and more fat people are treated as stereotypes and not as people, activists find it necessary to speak out and draw attention to these problematic actions. The fat activism of the authors of Women En Large and Marilyn Wann was preceded in prior decades by the work of two important groups.16 The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) was founded in 1969 to help educate and advocate on behalf of people of all sizes. The group’s mission is “to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for selfempowerment though public education, advocacy, and support.”17 The group was founded by William Fabrey, who was angry about the size discrimination suffered by his wife, Joyce: When I began NAAFA, all the fat people I knew had bought into the prevailing myth that said they were inferior because of the size of their bodies. It took me—a thin man, someone not in their oppressed group—to have enough self-confidence to fight for size acceptance.18 He cofounded NAAFA with Llewellyn Louderback, the author of Fat Power (1970)— an early work of activism that articulated the group’s views about the way society is prejudiced against fat people.19 Positioning themselves as civil rights activists and following on the heels of the Black Power and early feminist movements, NAAFA intended to rid the word “fat” of its negative connotations by arguing “that fatness is a form of body diversity that should be respected, much like diversity based on skin color or sexual preference.”20 While NAAFA was a strong presence in fat activism in the 1970s, another, more radical, group, the Fat Underground, likewise forged a political presence, more directly connected to feminism. Sara Golda Bracha Fishman and Judy Freespirit founded this new group in 1973.21 The women were working as therapists at the Radical Feminist Therapy Collective in Los Angeles, a group that “attempt[ed] to find political

142  Fatness connections to ‘personal’ problems in order to empower individuals to seek collective change.”22 Moved by Louderbeck’s Fat Power, the two women reached out to NAAFA to start a local chapter in Los Angeles. In 1998, Fishman explained the group’s early philosophies: From the start, our small NAAFA chapter took a confrontational stance with regard to the health professions. We accused them—doctors, psychologists, and public health officials—of concealing and distorting the facts about fat that were contained in their own professional research journals. In doing so, they betrayed us and played into the hands of the multibillion-dollar weight-loss industry, which exploits fear of fat and contempt toward fat people as a means to make more money.23 This aggressive stance proved to be unwelcome at NAAFA, which sent a letter asking the Los Angeles chapter to tone down their behavior. The letter caused the women to break off and form the Fat Underground, a group founded by and for fat people. The group was extremely active throughout the late 1970s, publishing papers on fat oppression and discrimination while continuing to challenge the health profession’s and weight loss industry’s attitudes toward fat people. While the Fat Underground’s struggle to maintain its membership base caused them to disband in the 1980s, the group inspired the formation of other groups that similarly addressed fat discrimination. One of the first texts published on fat studies was Shadow on a Tightrope (1983), an important anthology that gathered together essays by early activists, interviews with important leaders, and documents that had helped shape the movement’s development, such as the “Fat Liberation Manifesto” of 1973. Written by Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran, this short text elaborates on the way that fat bodies are frequently attacked, mistreated, and manipulated. The authors explained, “We are angry at mistreatment by commercial and sexist interests. These have exploited our bodies as objects of ridicule, thereby creating an immensely profitable market selling the false promise of avoidance of, or relief from, that ridicule.” The way to move beyond these prejudices, they asserted, is to “reclaim power over our bodies and our lives.”24 In 1994, Women En Large visually expressed ideas put forth earlier by NAAFA and by the Fat Underground. One activist idea that Notkin and Edison wanted to illustrate through their photographs and essays was that being fat could be a genetic trait, rather than a personal failing, often explained as laziness, aversion to exercise, or overeating.25 The “obesity gene” was discovered in mice in 1994, leading to reports that soon a genetically engineered solution would be available to eliminate fatness. The fact that the gene was not found in humans and occurred only in a fraction of obese mice was generally overlooked by the press.26 For her part, Notkin wanted to remove the stigma of being fat, and the idea that being fat was beyond a person’s control could obviously help to remove personal blame and imply that fat people were fundamentally the same as anyone else. To that end, the selection of photographs in Edison and Notkin’s book is extremely strategic. Besides the variety of nude women shown, the photographs also display a range of activities. Edison shows most of the women in their homes in a combination of daily activities and poses—exercising, dancing, playing instruments, stretching, and relaxing on their furniture—but never eating, as she did not want the images to

Fatness 143 reinforce stereotypes of fat people gorging on food. Additionally, most of the women are shown moving, contradicting the stereotype that fat people are lazy. The photographs are complemented by short essays written by each model, which give each woman a voice and an opinion. By using the models’ own words, Notkin and Edison helped to challenge perceptions about the attitudes and health of fat people. Each woman is not only described through a brief biography, but also given a forum to express her opinions. For example, regarding an image of herself that shows her nude body with only one breast, Rhylorien n’a Rose says, I understood that beyond the fat, beyond the disability, beyond the missing body parts, what really matters was how I felt about who I am. I don’t need approval from anyone except myself. I am not what others think of me.27 By giving a voice and individuality to their models, Notkin and Edison perform similar work to that of the Fat Underground. Both groups showed that fat people are more than just their bodies while simultaneously debunking stereotypes. As cultural historian Le’a Kent explained, Notkin sees medicalizing discourses as the major enemy of fat subjectivity, but also relies on them, marshaling scientific citations to debunk the assertion that fat people are inherently unhealthy. What is inherently unhealthy, she argues, is yo-yo dieting and the inhumane stresses that a prejudiced world inflicts on fat people.28 Notkin and Edison positioned their text and photographs as a way to help fat women become newly visible in a positive light. In addition, they also pushed fat women to make themselves visible and to accept themselves more. For historian Kathleen LeBesco, depicting fatness is then about creating a sense of belonging: “[Notkin’s] text is intended less to radically revamp society’s perception of fat bodies than to aid fat women in feeling better about themselves.”29 This attempt to change perception is evident in the last photograph included in the book. In one of the rare images taken outdoors, five women of various races are perched upon the side of a rocky bluff. Three women sit in dissimilar poses and one leans against a rock, looking at the camera. The fifth woman, standing at the left, looks toward the group. Each woman’s head is held high, as they confidently own their bodies. The women look relaxed and at ease; the photograph attempts to create an air of informality. Most of the images in the book feature women individually or in pairs and, as this photograph makes clear, there is an important sense of community to be found here. Notkin and Edison have conjured a place where no one is judged or marginalized, where fat women can be together celebrating their bodies. Women En Large arose in a distinctly North American context and, in fact, NAAFA and the Fat Underground are also uniquely American. The divide between fat and thin began in the United States as early as 1890, as evidenced by how changing fashions privileged slim women as well as by the emergence of dieting and early forms of eating disorders.30 Today, the idea of the fat American living on fast food has become a well-known stereotype, and fat is often located as an endemically US-based problem, despite the fact that fat people can be found in all cultures and countries.31 It is unsurprising, then, that Women En Large and the work of artists such as Laura Aguilar (b. 1959) emerged out of this weight-obsessed culture.32

144  Fatness Born in Southern California, Laura Aguilar considers herself a self-taught photographer, despite pursuing photography in high school and at a local community college.33 Notwithstanding her self-consciousness regarding her lack of conventional education, Aguilar has established a career that has included both national and international exhibitions.34 Her determination to prove herself stems from the challenges she has faced in her everyday life because of her low-level reading and writing skills, dyslexia, depression, fatness, and lack of financial security. She found photography to be an outlet and confronted her issues by incorporating them into her art. In a letter to a friend, she expressed her anxieties: I used to worry about being different: I am slow in how I learn, it’s always make [sic] me feel retarded. I don’t read or write well and it frustrated [sic]. About being Mexican. About doing my photography. Also being gay.35 Some of the main subjects of her work reflect those facets of her own identity: her Mexican American background, her sexuality, her educational struggles and her mental illness. Indeed, the unifying thread throughout much of her work is the inclusion of her own body or bodies like hers, that is, Chicana, gay, and/or fat. Sybil Venegas has elaborated on Aguilar’s self-portraits, noting, “They are powerful signifiers of difference and of the impact of otherness in our society, and on a deeper level they speak to the racialized, patriarchal, and gendered colonial paradigms that affect all our lives.”36 Exposing the way that Aguilar’s body can function in her art, Amelia Jones explained, Aguilar’s work simultaneously expresses anxiety about the incoherence of the self (proposing a multiplied but still “authentic” voice for various oppressed subjects, such as Latina lesbians) but also exuberantly plays out the dissolution of the notion of the “individual” as codifiable in terms of a singular and universalizable identity.37 Jones sees Aguilar as expressing a radical vulnerability, in which Aguilar’s fat body often stands in for her ethnic identity, her race, her sexuality, and more. At the same time, what defines Aguilar has also caused her hardship. For example, her dyslexia hindered her ability to incorporate text by her photographed subjects. Each of these struggles comes together in the physical representations of her body and her writing. As Aguilar explained in 1993, My artistic goal is to create photographic images that compassionately render the human experience, revealed through the lives of individuals in the lesbian/gay and/or persons of color communities. . . . Hopefully the universal elements in the work can be recognized by other individuals’ communities and can initiate the viewer to new experiences about gays, lesbians and people of color.38 Jones explains how this radical vulnerability strengthens Aguilar’s work, as she provides viewers the opportunity to engage relationally in a complex shuttle of belief, desire, and longing, siphoned always through layers of emotion. . . . Aguilar’s practice proposes her body as a site of radical vulnerability, giving us permission to engage sympathetically (be feeling for her) but also potentially empathetically (feeling with her).39

Fatness 145 In an example of how she situates her national identity, Aguilar’s Three Eagles Flying of 1990 shows the artist flanked by the flags of Mexico and the United States. The artist incorporates her body into the center frame of the photographic triptych. The outer panels are pictures of the United States flag (left panel) and the Mexican flag (right panel). These side photographs are simple, with the flags placed in front of the same black background that is used in the center panel. Here, Aguilar is bound with a rope across her stomach and around her wrists. A United States flag is wrapped around her prominent torso, and a Mexican flag is tied over her head, with the eagle appearing where her face would be. Yvonne Yarboro-Bejarano has noted that the title is a pun, playing on the three eagles—the one on the Mexican flag, the symbolism of the eagle associated with the United States, and Aguilar herself—as águila means “eagle” in Spanish.40 The title even emphasizes Aguilar’s struggle with her identity. The flags, each representing a distinct place to which Aguilar simultaneously belongs, are practically trapping her. Diana Hulick has articulated Aguilar’s conflicted position: In much the same way, Aguilar feels constrained and surrounded by these two cultures. In the U.S., she is looked down on because she is Chicano; in Mexico, she is separated by her relatively lighter skin color and her lack of fluent Spanish. Both cultures bind her and neither is fully accepting. She is caught between two worlds.41 This piece might recall the work of Frida Kahlo, who also expressed a fractured identity through clothing and setting, as evidenced in Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States of 1931. In this work, flags signify the divided identity of the artist: at center, Kahlo holds a small Mexican flag in her hand while in the background, there are symbols of her Mexican heritage—floral and plant life, a temple and icons—opposite an industrialized US landscape filled with tall skyscrapers, factories, and pollution.42 Both Kahlo and Aguilar illustrated their discomfort in defining their own identity and the pull between two vastly different worlds. Yet because Aguilar has stripped the image of any extraneous detail besides the flags, the differences between the actual countries must be read on Aguilar’s body. In the center, Aguilar denies committing to one or the other. Rather, she clothes herself uncomfortably in both flags. The large ropes wrap around her face and her neck, practically suffocating her. One flag wraps around her waist, whereas the other covers her face, so that they are restraining either her movement or her speech. Thus, this image is an account of Aguilar’s refusal to easily accept either identity. In a letter to her friend Pat Lyons, Aguilar revealed that this work was not easy for her to make: it took her over a year to gather the right materials and configure the photograph. Aguilar’s poverty restricted her from being able to purchase the materials, so she was left to find and borrow the flags and the rope. Furthermore, she neither could afford, nor could she find, anyone who would model for the work—a move that caused her to use her own body. She felt trapped by her working-class status, her poverty, and her struggle to survive day to day, all of which complicated her photography and slowed her career.43 The ropes that bind her can easily be interpreted as symbols of the way her poverty and her class hold her back. Aguilar’s body, however, cannot be fully restrained, as her breasts and upper torso remain exposed. Her arms cross in front of her body, her hands are tied together with the heavy rope. With her hands and legs bound, she cannot easily move. Her stomach

146  Fatness and breasts figure prominently, drawing attention to her girth. Yet her nudity also exposes her brown skin, inasmuch as it can be seen in black-and-white photography. Because she often places herself, as in this instance, directly in the center of her photographs, her gender (via the display of her breasts) is at the forefront of her work. Her body—in its size, race, and gender—makes visible three problematic qualities that cause a person to be ostracized in US society. And it is her body, which can incorporate a number of meanings, that was a frequent subject for Aguilar. Through repeated photographs of herself, Aguilar struggles to define and to accept the size of her body. Her first nude self-portrait, In Sandy’s Room of 1990, was unplanned. While staying at a friend’s house for a few days, she experimented with taking self-portraits, never intending to exhibit them. After showing them to a friend, who called them the most honest work she had done to date, Aguilar decided to seriously pursue the series.44 In this inaugural photograph, Aguilar shows herself leaning back in a chair with her feet propped up on an ottoman. The image exudes a sense of comfort: as she reclines, she holds a cool drink as a fan pushes a breeze over her skin. Her head tilts back as if she is pausing and taking refuge from a long, hot day. The room is sparse; the simple furniture is low, allowing the large window to dominate the upper half of the photograph. The light streaming in through the window illuminates Aguilar’s body. The repetition of horizontal lines and forms makes the image seem long, but the light helps also to keep the atmosphere relaxed and soft. The photograph is potentially easy for the viewer to relate to: who has not relished a cool breeze and an icy drink on a hot day? In Sandy’s Room is one of Aguilar’s most reproduced images. The first time she showed the work, in 1990, she exhibited it in a 16 × 20 inch format. A few years later, in 1993, she enlarged the work to 3 × 5 feet. By presenting her large body in a large format, she made the work more confrontational and dramatic. The use of large format prints was a breakthrough for Aguilar, as she found the larger size appropriate for her continuation of the nude self-portraits. 12 Lauras of 1993 repeated the emphasis on Aguilar’s body but in a more direct way—in a carefully composed series of twelve photographs arranged in a 3 × 4 grid. Each of the twelve photographs focuses on her nude upper torso, yet each is slightly different. While often looking directly at the camera, she caresses her breasts or plays with her hair, moving in and around the picture frame, seemingly shifting the focus of the camera to her head, neck, or breasts. The individual photographs were printed in the same large format—3 × 5 feet—with the intention that they would take up entire walls and galleries. In this courageous act, she is pushing the viewer to also become more accepting of her body. Of course, Aguilar’s body can be read as larger than “normal,” as Ann Marie Rousseau noted in a review of Aguilar’s 1999 exhibition: “Aguilar’s impudent photographs direct our gaze into a world where a woman has gained a good deal more than five pounds. It is not that she is overweight. She is much more than that.”45 Rousseau struggled to explain just what Aguilar was—as if afraid to say the word “fat.” Critics often are unwilling to fully address Aguilar’s weight, reflecting societal discomfort with fat bodies.46 Rousseau continued, She reclaims her body for herself. Art becomes a means of personal transformation. Hers may be a body as distorted and suffering (in terms of health) as the over-thin model, but it is her body, and she has found a way of using it to carve out space in the public arena for artistic discourse. That said, it is only because

Fatness 147 her body is at the extreme end of a continuum that we give these photographs a second glance.47 Thus, Rousseau made the case that these images are interesting only because Aguilar is not “thin” or “average,” unlike the women whose images are popular and commonplace in the mainstream media. The visual impact of Aguilar’s photographs does result in part from her willingness to show the viewer a different kind of body from is typically seen in the media or the art world but which exists commonly in society. One of the few ways that the fat bodies appear in the mainstream media are as “headless fatties.” Fat activist Charlotte Cooper uses the term to describe the anonymous bodies that often accompany news or magazine stories. For example, to illustrate a news piece on obesity or ill-fitting clothes, larger men and women are often shown headless—with their fat bellies and behinds being the focus of the camera.48 12 Lauras defies this convention by showing Aguilar’s face along with her body. Moving across the frame of one of the photographs, she reaches up and grabs her hair. She turns to one side, then confronts the camera then moves around to the other side and even closes her eyes for a moment. In the last row of pictures, her head and torso are at the center of the photograph, as she grabs her breast or again reaches to touch her hair behind her head. In this series, her body is intimately connected to her personality and identity, so that she is able to refute the trope of the “headless fattie” and claim ownership over her body. The series has a filmic quality, as if each photograph is a still from a video where Aguilar moves and fidgets while self-consciously touching her hair or her body. Indeed, at this moment in her career, Aguilar was exploring her body in film as well as photography. Her experimental videos The Body and The Body 2 (both 1996, each seven minutes long) essentially look like a moving version of 12 Lauras.49 While touching her body, she talks about the pressures of being her size and about her position as an outcast from society. The films are filled with quick edits—one moment she appears clothed and then, after an abrupt cut, she is nude. The camera zooms in and out, focusing on various parts of her body: her breast, her nipple, her arm, her hand, her chest, her torso. The films allow a more visual, fluid exploration of her body while also providing an audio component in which Aguilar discusses her feelings concerning her physique. One of the first anecdotes that Aguilar tells in The Body is how In Sandy’s Room came to be. After printing the photograph, Aguilar sought validation from a male friend. She needed to feel that the photographs of her nude body were worth exploring and seeing. The video then cuts to a close-up of her torso, in profile, from the top of her breasts to just below her navel. After a pause and with the camera still on her torso, Aguilar sighs, and then begins to explain how it feels to live in her skin: Well, this body is not the body one wants to promote or have, but it’s the body I happen to be in. And I started feeling comfortable being nude and—seeing myself and accepting myself and, you know, it’s comfortable, I mean—[playfully slaps stomach]—It’s strange, but even though I’m overweight, and this is not something one wants to aspire to be [turns to face camera, stops at three-quarters]. . . . I try [turns her body to face camera fully] to work on my diet, and just trying to make my life and myself more healthy in every way. . . . The thing is I am comfortable with myself. I never thought I would be comfortable with myself. This is who I am

148  Fatness today, and maybe this is who I will be tomorrow. Through my art, I’ve been able to find some comfort and some peace within my own body through its sags and its stretch marks and its shapes.50 Aguilar attempts to face her body—to look at it, to document it, to feel it, even to point out its imperfections. For Aguilar, the more she can talk about and photograph her body, the more she allows herself to feel comfort with her body, regardless of its size. Chon A. Noriega perceives this honest monologue, and much of Aguilar’s work as a whole, as a testimonio. Developed in Cuba in the 1960s, the testimonio is a narrative typically found in literature that offers a person’s position on a particular issue that became popular in Latin American communities, elaborating, [O]ne can situate the testimonio somewhere in the space between first- and thirdperson accounts of historical events . . . the testimonio places the speaking subject outside the theoretical binarism of the autonomous individual versus the decentered subject. Rather, the speaking subject initiates an “ethics of identity” that places him or her into direct relation with other people, albeit mediated through language.51 Viewed as a testimonio, Aguilar’s work creates a relationship between its autobiographically minded artist and the viewer. So as to establish a community, the work functions, in Noriega’s words, “not as something to be represented to an outside audience, but as a space within which to represent the self. . . . [C]ommunity becomes strategic, a necessary backdrop against which the self can be defined.”52 What these films suggest is that the process of the testimonio can be both personal and political, enunciating an “ethics of identity” in which art mediates between the speaking subject and other people. Drawing on the tradition of the oral history, historian John Beverly observed that people who use the form of the testimonio are frequently illiterate or struggle with their writing.53 This characterization would apply to Aguilar, who has dyslexia. Her writings and letters are often filled with apologies. She has admitted that it often takes her a long time to respond to people, as she carefully crafts her prose, and she regrets her frequent misspellings and awkward phrasing.54 She finds film to be an easier way to express herself. The concept of testimonio fits Aguilar’s straightforward approach, as she seeks to tell her story by speaking directly to the camera. Yet the rough cuts and the many restarts that Aguilar included in the final versions emphasize her struggles, even when speaking, to articulate her thoughts. Jones commented on the way that Aguilar uses the medium to confront her personal challenges: As she moves back and forth, in and out of the frame, she speaks of unspeakable things: her psychic pain, her art work and its therapeutic role, her alienation as a dyslexic whose body is overweight, and finally her desire to dissolve the boundary between life and death through suicide.55 Aguilar’s poverty and repeated attempts to secure a job that included health insurance were constant concerns for her throughout the 1990s.56 Over the years, her dissatisfaction with her body was also a key source of her depression.57 One of the ways

Fatness 149 she dealt with these issues, besides medication, was to confront them in her art. In The Body II, she brings up the idea that she should be ashamed of her body. Although she reveals her beliefs regarding what society must think about her body, she ends that section with the bold statement: “I don’t care what people think of me.” She continues, I am a large woman. And I’m not supposed to be comfortable with myself. You pick that up in society—how dare I be comfortable? I’m not jumping for joy. Please. I don’t want you to think that I’m jumping for joy because I’m overweight. Being overweight has caused a lot of pain in my life. And, but, I can’t hate myself for everything. And there has come some sort of peace and acceptance and hopefully my body will change—hopefully not any bigger. . . . I wonder what people think about me putting my images up on the wall in the gallery. I don’t have the answer to the question, I just wonder constantly.58 Aguilar is able to use the testimonio format to break from traditional modes of expression and to confront her concerns regarding her body. Her repeated insistence that she is comfortable with her body also acts as a reassurance to Aguilar herself. She is confirming to, or even convincing, herself that, yes, she is or can be comfortable with her body. The comfort that she so desperately wanted with her body size would be much more convincing later in her career, as she acknowledged her growing acceptance with her figure in a 2005 interview and in behind-the-scenes footage of Aguilar’s work on the series Grounded (2005–2006).59 She and an assistant planned the images by taking a number of preparatory photographs. Aguilar takes off her clothing and positions herself on various rock formations. She moves around freely without any hesitation and possesses a self-assuredness in dealing with her body that does not appear in the earlier films. These later photographs showcase Aguilar’s body among various natural elements, a motif she began working on in the mid-1990s. In this theme, she was influenced by the work of Judy Dater, whose workshop Aguilar attended in 1991.60 In Dater’s Self-Portrait With Stone of 1981, she is curled into a fetal position amid rocks in a deserted landscape. The viewer can see her back only, which stands out because of the difference in textures between her soft skin and the rough ground. This photograph became an inspiration for Aguilar, who decided to position her body in a similar manner in the desert.61 Aguilar’s Nature Self-Portrait 2 (also called Her Spirit Moves Me, A Homage to Judy Dater) of 1996 entails a composition similar to that of Dater’s Self-Portrait, but Aguilar has altered Dater’s viewpoint: the horizon line and the endless sky are no longer visible. Instead, Aguilar focused more on the ground and a view of her body from above. Aguilar tried to position her body in the same pose as Dater, yet she could not be quite as compact. She joked that it was the “closest I could get to the fetal position.”62 Just as Aguilar’s body is more substantial than Dater’s, the rocks also are larger and more prominent. Everything is oversized in Aguilar’s work, as if her body requires more ground and bigger rocks. Nature Self-Portrait 2 was taken as Aguilar was on her way to New Mexico with friends to attend a memorial for her childhood friend Gil Cuadros (1962–1996), a prominent writer and activist who had just died from AIDS. The trip was a chance for Aguilar to try to recover from her loss, but she also used it to seek out inspiration for new subjects. Prior to Cuadros’s death, Aguilar had been working in series, making

150  Fatness photographs of lesbians, biracial couples, and societal outcasts. After his death, Aguilar lost interest in that body of work. The desert scenery on the trip to New Mexico inspired Aguilar to revisit self-portraiture. The landscape reminded her of childhood hiking and fishing trips she had taken with her grandmother and her father in California.63 For her grandmother and for Aguilar herself, these sojourns were tantamount to religious experiences. Aguilar remembers her grandmother saying, “Where you are, that’s where you are worshipping God.”64 Aguilar’s self-portraits in landscapes are imbued with a personal spirituality. These quiet moments represent Aguilar’s search for peace and tranquility, particularly after the trauma she went through when her friend Cuadros died. Throughout the series, she appears alone and isolated amid the endless desert. The scenes move from different rock formations to areas near water to spaces framed by dried branches. The softness of her body and flesh separates her from her surroundings, yet Aguilar often uses her body to mirror the curves of the rocks or the ground. Writing in the catalog for Aguilar’s 1998 show at Fundación “La Caixa,” Berta Sichel elaborated, Her form is enhanced by the mimetic relationship it establishes with the arid environment she has chosen as a backdrop. In this desert-like land, her body is reminiscent of a large piece of rugged rock. It also suggests something not totally identifiable, possibly belonging to the animal kingdom that has been turned upside down.65 In Dater’s photograph, the body stands out from the landscape; by contrast, Aguilar’s photograph focuses on the relationship of her body to the natural forms. Women, as a gender, have frequently been tied to nature across all disciplines. Sociologist Sherry Ortner, for one, famously pointed out in 1974 that conventionally speaking, a “woman’s body seems to doom her to mere reproduction of life; the male, in contrast, lacking natural creative functions, must (or has the opportunity to) assert his creativity externally, ‘artificially,’ through the medium of technology and symbols.”66 By situating her body amid rocks as if it were a part of the landscape, Aguilar effectively alluded to such conventions, yet at the same time, she assumed the “male” role of creative agent. In many of the photographs of the Nature series of 1996, such as Nature SelfPortrait 6 and Nature Self-Portrait 10, Aguilar lies down on a gently curved plateau, allowing the subtle curves of her body to evoke the subtle undulation of the landscape. In another photograph using the same rock formation, her hair dangles above the water as she lies on her stomach. She also incorporates her reflection in water in a number of images, recalling the Greek myth of Narcissus, whose beauty was spectacular but his relationships with women were troubled. After a scorned lover prayed to the gods asking that Narcissus love himself in the way others had loved him, Narcissus became so completely infatuated with his own image reflected in the water that eventually it killed him.67 Like Narcissus, Aguilar positions herself around bodies of water so that her reflection is visible. In Nature Self-portrait 14 (1996), she looks at her reflection with her hand poised just above the water, as if testing the falseness of her mirror image. Other photographs, including Nature Self-portrait 6 and Nature Self-portrait 10 (both 1996), show Aguilar with her back to the water, as she denies herself the privilege of seeing her body. The transgressive nature of Aguilar’s images lies in her defiance of the commonly held belief that fat bodies are not fit subjects for works of modern and

Fatness 151 contemporary art. By forcing the comparison between her own body and the legendary beauty of Narcissus, however, Aguilar brings up that bias by defying the viewer’s expectation and focusing on her nonconformist body. Like the fascination that Narcissus has with himself in the mirror, the viewer can be just as interested in the juxtaposition of Aguilar’s body and the desert. Stefanie Snider proposes that there are many ways of understanding Aguilar’s closed eyes and often hidden face. In Nature Self-portrait 6 and Nature Self-portrait 10, her body is represented not once, but twice because of her reflection in the water; Aguilar is, in fact, doubling the representation of her body and increasing its presence in the art world. Snider powerfully concludes, She refuses to participate in an exchange of gazes that perpetuates a heterosexualized and racialized mode of looking at the “beauty” of the nude female object of desire seen throughout much of the history of art. Simultaneously, by revealing her imperfect body on her own terms, she opens up the possibility of her objectification through a queer gaze that can in fact eroticize her as a fat woman of color.68 Aguilar has created a powerful new space for her body to exist by strategically placing her nude body in a natural setting and allowing for the possibly of the exploration of her sexuality. Aguilar also addressed the theme of her body in nature in her series Stillness (1996– 1999), Motion (1999), and Center (2001), and again, in these works, her face is rarely visible. Many times, her hair is draped over her face; otherwise, her back is turned to the viewer, obscuring her identity. She is not being bashful or hiding; rather, Aguilar is intent on making herself more universal, standing in for other women who might relate to her size, her sexuality, or even her race. In other photographs, she is accompanied by women of different shapes and sizes, as if bringing to life the popular “Health at Every Size” program that developed in the 1990s at the University of California, Davis by nutritionist Linda Bacon.69 By including her nude body with others of different sizes, she encourages a widening of society’s acceptable body types. As Berta Sichel emphasized, “Ambiguity is key to the image’s beauty, for by exposing her body and emphasizing the otherness of her own form, Aguilar creates a visionary dialectic bent on transforming conventional concepts of attractiveness.”70 In photographs like Stillness 26 of 1996 and Motion 58 and Motion 59 of 1999, multiple women are seen posing together, sometimes supporting one another. In Stillness 26, Aguilar and a model hold a sheer piece of fabric between them, letting the cloth catch the wind. In Motion 59, Aguilar’s body forms a bridge between two women who fold their bodies on top of her. The three women are physically connected to each other, and it becomes complicated to separate one woman from the next. In Motion 58, Aguilar and another woman are lying down as another two women are propped up against branches, their bodies loosely overlapping and touching one another. The suggestion of community in these photographs speaks to the larger need for the fat woman to find an integrated place in society as well as moral support from other women. It is noteworthy that, as Aguilar and others were exploring fat acceptance through photography in the early 1990s, fat women were becoming increasingly visible and accepted in television and film. The actress Ricki Lake made her film debut in 1988 in the popular John Waters movie Hairspray, as a precocious, bubbly teenager who

152  Fatness landed a spot on a popular television dance show despite her fatness. The role was intended as inspirational, as a young woman overcame the odds stacked against her because of her body size. Yet the film also reinforced stereotypes about body size, as her physique (and her mother’s) was frequently the butt of jokes. Although her role in Hairspray led to other starring film and television roles, Ricki Lake lost 125 pounds in 1993–1994 in the hope of becoming even more successful.71 At the same time, in 1993, the thinner Lake became the host of her own syndicated talk show. Her weight loss was a source of pride that was just as important as her new television show, according to a People magazine report of November 1994. Next to a picture of her new, thinner self, the title proclaimed “Ricki Lake: She’s slim (after dropping 125 pounds), she’s sassy and, at 26, she has the hottest talk show on TV. (Are you listening, Oprah?)” Yet like Oprah and many other dieters, Lake’s weight loss was not permanent. Similarly, Delta Burke, who starred in Designing Women (1986–1991), and Roseanne Barr, the star of Roseanne (1988–1997, 2018-present), were both full-figured women, whose weight fluctuations were often a subject of the shows’ humor. A 1991 People article, “For Delta, Roseanne and TV’s Other Big Talents, Heavy Means High Ratings,” revealed that the stars were constantly subjected to comments about their weight.72 In 1990, Burke won her first Emmy for a Designing Women episode that dealt with her weight gain; it was ironically entitled “They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They?” Roseanne presented a different side to fat women. Barr is outspoken about her acceptance of her weight, as Kathleen K. Rowe has noted: “Concerning her fatness, she resists the culture’s efforts to define and judge her by her weight. Publicly celebrating the libidinal pleasure of food, she argues that women need to take up more space in the world, not less.”73 Moreover, Roseanne and her husband Dan were both fat but were nonetheless vibrant characters engaged in a tender and loving relationship. Burke’s and Barr’s bodies challenged the traditional ways that women had been depicted on television. Following the popularity of Designing Women and Roseanne emerged a short-lived sitcom, Babes, that ran on the Fox television network for one season (1990–1991). The show focused on the close relationship of three sisters who shared a small apartment. Babes was received positively, though hesitantly, because of its handling of fatness, as the writers definitely used the size of the women as a source for comic relief and for sight gags.74 In the first episode, the three sisters are settling into their minuscule New York City studio apartment, where they must share the sofa bed. At the end of the show, the bed breaks just as they get comfortably situated, sending all of them crashing to the floor as the women erupt into laughter. As much as their size might be laughable, these women seemed to be in on the joke and were willing to embrace it. Additionally, Fox presented these women as beautiful and desirable. As Jane Feuer articulated, The three women are represented as beauty objects with their glamorous clothes. The show provides access to visual pleasure based in the adorned fat body, a pleasure that is legible despite the narrative context of a vulgar Fox sitcom or perhaps because of it—one can shut out the crude sitcom framework even if one finds it offensive.75 Without the fat liberation movement and the increasing popularity of fat actors like Barr, Feuer posited, the radical and frequently challenging show Babes would never have aired. Additionally, Babes’ premise hinged on the bonding of the three sisters.

Fatness 153 The women supported one another, supplying housing when one got divorced, helping find employment when needed, and generally providing a shoulder to cry on. Mutual support, such as was shown in Babes, was a key element within fat acceptance groups as well. Fat women supporting other fat women factors in the later photographs of Laura Aguilar and is also a theme in Women En Large. In a series of photographs from 2006, Ariane Lopez-Huici (b. 1945) explores a similar subject through a group of nude women. Her studio-based photography often focuses on people who are uncommon subjects in the art world, not just fat women but also disabled dancers and models who have undergone amputations. In Rebelles of 2006, Lopez-Huici focused on a grouping of women touching and connecting with one another in a manner reminiscent of the women in Aguilar’s photographs. In her characteristic style, Lopez-Huici positioned the women against a black backdrop in a simple studio setting. Whereas Aguilar’s and her models’ faces are often hidden or turned away from the camera, Lopez-Huici’s models either look at one another or toward the camera and the viewer. Between the nudity and the way the women touch and embrace one another, Aguilar and Lopez-Huici create photographs with significant lesbian undertones.76 The sensuality of the touch and the interest in the flesh, coupled with the way the women interact with one another (more evident in Lopez-Huici’s work), adds to the desirability of these women. In appearing to be potential sexual partners for the other women in the photograph, the artists move the photographs away from the more straightforward depictions of fat women in the Women En Large images to photographs that engage the art historical tradition of painting women as beautiful, sexual objects on display. Much like Aguilar, Lopez-Huici used the simplicity of black-and-white photography to draw attention to the women’s bodies by emphasizing the highlights and the shadows of the folds of the flesh. In the Rebelles series, the four white women wrap their arms around one another in poses that suggest women engaging with and relating to one another. In one grouping, the women are posed on various levels, from sitting on the ground or in a chair to standing straight up or leaning. Turned at different angles, the models show us all sides of the female body, in a manner reminiscent, say, of the composition of the figures in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Large Bathers (1887). In fact, Lopez-Huici used works by artists such as Renoir, Michelangelo, and Peter Paul Rubens as inspiration for both her and her models.77 Showcasing the way the women’s skin wrinkles and puckers while also showing the women physically interacting, Lopez-Huici casts the women’s forms as desirable and attractive, Rubensian bodies at a time when such a model of female beauty had long since fallen out of favor, notwithstanding the increase in fatness in contemporary society. Beginning in the 1990s, Lopez-Huici developed a consistent body of work that is almost exclusively studio based and often relates to cinematic moments. The studio setting reflects her early background in film; Lopez-Huici had traveled extensively as she pursued her artistic studies and worked as an assistant to a filmmaker.78 Controlling the environment and using only minimal props, she allows the camera lens to focus centrally on her subjects. Against the dark backdrops, the nude bodies present vibrant surfaces for light to reveal and shadows to pool. Her models’ poses vary from moving and dramatic to still and pensive. Eliminating distractions, Lopez-Huici draws the viewer into a visual exploration of these bodies. Lopez-Huici’s models often begin as acquaintances, but in the process of creating photographs together, they become her friends. Lopez-Huici feels that this close

154  Fatness relationship is necessary; by building a sense of trust and comfort with her models, she can get the pictures that she desires.79 One of her most popular models, Aviva Stone, had been a model for art classes and professional artists throughout New York City, but had rarely, if ever, posed for photographers.80 The fact that Stone and others who had similarly resisted modeling for photography agreed to pose for extremely intimate photos by Lopez-Huici shows their comfort with the artist and support for her work. Stone had begun modeling in the 1970s when she was a dancer and in excellent shape. By the 1990s, she had gained weight and was not modeling as frequently, yet she was approached to pose for a SoHo drawing group: They just loved my butt. What can I tell you? They just went crazy. It is a pretty solid butt. . . . They were totally happy, and that was the beginning. Suddenly, the girth was welcomed. I mean, you are in a society where everyone is telling you, take it off. Now my friends are telling me, you have a career. Get to the heavy cream.81 When Stone embraced her larger size, her career as a model was successfully revived. Preferring to pose for artists who worked in painting and drawing, Stone’s relationship with Lopez-Huici was quite an anomaly.82 In discussing Lopez-Huici’s work, critics and scholars frequently focus on the difference in size between the photographer and her model. Lopez-Huici is a rather petite woman, and she is frequently asked about this contrast. She responds, Why? I’m small and petite and Aviva, Dalila and Holly are Rubensian. In creative work there are many unknowns, for me at any rate. If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t take photographs. The choice of models depends on many circumstances: encounters, desire, the potential that attracts and intrigues you, the transcending of established norms, the trust that you create in order to persuade someone to pose. It’s the irreducible mystery of my models that I photograph. These models are heroes of our time. With their talent, strength and courage they help to enlarge our emotional and visual field. Their beauty comes from the poetry of their imperfections.83 For Lopez-Huici, her models can occupy a space that she cannot. The discrepancy in size between Lopez-Huici and her models positions Lopez-Huici very differently from Aguilar. Regardless of how she depicts and engages with her models, Lopez-Huici is always an outsider with respect to her fat models. Before Aviva Stone appeared in Rebelles, she posed for a number of individual portraits by Lopez-Huici in 1996, each titled simply Aviva. In one example, Stone lies on a chaise covered with a white cloth. The background is completely black, and this darkness is repeated in the small black pillow that rests under her arm. Lying across the couch and meeting the photographer—and so the viewer’s—gaze, she is at once defiant and confrontational. Stone asserts that she is a woman in command of her body. In the pose and assertive gaze, the image loosely resembles Édouard Manet’s famous Olympia (1863) as well as some other nineteenth-century odalisques, as Carter Ratcliff has pointed out: [Stone’s] poses conform to the artifice of that motif: on elegantly arranged bedclothes, a naked woman assumes languorously horizontal postures. Yet she is not

Fatness 155 an odalisque because, to speak bluntly, she is too fat. Her bulk makes it impossible for her to squeeze into the image of ideal female beauty.84 That Stone does not conform to the expectations of beauty associated with the odalisque thus presents a challenge to Ratcliff, as to other viewers of the work. Instead, her size should be seen as a new odalisque, fatter now perhaps, but still desirable and attractive. Lopez-Huici’s Dalila Khatir series of 2002 (Figure 5.2) like the Aviva works, are studio photographs of a solitary woman who does not conform to contemporary ideals for a performer because of her body size. Born in France of Algerian descent, Khatir is a popular singer and dancer, known for performances in a costume with many veils. Because Khatir is a Muslim, she believed that it was wrong to show or display her nude body in public. After Lopez-Huici asked her to model, she and Khatir built a relationship over the course of several days.85 Lopez-Huici allowed Khatir to review the images and promised not to use anything that Khatir did not approve.86 Once she felt comfortable, Khatir was more willing to explore her nudity and her fat body, using the opportunity to capture the movement and life of her dance moves in photography. Yet Lopez-Huici acknowledged that these are photographs are risky. “I know that Dalila could be severely punished under Koranic law for posing nude; never for a moment do I forget her tremendous strength of character.”87 The works, particularly when viewed as a series, emphasize the movement of Khatir as a dancer, but not the stick-thin ballerina type. Instead, Khatir’s figure both takes up space and commands it. In one work, she moves inward as she pauses to cover her breasts, then she appears regal while raising her arms in exaltation in another photograph. Furthermore, she displays a wide variety of facial expressions varying from joy to surprise to contemplation. In these photographs, Lopez-Huici used extremely dramatic lighting, reflecting Khatir’s stage career. Part of her body is illuminated in a bright light, whereas the rest of the body is hidden in the shadows. Heightening the performance-like quality of the work, Lopez-Huici wanted the dramatic lighting to allude to the mystery and the rebellion of the Muslim Khatir.88 In another photograph, Khatir is seated on a rough, hardwood floor, her back to the camera and her legs covered by a blanket loosely draped around her waist. Her hair is covered with a scarf wrapped around her head and knotted at the nape of her neck. She looks off into the distance at an angle, so that her face is scarcely visible. The pose feels familiar, as Brooks Adams has suggested that the photograph recalls both Ingres’s and Man Ray’s seated nudes. Noting that the work is more than its references, he continues, The full expanse of her back suggests a gigantic fruit or pepper, a la Edward Weston, but the textures of her wrapped head, the nubbiness of the striped towel swathing her lower body in a sharp black arc shape and all the scratchy particularities of the floorboards on which she sits bring the depicted scene back down to earth in the bohemian here and now.89 In connecting Lopez-Huici’s image to those by more famous artists, Adams elevated the status of her work while implicitly comparing Khatir’s fat body, with its folds and imperfections, to the thinner women in the sexualized images of Man Ray or Weston. At the same time, Adams noted that Khatir’s body looks like a “gigantic fruit or

156  Fatness

Figure 5.2 Ariane Lopez-Huici, Dalila, 2002, gelatin silver print Source: © Ariane Lopez-Huici.

pepper”—not just an ordinary object or women to be consumed, but a woman whose weight is her defining characteristic. He goes out of his way to position Khatir as different and inferior just because of her weight, instead of allowing her to have her own beauty and power.

Fatness 157 Further, Lopez-Huici’s works are more complicated than Adams and others allow. The photographs of Khatir standing from 2002, like those of Stone standing from 1994, both exude a sense of mystery that derives from the women’s postures as well as the low camera angle. The drama is heightened by Khatir’s partially hidden body, from both shadows and her turban-wrapped hair. Through the photographic series, LopezHuici is slowly revealing to the viewer Khatir’s body. By using scarves and shadows, Lopez-Huici cautiously shows us Khatir’s back, side, and breasts, as if recalling her performances but also her hesitancy to show her body because of her religious beliefs. On the other hand, Stone’s body is illuminated clearly by bold, direct lighting, which gives a direct view of her body. Despite their similar nude bodies and dark backdrops, these photographs also speak to the different personalities of the sitters. Khatir’s shyness is coupled with her talented dancing, whereas the photographs of Stone recall her confidence as a seasoned model. Both women appear in Lopez-Huici’s Triumph series of 2007 (Figure 5.3), images that might again invite loose comparisons with paintings by Rubens or Renoir, such as the latter’s 1918–1919 Bathers (Musée d’Orsay), where two women lie in the foreground of a lush landscape. Renoir provides the viewer with different angles of the female body, as the foremost woman’s breasts are prominently displayed, whereas the second woman’s breasts are mostly covered but the sensual outline of her hip is emphasized. In the background, three women are bathing in the river, each in a

Figure 5.3 Ariane Lopez-Huici, Triumph, 2007, gelatin silver print Source: © Ariane Lopez-Huici.

158  Fatness distinct pose. Stripped of all props, Lopez-Huici’s photographs show only four bodies in front of a simple black background. The high contrast between the skin and the backdrop heightens the poses, each of which, as in Renoir’s composition, emphasizes different parts of a woman’s body, allowing for a dynamic group portrait. In the Triumph series, four women smile and smirk at the camera while also engaging with one another or connecting tactilely. In two of the works, models raise their arms in exhilaration. As in the solo views of Aviva, they appear confident and, by contrast with the quieter Rebelles works, seem to be jubilating and exalting in their flesh. As John Wood has suggested, [Lopez-Huici] confronts us with fat, assaults us with the immensities of flesh and forces us to look and look again. . . . We will have seen so much of the body’s muchness laid out before us like sculpture that our prejudice begins to abate.90 Like many supporters of Lopez-Huici, Wood reads her work as challenging cultural norms of beauty. Lopez-Huici’s studio-type photography might recall the procedures of the early and immediately popular photographic studios that arose in the mid-nineteenth century. At a time when photography necessitated long exposure times and bright lighting, the portraits were often taken in carefully arranged spaces, with simple backdrops and props.91 Lopez-Huici’s work uses the studio setting to draw attention to and focus on the flesh of Khatir, Stone, and others. Likewise, Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) often uses an austere setting in his photographic figure studies, similarly allowing the shape of the nude form to be the entire focus of the photograph, as is the case in his Full Body Project (2007). This set of photographs includes a series of images of fat, middle-age women. Originally exhibited in various groups, the photographs were eventually published together in 2007. His previous works, including the Shekhina series (begun in the mid-1990s, published 2001) and a series called Classic Nudes (n.d.), depicted conventionally beautiful and thin models. Nimoy began the The Full Body Project in 2000 after being approached at a Shekhina exhibition by an unconventionally sized model, who suggested that Nimoy expand his range of subjects.92 He agreed to photograph her, but he later expressed discomfort dealing with the model during the photo shoot: I was concerned how to photograph this kind of figure because I simply was not used it. I shot her in black-and-white. I was quite satisfied with what I got, because I thought she looked like a marble sculpture in black-and-white.93 After he photographed this initial model, Nimoy continued to seek out fat women. Nimoy had been engaged in photography for over thirty years as a side project to his more prominent acting and directing careers. His early works—mainly nudes, slender dancers, and landscapes—were more or less studies in the medium. In 2001, however, he published a group of untitled photographs that attempted to explore the physical embodiment of the Old Testament spiritual figure Shekhina. Originally, “Shekhina” meant the physical presence of God in the earthly world, though the term evolved to signify a female counterpart to God who could represent and argue for humanity. In Nimoy’s photographs, a dark-haired model wears flowing robes and moves amid simple forms and landscapes. This Biblical subject matter, including glamorous

Fatness 159 almost-nude women, was fairly controversial because women were often segregated and secondarized in traditional Judaism.94 Moving from Shekhina to photographs of much larger models presented a dramatic change in subject matter for Nimoy. His anxiety about the project led to his solution to treat his model’s body like a sculpture or an “artform.”95 The model was surrounded entirely by black props—from the couch and cushions, to the backdrop, to the scarf that covered various parts of her body. The first image of this model in the book renders her cat-like, in a profile pose, lying on her stomach, and propped up on her elbows.96 In another photograph (Sphinx #2), we see the reclining model from the back. Drapery, wrapped around her head, gently traces the curve of her back and, wrapped around her legs, cuts them off just above her knee. The scarf thus creates a bizarre sectioning of the body, as we see the model’s torso and upper thighs, but not her legs, hair, or the top of her head. We do see the folds of her body, the ripples of her skin, and her flesh as gravity pulls it toward the couch. As Nimoy has discussed, he worked hard to achieve a level of comfort for both the model and himself.97 His wife assisted at the photo shoot, directing the model’s poses and generally trying to keep Nimoy comfortable throughout the process that was unfamiliar, and therefore uncomfortable, to him.98 Yet his discomfort and unfamiliarity with fat models appears in the stiffness and awkwardness that pervades these photographs. Other images of the same model show her in a variety of positions, including a reclining pose in which she is rotated to face the camera. The position of the cloth shifts in the various poses. In one photograph, it covers her legs. In two others, the fabric drapes across her neck, separating her head from her body isolating the fleshy torso. In a way, the use of the cloth to focus the viewer’s attention on specific parts of the human form could be compared to the uses of drapery in Greek and Roman art, for example. But this group of photographs is more surrealist than classical, recalling the fragmenting of the body in certain photographs by Man Ray or Brassaï. For example, in Man Ray’s 1934 photograph Minotaur, the head of the female is conspicuously absent and the limbs fade into the shadows. Nimoy’s draping is less subtle and seems to hide parts of the body while still acknowledging their presence. The disconcerting effect of Nimoy’s is to visually chop the model into pieces. In that respect, these images have a violent aspect to them. Whereas Aguilar determines her own poses and Lopez-Huici attempts to collaborate with her models as well as draw from art history, Nimoy’s discomfort with the situation becomes apparent as he uses the scarf to fragment his model’s body. Although he might want to compare her to broken Greek sculptures, cutting off her head and limbs undercuts her identity and humanity. These awkward, violent acts to his model lack the vitality and life that Aguilar and Lopez-Huici’s models, particularly Stone and Khatir, embody. Despite the cloth covering parts of her figure in this series, Nimoy often highlights her face so that the woman maintains her individuality. He still manages to show us her dimples and scars as well as the movement and the folds of her flesh. Writer and fat activist Marilyn Wann elaborates: “I think the photographs in this book tell us that we’re looking at some quite specific people. These are very real people. Their exuberance and their sense of life comes off the page.”99 This uniqueness of the body and the movement and spirit Nimoy captures is more evident in his group photographs. After creating the Sphinx photographs, he reached out to Heather MacAllister, the founder of the theatrical production company Big Burlesque and the touring branch Fat-Bottom Revue, which were composed of fat activists and artists.100 Founded in

160  Fatness 2002, this popular burlesque group was the first to be composed of women of all sizes. The group’s success extended beyond the Bay Area, as they traveled across the US and Canada. Big Burlesque and Fat-Bottom Revue gained notoriety and success as a dance troupe through their humor and charm while relying on their fat bodies to defy the notion that burlesque dancers must be thin.101 Nimoy had specific ideas in mind for his potential subjects and sent the group reproductions of iconic photographs by Herb Ritts and Helmut Newton as well as paintings by Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp. Using these works as inspiration, he re-created the poses and gestures of, for instance, Ritts’s supermodels with the women of the burlesque group. Just because Nimoy used models who were larger than conventional dancers did not mean they could not be beautiful or dance well, and their talents were evident in Nimoy’s photographs. In one work, which recalls Ritts’s famous 1989 group photograph of popular 1980s supermodels entitled Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood, Nimoy seated the women together intertwined on a hardwood floor. Nimoy’s women mimic the composition that Ritts used, but no longer are bones and ribs visible; rather, the concave forms of his models’ backs are replaced by fuller bodies with folds, tattoos, and piercings. These women not only do not match the physiques of the supermodels, but also their skin is marked in a way that was uncommon in the modeling industry.102 More than Aguilar and Lopez-Huici, Nimoy presents fat women in a manner that opens them up to being described as unconventional or on the margins of society because of their tattoos and piercings. Nimoy, however, by choosing to focus on women from the Big Burlesque group, is benefiting from their celebration of fat women. By the nature of her advocacy, Heather MacAllister, who is at the top and center of the pyramid of women in Nimoy’s photograph, did much to promote the beauty of women of all shapes. As she told Nimoy, “Any time a fat person gets on a stage to perform and is not the butt of a joke—that’s a political statement.”103 One of the ways that Nimoy’s Big Burlesque models seem to own their bodies is by confronting the viewer and maintaining eye contact. As Natalie Angier elaborated in her foreword to The Full Body Project: “[This] is the gaze of gimlet-eyed women who know perfectly well that they are on view, and that their unclothed bodies are not the standard models of beauty as brought to you by museums, the movies, or Maybelline.”104 Angier further argued that the eye contact encourages us to see the faces of the women first, giving them a sense of personality and identity before we take in their bodies. She continues, Rather than rejecting their bodies as unacceptably obese, the opposite of what we health-conscious, weight-hating Americans strive for, we see them almost as abstractions, an interplay of geometries, patterns, and themes. . . . an imperfect, magnificent evolutionary compromise between the life forms that preceded it, and the life forms yet to be.105 These imperfect bodies are the focus of a work in which Nimoy references Helmut Newton’s 1981 photographs, Sie Kommen, Dressed/Sie Kommen, Naked. Newton’s diptych included two views of a group of four women walking toward the camera, cool and detached. In one view, they are nude, and in the other, they are clothed in suits and outer garments. Nimoy repeated Newton’s format, though he used the women of Big Burlesque. Newton’s models wear designer clothing, whereas Nimoy’s

Fatness 161 pose in their burlesque costumes—high-heeled shoes, elaborate corsets, and feather boas. The Full Body Project diptych does not show the ideal and highly desired bodies of supermodels; rather, the women’s marked bodies and their sexualized costumes add a sense of vitality and individualism that Nimoy desires. In yet another interpretation of a recognizable image, Nimoy referenced Henri Matisse’s 1909 The Dance (I). In this famous painting, Matisse depicted five nudes in a simple landscape, holding hands and dancing in a circle. In Matisse Circle of 2007, Nimoy repeated Matisse’s composition with six women from the Fat-Bottom Revue, though his women dance not in a lush landscape but rather on a tiled studio floor. The photograph is shot from above, echoing the vantage point of Matisse’s painting. However, Nimoy’s addition of a sixth woman who, unlike the others is dark, not light-skinned, makes the composition of the work more balanced and symmetrical than Matisse’s. Of course, Matisse’s daring use of color, with its flat, broad planes and stark simplicity, is also replaced by the gradations of the black-and-white photograph. Nimoy substituted Matisse’s play with color for a subversion of ideal beauty by his emphasis on the fat female body. In other works, Nimoy continues to use a circle of women in a variety of settings and configurations. Additionally, he even uses contemporary artworks as props. In several shots, his models move around a large column in an art gallery whose walls display a backdrop of large drawings by Jenny Okun (b. 1953). The unnamed series of photographs shows them moving around the column in a dance-like manner, though they are no longer holding hands. Originally, the figures circled a large sculpture, but because the sculptor decided not to be a part of Nimoy’s project, the column was digitally added at a later date.106 The stark rectilinear column becomes the centerpiece that the women walk or dance around in a sort of jubilant celebration. By contrast, in another untitled set of images, the women move around a large, mirrored, crag-like sculpture, Shangri-La (2005), by Patty Chang (b. 1972). The work, which was then installed at the Hammer Museum and rested on a rotating platform, created a moving play of light on the walls of the space.107 Nimoy’s group of Fat-Bottom Revue women face the sculpture in various positions as their bodies are reflected across the surface of the work. Although their bodies are turned away from the center in one photograph with the column, they are turned instead toward the Chang piece, apparently admiring the way it fragments and replicates their bodies. Not only does Nimoy incorporate references to famous paintings, but he also photographs his models at museums and galleries, encouraging the perception of these larger women as embedded in an artistic endeavor and intellectual exercise. In fact, each of these artists—Aguilar, Lopez-Huici, and Nimoy—made art historical references throughout their photographs of fat bodies. Aguilar and Nimoy reinterpreted the works of famous artists, whereas Lopez-Huici looked to art history as inspiration—a starting point for her own photographs. Yet each artist used these devices differently. Aguilar referred to Dater’s work to begin her investigation into the use of her body outside in nature. Lopez-Huici was interested in Renaissance and Baroque masters, who used larger bodies that looked similar to those of her own models. Nimoy’s re-creations of Matisse and Newton are more reductive and stagedlooking than the work of Lopez-Huici and Aguilar, feeling more like re-creations than inspirations. When he began to work with Heather MacAllister and the Fat-Bottom Revue to create The Full Body Project, Nimoy sought out influential photographers and painters on which to base many, if not most, of his photographs. These references

162  Fatness provided him with not only a way of positioning his models, but also an explanation for his choice of models: The development of ideas came from the project itself . . . I thought, “OK I’ve got these women to shoot. Now what would be interesting to do?” I think the first impulse I had was the Herb Ritts photographs, because that was so much about fashion models of a body size and shape that is sold as the ideal. Once I latched on to that, then the rest of it came—the Helmut Newton, Matisse, Duchamp and the Raphael.108 Finally, Nimoy explored female agency differently from Aguilar and Lopez-Huici. Aguilar, in using her own body, clearly defines how she wants herself to be seen. Lopez-Huici and her models have always maintained that they are working collaboratively. From searching for inspiration, to discussing the poses, to going over the proofs of the photographs, Lopez-Huici incorporates her models’ opinions through each step of the process. To help establish trust and openness with her models, moreover, LopezHuici embarked on the film Toak (1995), where she performed a modern dance nude to improvised jazz on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday.109 Part of the idea for the film was to be vulnerable and to put herself into her art in the same way that she asks her models to bare all.110 By contrast, Leonard Nimoy admits to not having anything in common with his models. He elects to work with his wife to help create the images and/or he bases his photographs on famous paintings and photographs by male artists. In effect, he uses his models as props. More so than having and illustrating their own identity, the models function to realize Nimoy’s agenda as overseer of the project. In her series Wait Watchers (begun 2010), Haley Morris-Cafiero visualizes Nimoy’s role of the onlooker, even able to convey his expressed discomfort. Morris-Cafiero forces the viewer to visually confront the way that fat bodies exist in a public space. Wait Watchers (published in book form as The Watchers in 2015) is composed of self-portraits of the artist in public spaces. The series was begun almost accidentally after she took her 2010 photograph Anonymity Isn’t for Everyone (Figure 5.4). Working on an earlier series, Something to Weigh, Morris-Cafiero was already interested in photographing herself in situations where she was self-conscious about her body size. In high school, Morris-Cafiero had been extremely active, yet she was also struggling from an undiagnosed eating disorder. When she went to college, and stopped playing soccer, she gained weight rapidly, which she later discovered had been accelerated by hypothyroidism.111 As her body changed size, she started hearing snide comments about her body and caught people openly mocking her.112 On the night that Anonymity Isn’t for Everyone was taken, she photographically captured someone staring at her. Sitting on the red steps of the TKTS ticket booth in Duffy Square in New York City, Morris-Cafiero looks forward, grasping her cardigan between her legs. Behind her, a man poses for a photograph; the female photographer aiming the camera stands in front of Morris-Cafiero. Although he is supposed to be posing for a typical tourist photograph in Times Square (the gimmicky Hershey’s store looms behind them), his gaze is not directed at his photographer. Rather, he looks down at Morris-­Cafiero. This unplanned moment that happened as she was working on an earlier series changed Morris-Cafiero’s artistic direction. In regards to this photograph, Morris-Cafiero has made clear that it was not just a lucky capture of a sideways glance. Rather, she has multiple pictures of him looking at

Fatness 163

Figure 5.4 Haley Morris-Cafiero, Anonymity Isn’t for Everyone, 2010 Source: Courtesy of the artist.

her, emphasizing his (albeit temporary) fascination/disgust with her. The smirk on his face is, after all, undeniable. Moving forward, she decided to work in a similar fashion. Often when she was traveling, she would seek out visible, public spaces to set her up her camera. She wanted to convey a sense of reality, so that she tried to work with an air of spontaneity and avoided thinking about her outfit or other distractors. She would use a tripod, allowing whomever she was with (an assistant, a friend, a student, etc.) to shoot a number of photographs in rapid succession, with the shoot lasting for just five minutes. Morris-Cafiero tried to be nonchalant, thinking about what would be appropriate for the location—from walking around, applying sunscreen, or eating gelato.113 The process and the event are important, paramount even. Morris-Cafiero has repeatedly referred to this project as a “social experiment.”114 She knows (and has

164  Fatness repeatedly documented) that people will react to her fatness. Some images are more successful than others, because in particular instances (Flander, 2014 and Athletics, 2015), it is very obvious that observers are aware of the camera and the setup. It also neither allows for those who are looking off and beyond the artist herself, nor does it take into account those with “resting bitch face,” a term that has gained traction in the past few years that describes women who are at ease or perhaps critically thinking but are typically perceived as irritated or angry.115 In that case, it does seem like Morris-Cafiero could be cashing in on fortuitous timing. These photographs could also be read as convenient in that certain photographs seem staged, with the artist creating a situation that seems to encourage funny looks or disorientation. For instance, in many images where she is wearing workout gear, it can be easy to understand the looks as confusion or dismay as to what seems to be a scene out of the ordinary: a photo shoot of a woman working out or stretching in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. To her credit, Morris-Cafiero acknowledges this: I think some people are just reacting to the way I look. And I do think some people are reacting to me being photographed . . . I don’t presume that they all think I’m fat. But at the same time, for that one little fraction of a second, there’s a physical reaction to me doing what I’m doing.116 Certainly, that can be more convincing in some images more than others, but in those genuine moments, the expressions on people’s faces are horrifying and repulsive. To see the judgment happening behind Morris-Cafiero’s back, which generally takes place with a camera in plain view, is alarming, but perhaps not surprising. In Women En Large, Notkin and Edison worked to provide fat bodies with dignity and beauty, the same type of bodies to which many of the onlookers in MorrisCafiero seem to view with disgust. It is then predictable that Morris-Cafiero seems to approach her project with an activist spirit, elaborating, It may not be picketing and sitting-in and all those different more physical forms of activism, but I do consider it activism. For me, activism is taking something that is not necessarily on the up-and-up and putting it out in the world and showing it. I think there’s a big spectrum of activism.117 In her way, Morris-Cafiero is drawing attention to fat shaming that takes place every day in the lived environment, including the looks, the snickers, the mean comments, and the hateful mocking all taking place in public when the onlookers think the subject of their derision cannot see or hear them. Strikingly, what makes this project even more impactful is the public response to the series. In 2013, Morris-Cafiero wrote an online article on the project for Salon, which was accompanied by a number of photographs.118 The article went viral, and other presses like The Huffington Post and People followed up and actively circulated Morris-Cafiero’s pictures. In this Internet age, it is no longer shocking that an article like this might be met with vitriol in the comments. Perhaps more jarring though is that the artist started receiving hate mail and threats (to be fair, she did start getting supportive and thankful messages as well). Morris-Cafiero did not shy away from reading these negative comments; rather, they motivated her to take more photographs.119 Both kinds of responses had a lasting impact, and in the publication of The

Fatness 165 Watchers in 2015, she incorporated comments from the Internet and personal e-mails on the cover, front and end pages, and mixed in with the photographs. These striking words enhance the viewer’s understanding of the images. Whereas the hurtful words reinforce the faces of the onlookers, the more encouraging words provide support while acknowledging the isolation and pain that Morris-Cafiero is experiencing. In the interior of the book, she pairs the texts, so that you get both a bad and good comment on a single page and next to each other. In an example of one pairing, “Get the fuck out of the way fatty” is coupled with “You rule. Fuck everyone.” By including these reactions to her project, Morris-Cafiero is illustrating the powerful emotions that her project elicits. Moreover, these juxtapositions serve to show how Morris-Cafiero engaged her audience as the project developed and shifted. Numerous people e-mailed her and told her how she could improve her looks—putting on makeup, changing her hair, or wearing certain types of clothing, implying that if only she looked better, she would no longer be the recipient of off-putting glances and mocking. Instead of responding to these viewers, many of whom thought they were being helpful, Morris-Cafiero took the photograph Dress (2014), which focuses on the artist shopping, in search of a more stylish piece of clothing but still getting the venomous looks.120 Another pair of comments that are included in The Watchers bring up larger, complicated issues concerning fat activism. “Being fat is a sign that you lack discipline and a single damn about who you are” is matched with “It shows a woman that is in complete ownership of herself.” As mentioned earlier, one of the major problematic associations with fatness is to connect fatness and moral failings, which ignores the research that has been done to challenge medical views of “obesity.” Additionally, those kinds of remarks compel Morris-Cafiero to defend her lifestyle, as she has said, Even though I’m a college professor, who works 12-hour days and eats healthy, even though I have none of the diseases constantly reported in the media as linked to obesity, I’m up against quite a few stereotypes as an overweight blond female artist. I’m constantly fighting strangers’ criticisms that I am lazy and slow-witted, or that I am an overly emotional slob.121 In light of these comments, Morris-Cafiero’s insistence on her work as a type of activism becomes even clearer. In envisaging fat shame, she is forcing people to confront the despicable treatment that fat people face almost daily.122 In an unsurprising parallel, a number of photographers have followed the work started by Notkin and Edison and continued by Morris-Cafiero. Commercial photographer Matt Blum and photographer/editor Katy Kessler created The Nu Project (2005–present) to document nude women all over the world, with the following goals: “No professional models, minimal makeup and no glamour. The focus of the project has been and continues to be the subjects and their personalities, spaces, insecurities and quirks.”123 Similarly, Natalie McCain’s The Honest Body Project (2015–present) strives to document “real” women, but more specifically then Blum and Kessler, McCain focuses on women who have had children, with the motivation to help postpartum women celebrate their bodies.124 Last, The Adipositivity Project (2007–present) by Substantia Jones wants to expand the definitions of physical beauty “literally.”125 Photographing all types of people (not just women, but also men and transgender people), Jones project relies on the idea that by taking pictures of bodies

166  Fatness that society does not typically view as beautiful, these photographs will encourage a better understanding/acceptances of these physiques as attractive. Each of these artists’ work exists primarily online or, in some cases, self-published books or prints via their websites. Further, these newer projects have a distinctly body-positive message, which although a part of fat activism and with potential benefits to boost morale and promote acceptance, is a limited idea that can detract from bigger issues in medical and health fields as well as serious concerns regarding discrimination. In their narrow focus on positivity and inclusion, these projects lack the more pathbreaking qualities and nuanced criticism that the earlier artists discussed have demonstrated. Yet Blum and Kessler, McCain, and Jones have all benefited from the same culture that popularized Morris-Cafiero. Articles and blogs popularized on social media about each of these photographers and their ventures went viral (running the gamut of types of websites from The New York Times to Huffington Post to Refinery29 to Bust). The massive popularity of these projects speaks to a powerful and lasting need for imagery of fat women. In particular, these photographers are looking to fill the absence of fat women in mainstream media. It is not a surprise, then, that critics frequently compare the women represented by many of these artists to the Woman of Willendorf (c. 22,000 bce, also known as Venus of Willendorf ) or a generic Mother Earth or Earth Goddess figure.126 Striving to find an adequate analog to these unfamiliar images of fat women, many critics reach back to some of the first examples of artwork ever produced. Even Aviva Stone, Lopez-Huici’s model, has claimed that one of the fantasy roles she thinks about as she poses is “the new Venus of Willendorf, a figure that came out of Europe as a fertility goddess.”127 But it is time to move beyond such facile comparisons. Lopez-Huici herself has noted that “what I really want to say in those works is that they are sexy bodies. I do not want to put on them this Earth Mother side. It is to deny again their identity.”128 These artists’ models are generally opinionated women, each of whom, by posing for the photographs, becomes a visual counterpart to the work of the Fat Underground and NAAFA while also choosing to be a desirable object. These fat women, in asserting their right to be an active participant and a subject with agency, have helped to find and claim a place for the longmarginalized fat women in society.

Notes 1 I will use the word “fat” throughout this paper following in the footsteps of fat advocacy groups and writers, which is detailed further in this chapter. Additionally, Charlotte Cooper has powerfully articulated her position regarding the word and the importance of using it (of which I strongly agree) and is actively working toward its reclamation in Charlotte Cooper, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement (Bristol, UK: HammerOn Press, 2016), 1n1. 2 Notkin and Edison were both involved in the science fiction community. They each subscribed to magazines, participated in fan events, and attended conferences. After reading a published letter from a prominent man in the science fiction world disparaging fat women, they decided to organize discussions about the role of fat women in this community. Debbie Notkin, “Enlarging: The Personal Story,” in Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, eds. Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin (San Francisco, CA: Books in Focus, 1994), 108–13. 3 Notkin, “Enlarging: The Personal Story,” 109. 4 Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin, Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes (San Francisco, CA: Books in Focus, 1994), 111–12. 5 Edison and Notkin, Women En Large, 91. 6 Edison and Notkin, Women En Large, 91–2.

Fatness 167 7 Both statements from Tee Corinne, “Review: Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes,” Afterimage 22, no. 5 (December 1994): 10–11. 8 Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age,” New York Times Magazine, August 2, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/magazine/weight-watchers-oprah-losing-itin-the-anti-dieting-age.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur&_r=1. 9 Marilyn Wann, Fat!So? Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1998), 19. An example of how these definitions are changing can be seen in Robert J. Kuczmarski and Katherine M. Flegal, “Criteria for Definition of Overweight in Transition: Background and Recommendations for the United States,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72, no. 5 (November 2000): 1074–81. 10 Linda Bacon, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight (Dallas, TX: Benbella Books, 2008), 132–5. 11 Pat Lyons, “Prescription for Harm: Diet Industry Influence, Public Health Policy, and the ‘Obesity Epidemic,’ ” in The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 79. Lyons also addressed the fact that many of the people who were given grants and viewed as obesity experts at this conference were paid consultants to weight loss and drug companies. 12 Christopher J. Ruhm, “Current and Future Prevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity in the United States,” Forum for Health Economics and Policy 10, no. 2 (2007): 1–26. 13 Elizabeth Kristen, “Addressing the Problem of Weight Discrimination in Employment,” California Law Review 90, no. 1 (January 2002): 57–109; Jay Bhattacharyaa and M. Kate Bundorf, “The Incident of Healthcare Costs of Obesity,” Journal of Health Economics 28, no. 3 (May 2009): 649–58; Adam Gilden Tsai, David A. Asch, and Thomas A. Wadden, “Insurance Coverage for Obesity Treatment,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 106, no. 10 (October 2006): 1651–5. 14 Marilyn Wann, “Foreword,” in The Fat Studies Reader, xiii. 15 For just a few of these studies, see Marlene B. Schwartz et al., “Weight Bias Among Health Professionals Specializing in Obesity,” Obesity: A Research Journal 11, no. 9 (September 2003): 1033–9; William H. Dietz et al., “Management of Obesity: Improvement of Health-Care Training and Systems for Prevention and Care,” The Lancet 385, no. 9986 (June 2015): 2521–33; and Gary Foster et al., “Primary Care Physicians’ Attitudes About Obesity and Its Treatment,” Obesity: A Research Journal 11, no. 10 (October 2003): 1168–77. 16 Of course, this discussion is much more complicated than these two groups, and for a more nuanced approach, see Cooper, Fat Activism, 96–129. 17 “About Us,” National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, www.naafaonline.com/ dev2/about/index.html. 18 Quoted in Charlotte Cooper, Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size (London: The Women’s Press, 1998), 131. 19 Llewellyn Louderback, Fat Power: Whatever You Eat Is Right (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1970); Cooper, Fat and Proud, 130. 20 Bacon, Health at Every Size, 123. 21 Fishman has also gone by the names Aldebaren and Vivien Mayer. 22 Cooper, Fat and Proud, 133. 23 Sara Golda Bracha Fishman, “Life in The Fat Underground,” Radiance: The Magazine for Large Women Online, Winter 1998, www.radiancemagazine.com/issues/1998/winter_98/ fat_underground.html. 24 Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran, “Fat Liberation Manifesto,” in Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, eds. Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Wieser (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Book Company, 1983), 52–3. 25 Edison and Notkin, Women En Large, 95–6. 26 Le’a Kent, “Fighting Abjection: Representing Fat Women,” in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, eds. Janaevans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 132–3. 27 Rose has a physical ailment that prohibits her from walking easily. She also survived breast cancer after a mastectomy. In her photograph, her scar is prominently displayed as she holds onto a chair for support. Quoted in Edison and Notkin, Women En Large, 99. 28 Kent, “Fighting Abjection,” 139.

168  Fatness 29 Kathleen LeBesco, Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 47. 30 Peter N. Stearns, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 5. 31 Charlotte Cooper, “Maybe It Should Be Called Fat American Studies,” in The Fat Studies Reader, 329–30. 32 Even the scientific research has been dominated by a focus on United States populations; see Cooper, “Maybe It Should Be Called Fat American Studies,” 328. For more information see Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession With Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health (New York: Penguin Books, 2004); Greg Critser, Fatland: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2003); Laura Fraser, Losing It: America’s Obsession With Weight and the Industry That Feeds on It (New York: Penguin Books, 1994); J. Eric Oliver, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 33 Diana E. Hulick, “Laura Aguilar,” Latin American Art 5, no. 3 (1993): 52; Alice di Certo, “The Unconventional Photographic Self-Portraits of John Coplans, Carla Williams, and Laura Aguilar,” (Master’s thesis, Georgia State University, 2008), 54–5. 34 She has had solo shows at the ArtPace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, the La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, and the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles. Her work has been included in a number of important exhibitions, including “Bad Girls” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City and the 1993 Venice Biennale, and various group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. For examples of her feelings about her education and her attempts to further her career, see Laura Aguilar to Jeffrey Aaronson, June 19, 1987, box 1, folder 2; Laura Aguilar to Esther, May 9, 1987, box 1, folder 2; Laura Aguilar to Julia Nelson, [1987], box 1, folder 2, Laura Aguilar Papers and Photographs, 1981–1995, Cecil H. Green Library, Stanford University (hereafter known as Laura Aguilar Papers). 35 Aguilar to Nelson, Laura Aguilar Papers. 36 Sybil Venegas, “Take Me to the River: The Photography of Laura Aguilar,” in Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, ed. Rebecca Epstein (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2017), 17. 37 Amelia Jones, “Bodies and Subjects in the Technologized Self-Portrait: The Work of Laura Aguilar,” Aztlan 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 208. 38 Laura Aguilar, “Artist’s Statement,” Women Artists of the American West: Lesbian Photography on the US West Coast, 1972–1997, www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Aguilar.htm. 39 Amelia Jones, “Clothed/Unclothed: Laura Aguilar’s Radical Vulnerability,” in Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, 44. 40 Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, “Laying It Bare: The Queer/Colored Body in Photography by Laura Aguilar,” in Living Chicana Theory, ed. Carla Trujillo (Berkeley, CA: Third Woman Press, 1997), 286. 41 Hulick, “Laura Aguilar,” 53. 42 For more information, see Rebecca Block and Lynda Hoffman-Jeep, “Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in ‘Gringolandia,’ ” Woman’s Art Journal 19 no. 2 (Autumn 1998/ Winter 1999): 8–12; Oriana Baddeley, “ ‘Her Dress Hangs Here’: De-Frocking the Kahlo Cult,” Oxford Art Journal 14, no. 1 (1991): 10–17. 43 Aguilar to Pat Lyons, Laura Aguilar Papers. 44 Aguilar discussed the origins of her nude self-portraits in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective, Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series 8, produced by Michael Stone, DVD (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2008). 45 Ann Marie Rousseau, “The Empress Has No Clothes,” review of Laura Aguilar, “Stillness and Motion,” Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, March 8–April 8, 2000, Photo Metro, www.amrousseau.com/articles/photometro10.html. 46 For society’s discomfort with larger bodies, see Laura Fraser, Losing It; LeBesco, Revolting Bodies?. 47 Rousseau, “The Empress Has No Clothes.” 48 Charlotte Cooper, “Headless Fatties,” Charlotte Cooper, January 2007, www.charlotte cooper.net/docs/fat/headless_fatties.htm.

Fatness 169 9 These films are featured in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 4 50 The Body in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 51 Chon A. Noriega, “Talking Heads, Body Politic: The Plural Self of Chicano Video,” in Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, eds. Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 210. Regarding the testimonio, see also John Beverley, “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative),” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 11–28. 52 Chon A. Noriega, “Laura Aguilar: Clothed Unclothed,” CSW Update: Newsletter of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, May 2008, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/ 0vw2z527. 53 Beverley, “The Margin at the Center,” 15. 54 Aguilar, [Statement], July 5, 1983, box 2, folder 2; Aguilar to Suda House, [1980], box 2, folder 2; Aguilar to Jim Goldberg, May 8, 1987, box 1, folder 5, Laura Aguilar Papers. 55 Jones, “Bodies and Subjects in the Technologized Self-Portrait,” 210. 56 Aguilar to Pat Martel, October 5, 1992, box 1, folder 7, Laura Aguilar Papers. 57 See her short films, The Body and Talking About Depression, in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 58 The Body and The Body 2 in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 59 Laura Aguilar, Interview by Jennifer Sternad, Joshua Tree State Park, California, 2005, in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective; “The Photographer Laura Aguilar Is Her Own Model,” Joshua Tree State Park, 2005 in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 60 Luz Calvo, “Laura Aguilar Biography,” Latinos in America, www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/ 3578/Laura-Aguilar.html. 61 Aguilar discusses this in a lecture presented at Stanford University in 2005; recorded and presented in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 62 See Stanford University Lecture, 2005, in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. See also Bill Smith, “The Natural: Laura Aguilar, in the Flesh,” LA Weekly, January 9, 2003, www.laweekly.com/2003-01-16/news/the-natural/. 63 Stanford University Lecture, 2005, in Laura Aguilar: Life, The Body, Her Perspective. 64 Smith, “The Natural.” 65 Berta Sichel, “Laura Aguilar: Why Do We Look at Her?” in Laura Aguilar (Barcelona: Fundación La Caixa, 1998), 38. 66 Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” in Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 75. 67 Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942; repr., New York: Penguin Group, 1969), 87–8. 68 Stefanie Snider, “Social Intelligibility and the In/Visible Body: Laura Aguilar’s Self-­Portraits,” in Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, 77. 69 For more, see Deb Burgard, “What Is ‘Health at Every Size’?” in The Fat Studies Reader; Bacon, Health at Every Size. 70 Sichel, “Laura Aguilar,” 38. 71 Peter Castro, “Ricki on the Rise,” People, November 21, 1994, 114–19. 72 Marjorie Rosen et al., “For Delta, Roseanne and TV’s Other Big Talents, Heavy Means High Ratings,” People, January 14, 1991, 86–90. 73 Kathleen K. Rowe, “Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess,” in Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, eds. Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D’Acci, and Lynn Spigel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 80. 74 Jane Feuer, “Averting the Male Gaze: Visual Pleasure and Images of Fat Women,” in Television, History and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, eds. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 192–6. 75 Feuer, “Averting the Male Gaze,” 195. 76 Because of Aguilar’s own sexuality, the role of lesbianism in her photography is significant and should not be understated. For a thorough discussion of these issues, see Stefanie Snider, “Envisioning Bodily Difference: Refiguring Fat and Lesbian Subjects in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, 1968–2009,” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2010).

170  Fatness 77 Ariane Lopez-Huici, interview by author, New York, April 23, 2010; also discussed in The Body Close Up, directed by Marilia Destot (unreleased, 2008). 78 Brooks Adams, “The Camera and the Flesh,” Art in America 93, no. 2 (February 2005): 61; Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 79 Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 80 Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 81 Jeffrey Hogrefe, “The 200-Pound Supermodel,” New York Observer, March 22, 1998, www.observer.com/print/40314. 82 Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 83 Ariane Lopez-Huici and Joan Ramon Escrivà, Ariane Lopez-Huici (Valencia, Spain: Generalitat Valenciana, 2004), 20. 84 Carter Ratcliff, “Beyond Athens and Eden: The Art of Ariane Lopez-Huici,” in Ariane Lopez-Huici: Visions d’excès, ed. Guy Tosatto (Grenoble: Actes Sud/Musée de Grenoble, 2004), 5. 85 Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 86 Edmund White, “The Sacred Monsters of Ariane Lopez Huici,” in Ariane Lopez-Huici, 5. 87 White, “Sacred Monsters,” 5. 88 Lopez-Huici, interview by author. 89 Adams, “The Camera and the Flesh,” 61. 90 John Wood, “Ariane Lopez-Huici: Monumental Beauty,” Journal of Contemporary Photography VI (2005): 2. 91 For more detail on this development, see Roger Hargreaves and Peter Hamilton, Beautiful and the Damned: The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Photography (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 2001). 92 This model is not identified by Nimoy in the book or in interviews, as she is no longer in touch with the photographer; Leonard Nimoy, telephone interview by author, July 15, 2010. 93 Nicole Pasulka, “Live Large and Prosper,” Salon, December 12, 2007, www.salon.com/ mwt/feature/2007/12/12/leonard_nimoy/print.html. 94 For more on this series, see Donald B. Kuspit, “The Gnostic Nude: Leonard Nimoy’s Photographs,” in Shekhina, ed. Leonard Nimoy (New York: Umbrage, 2002). 95 Abby Ellin, “Girth and Nudity, a Pictorial Mission,” New York Times, May 13, 2007. 96 As published in the book, none of the photographs are given titles. I am using the titles given on the website of Nimoy’s dealer, R. Michelson Galleries, Northampton, Massachusetts. 97 Ellin, “Girth and Nudity.” 98 Pasulka, “Live Large and Prosper.” 99 Marilyn Wann, “Full on With Leonard Nimoy,” Smith Magazine, December 1, 2007, www.smithmag.net/2007/12/01/full-on-with-leonard-nimoy/. 100 Ellin, “Girth and Nudity.” 101 For more information on Heather MacAllister and Big Burlesque see Heather MacAllister, Big Burlesque, 2002–2008, www.bigburlesque.com/. 102 As permanent marks on the body, tattoos are frequently used by different groups to create communities, to bring together those who might be considered outcasts from mainstream society; see Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). 103 Ellin, “Girth and Nudity.” 104 Natalie Angier, foreword to The Full Body Project, by Leonard Nimoy (New York: Five Ties Publishing, 2007), 6. 105 Angier, foreword to The Full Body Project, 6. 106 Nimoy, telephone interview by author. 107 For more information regarding this specific artwork, including the show that was held at the Hammer Museum when Nimoy took his photographs, see Patty Chang and Russell Ferguson, Shangri-La (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2005). 108 Quoted in Pasulka “Live Large and Prosper.” 109 Adams, “The Camera and the Flesh,” 60. 110 Lopez-Huici, interview by author.

Fatness 171 111 Erica Schwiegershausen, “The Photographer Who Captures Fat-Shaming on Camera,” The Cut, November 19, 2014, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/photographer-who-cap tures-fat-shaming-on-film.html. 112 Marvin Heiferman, “The Eyes of Others,” foreword to The Watchers, by Haley MorrisCafiero (Toronto: Magenta Foundation, 2015). 113 Morris-Cafiero’s process is explained in depth in Schwiegershausen, “The Photographer Who Captures Fat-Shaming,”; Heiferman, “The Eyes of Others,”; Haley Morris-Cafiero, “Pictures of People Who Mock Me,” Salon, April 23, 2013, www.salon.com/2013/04/23/ pictures_of_people_who_mock_me/. 114 For just two instances, see Nina Bahadur, “Haley Morris-Cafiero, Photographer, Explores Fat Stigma In ‘Wait Watchers’ Series,” Huffington Post Women, February 7, 2013, www.huff ingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/haley-morris-cafiero-photographer-wait-watchers-fat-accept ance-weight-stigma_n_2631439.html; Jackie Wykes, “That One Isolated Moment: An Interview With Haley Morris-Cafiero,” No More Pot Lucks 28 (2013): http://nomorepotlucks. org/site/that-one-isolated-moment-an-interview-with-haley-morris-cafiero-jackie-wykes/. 115 Resting bitch face originated in this humorous video, “Original Video—Bitchy Resting Face,” YouTube video, 2:39, posted by Broken People, May 22, 2013, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3v98CPXNiSk&version=meter+at+7&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article &contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meterlinks-click. A thoughtful introduction to the term can be found in Jessica Bennett, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF,” New York Times, August 1, 2015, www.nytimes.com/ 2015/08/02/fashion/im-not-mad-thats-just-my-resting-b-face.html?_r=0. 116 Bahadur, “Haley Morris-Cafiero.” 117 Wykes, “That One Isolated Moment,” This argument for the widening view of fat activism is also articulated in Cooper, Fat Activism. 118 Morris-Cafiero, “Pictures of People Who Mock Me.” 119 Gabrielle Olya, “Photographer Captures Strangers From Across the World Reacting to Her Weight in New Book,” People, January 7, 2016, www.people.com/article/haley-morriscafiero-captures-strangers-reacting-weight-new-book. 120 Gillian Orr, “Photographer Haley Morris-Cafiero’s Revealing Project Looks at Passersby, Looking at Her,” Independent, August 7, 2015, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertain ment/art/features/photographer-haley-morris-cafieros-revealing-project-looks-at-passersby-looking-at-her-10441187.html. 121 Morris-Cafiero, “Pictures of People Who Mock Me.” 122 For a thorough and thoughtful history on fat shame, see Amy Erdman Farrell, Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 123 Matt Blum and Katy Kessler, “The Nu Project,” The Nu Project, 2016, https://thenupro ject.com/info. 124 Natalie McCain, “About the Honest Body Project,” The Honest Body Project, 2015, http://thehonestbodyproject.com/?page_id=4. 125 Substantia Jones, “The Adipositivity Project,” The Adipositivity Project, 2016, http://adi positivity.com. 126 For just a few examples, see Angier, foreword to The Full Body Project, 5; Joe Fyfe, “Review: Ariane Lopez-Huici: Photography, at New York Studio School,” Art Critical, January 2008, http://artcritical.com/2008/01/22/ariane-lopez-huici-photography/; White, “Sacred Monsters,” 2; Rousseau, “The Empress Has No Clothes.” 127 Quoted in Hogrefe, “200-Pound Supermodel.” 128 Lopez-Huici, interview by author.

6 Beginnings, Again

Wow huge tits. You are ugly, but your smile is nice. You are too thin now. That’s a big ass. What an ugly little duckling. If you gained weight you’d be more attractive.

These are just some of the painful phrases that appear on T-shirts worn and discarded during One Fine Day, a performance by Katya Grokhovsky (b. 1977, Figure 6.1).1 Besides the plethora of T-shirts, she wears a white tutu, black tights, and glittery, sparkly heels. For part of the performance, she has a bitter lemon in her mouth. Dancing and moving around the gallery, Grokhovsky removes one shirt after the other, placing them in a circle around her. All throughout the performance, a song by The Chiffons plays, repeating “One fine day, you’ll look at me/And you will know our love was meant to be.”2 As soon as the song ends, it begins again. As much as the song is cheerful and speaks to finding love, the song is unresolved. The “girl” of the song wants to find a man and is hopeful that she will, yet in the song, she is just that—­ hopeful. Grokhovsky’s performance plays with the same contradiction. The dancing and playfulness of the performance catches the eye, but the bitterness of the lemon and the phrases on the shirts unnerve the viewer. Katya Grokhovsky’s work often returns to the body, which she calls her favorite art making tool,3 exploring its form across the broad spectrum of formats she uses— drawing, painting, mixed media, video, and performance. In discussing her video work from the early 2010s, she ends up explaining how the stage was set for One Fine Day, elaborating, The videos are performances created for camera, vignettes, in which I utilize my body as a tool for interaction with found objects, such as gift-wrapping paper and pajamas. I explore the gaze and the futility of the ideas of fitting into certain body and beauty ideals, ultimately always failing, in often ridiculously humorous and absurd ways.4 Willing to make herself “ugly” or unattractive, Grokhovsky often wants viewers to be uncomfortable and to question their preconceptions. Drawing attention to unruliness on the part of women who defy expectations and question societal norms (much as the artist does herself), she also takes umbrage with

Beginnings, Again 173

Figure 6.1 Katya Grokhovsky, One Fine Day, 2014, performance. Videographer Yan Gi Cheng Source: Courtesy of the artist.

name-calling and the brash and awful ways the female body has been described. This is especially evident in the phrases on the T-shirts, which are meant to clash with the feminine markers of the heels, the tutus, and even the dance itself. In those elements, Grokhovsky plays the part and is the feminine woman. Yet wearing the shirts with these phrases, she provides the viewer with brief clips that are often leveled at women via catcalling, anonymous trolling, or even loved ones in arguments. By attacking the female body and its differences, these commenters not only demean women, but also define female qualities as inferior, asserting the idea that female bodies are less than their male counterparts. Grokhovsky emphasizes not just how uncomfortable and frustrating it can be as a woman in Western society today, but also how hard it is if your body, for whatever reason, does not fit the ideal societal norm. The painful reality is that so many women do not fit that ideal body type. With the advent of computer manipulation, it is now even impossible to believe what we see on screens and in print. In her memoir about her body, Hunger (2017), Roxane Gay questions if anyone can possibly feel comfortable in their bodies today: “Glossy magazines lead me to believe that this is a rare experience, indeed. The way my friends talk about their bodies also leads me to that same conclusion. Every woman I know is on a perpetual diet.”5 Although she recognizes her own discomfort, she admits that she is “working toward abandoning the damaging cultural messages that tell me my worth is strictly tied up in my body.”6 Grokhovsky, then, is making these painful messages visible on her T-shirts, forcing her audience to see the way women’s bodies are used and discussed. As Grokhovsky puts it, she is examining “issues of female conditioning and ways of decoding it. It seems to be an intricate web of personal and family

174  Beginnings, Again histories as well as societal pressures.”7 Both author and artists make clear that bodies are often separated from the brain and intellect in conversations, but more so for men than women. Consider the treatment of women on red carpets and in tabloid magazines; women are constantly asked what they are wearing and how they prepared for the event, instead of what projects they are working on and why they are there. In what might be seen as innocuous questions, the importance of what a woman looks like is continually reinforced. #SmartGirlsAsk, a hashtag established by Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls organization in 2015, encouraged girls and women to share better questions that could be asked of women on the red carpet, many of which involved their careers, but also spoke to identity issues, politics, and even aspirations and goals.8 This movement came a year after a popular hashtag created by The Representation Project circulated during awards season; #askhermore encouraged better interviews for women on the red carpet.9 As these movements, organizations, Gay, and Grokhovsky are pushing readers and viewers to see, women must reject the ideal female body type as a measure of self-worth and the continual focus on what women’s bodies look like and push for equal treatment for women on all counts. This book has covered the past forty-five years, focusing on the development of female body image as an important subject for visual artists. Many artists whose work was discussed here echo Grokhovsky and have addressed the ways that women’s bodies have been subjected to increasingly unrealistic demands by the mass media and other elements of the general culture. By creating drawings, paintings, films, photographs, and performances engaging with the topics of dieting, fatness, self-harm, and eating disorders, these artists have illuminated the struggles that many women go through every day. Yet it was only on account of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its consciousness-raising tactics that such issues became available for critical treatment. That is to say, insecurities and concerns surrounding female body image certainly existed before the 1960s, but it was not until the rise of the women’s movement that women were able to freely, publicly, and persistently address, challenge, and critique the imposition of unrealistic female bodily norms. My original intention in writing this text was to be as inclusive as possible, pushing beyond the boundaries of the United States, where the feminist art movement was especially concentrated. In fact, I have discussed artists from, or working in, the Netherlands, Canada, China, Germany, Spain, and France who have created artwork that engaged with patterns of disordered eating or self-mutilation. Regardless of their nationality, the artists treated here are focusing on weight and mental health issues that have become particularly prevalent in the United States, which has led the way in privileging a thin female body, as various historians and sociologists have argued.10 Further, I incorporated a variety of media in this book to emphasize that the subject of female body image is not relegated only to the literal representations of the body most commonly seen in photography or painting. From quilts to theatrical performances to a meat dress, the artworks discussed here span all types of materials and objects. What, of course, emerges out of this project is that the media and society-at-large are putting increasing amounts of pressure on women to be perfect. Women and, for that matter, human beings generally, possess a wide variety of body types and sizes, all of which can be considered uniquely beautiful. Instead of celebrating differences, the media imposes harmful expectations and standards on what the female body should

Beginnings, Again 175 be, encouraging the proliferation of body image issues, eating disorders, and selfinjury practices. Accepting all types of body sizes is important, but it is also imperative that society stop imposing any guidelines or beliefs on women’s bodies. Taffy Brodesser-Akner astutely articulates this position, Weight isn’t neutral. A woman’s body isn’t neutral. A woman’s body is everyone’s business but her own. Even in our attempts to free one another, we were still trying to tell one another what to want and what to do. It is terrible to tell people to try to be thinner; it is also terrible to tell them that wanting to lose weight is hopeless and wrong.11 Opinions on women’s bodies should be made only by the women who live in those bodies. Society-at-large needs to stop proscribing how women should look and behave and instead enumerate the countless ways that women are held back by sexist polices and beliefs. Hopefully, this book is the first of many scholarly studies to examine the subject of body image in art. This book is only a beginning. As much as I attempted to be comprehensive, it is impossible to include every artist whose work might well be reevaluated in this context. Further, I have focused explicitly on the female body yet recognize that transwomen will have their own specific, necessary, and relevant views on this topic. As more artists and art historians address these issues, the topic will undoubtedly grow and evolve; scholarship will be increasingly open to their inclusion and their perspective.12 This project, however, was already so large in scope that it would be irresponsible for me to address this topic in a limited way. As the book ends, I would like to briefly discuss a few different projects that challenge both the viewers’ perceptions about their own body as well as the way that art history’s preferences have contributed to those ideas. Annetta Kapon’s Floor Scale (1991) forces viewers to consider their own weight. Known for playing with repetition, minimalism, humorous juxtapositions, and repurposing of mundane, everyday objects, Kapon (b. 1950) was born in Greece but has lived in the United States since 1982. In her interactive gallery installation Floor Scale, Kapon covered the gallery floor wall to wall with bathroom scales. Viewers are invited to enter the room, but to do so they must step on the working scales, which then measure the weight of bodies as they move throughout the room.13 Kapon explained her attempt to capture weight through sculpture: This measurability is often effected [sic] by addition, multiplication, subtraction. In the end, however, like all obsessional counting, these values do not come close to giving any definitive answers. Their function is rather to call into question both empiricist and rationalist ways of thinking.14 Kapon recognized the absurdity of placing such an importance on numbers and measurements, and yet if viewers choose to enter the room, they must confront their weight, a number imbued with an immense power for many in Western society. Describing the reaction of viewers to the piece, Margaret A. Morgan has written, “The floor measures the presence of every viewer, triggering tacit obsessions with body and body image, each onlooker a participant in the bizarre, because denatured, private ritual of seeing if one’s body measures up.”15 As one walks upon the piece, the

176  Beginnings, Again scales shift and move, constantly adjusting to the pressure put upon them. Morgan continues, The scales’ erratic little dials are an endless dissatisfaction, an irritant, their shifting inconstancy a testimony to the elusiveness of the body’s ontology. True to latter-day clichés of the feminine, distortions of self-image tip and swing, like the gaze of a woman who stares at the tiny, distant dial at her feet, in front of her toes, beyond her foreshortened body, hers a gaze that runs over the object in question only to find it always, ineluctably, too much or not enough.16 This public weighing recalls Weight Watchers meetings that used to begin with every person being weighed in front of the others, but it can also bring up more private experiences with a bathroom scale or at a doctor’s appointment. By forcing engaged viewers to measure their weight, Kapon’s Floor Scale intentionally puts participants in a potentially compromising or distressing situation. And in putting the viewer on the scales, Kapon necessitates a direct involvement with her work. The number on that scale can mean so much to people sensitive to weight, but it does not and cannot provide any information other than the number itself. One trend that has emerged in the past ten years has been a surge in literature concerning positive body image and separating weight and body size from health. Rosanne Olson’s project This Is Who I Am (published 2008) is a collection of photographs of all different types of women, inclusive of various ages, races, and sizes. All nude or draped in a sheer cloth, the women are posed to emphasize the shape of their bodies. She explains the project: I wondered what would happen if I invited women of all shapes and sizes to discuss their feelings about their bodies and then let me photograph them in the nude. My goal was one of complete revelation—not hiding behind clothing but exposing both body and mind. What would we learn about ourselves? What would we learn from each other? Would we—could we—become more compassionate? Not only toward ourselves but toward one another?17 Similar to Women En Large, Olson’s project was nonetheless more inclusive in that it incorporated women of all sizes. This book is just one of many published in the last ten years that intends to instruct and help women create a more positive body image.18 Encouraging healthy views concerning body size is a growing movement in other ways besides books, with the formation of organizations such as LoveYourBody.org, Adios Barbie, and Love Your Body Day, a group founded by the National Organization for Women. These texts and groups encourage women to be more accepting and less critical of their physiques, regardless of their size, and aim to counteract the media’s deleterious messages about body size. Remarkably, it seems to be working. In 2015, Mattel released Barbie dolls in a greater range of skin tones than ever before. Then, in 2016, the company released new shapes for their dolls: curvy, petite, and tall versions. Rachel Abrams connects this to a larger societal shift, elaborating, Parents and many health experts have complained that too many dolls, models and even clothing companies conform to an extremely thin, even anorexic, body

Beginnings, Again 177 type and have pressured corporations to offer a broader variety of images and apparel sizes to give girls and boys more confidence in their own body shapes.19 Although this change is certainly overdue, it is rather small and will affect only a smaller segment of the population who actually seeks out the dolls for their children. Yet by providing girls with more options and more examples of body sizes, Mattel is attempting to normalize (and monetize) different types of body sizes for girls. The modeling world is slower to accept all body types, but Ashley Graham is working to change that. In 2016, Graham was the first plus size model to be on the cover of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. Defined as any model who is a US size 8 or above, plus size modeling has become more popular and relevant over the past ten years. At the time of the cover, Graham was a size 16, significantly above the designation of what a plus size model could be, but more in line with clothing stores that cater to women of a larger size. As Laura Beck has argued, “A size 8 can shop pretty much anywhere a size 2 can shop, but size 14 cannot. Hence, a size 8 is not an actual plus size.”20 She continues, noting the average size woman in the United States is a size 14, considerably larger than the size 8 that exemplifies “plus size.” Graham’s Sports Illustrated cover, then, was practically triumphant, championing a body that matches the size of the average woman. Yet the magazine could not bank on Graham alone; indeed, there were three covers, one with Graham, one with rising (traditionally thin) model Hailey Clauson, and one with superstar athlete Ronda Rousey, a mixed martial artist and UFC fighter. Although Sports Illustrated may have released this “groundbreaking” cover in 2016, they could not release it without having two other options of more conventional and typical models on separate covers. While progress is being made, it is slow going, and although differently shaped bodies are gaining more acceptance, the world still privileges thinner bodies. Gradually, the fashion world is beginning to recognize the problematic standards they have set for their models’ bodies, as it has become commonplace to see underage, anorexic models walking runways across the world. Madrid’s regional government placed restrictions on models’ sizes for the first time in 2006 during the Pasarela Cibeles, Madrid’s fall fashion week. Using the body mass index as a guide, medics turned away 30% of the women who had taken part in previous fashion shows because they were deemed unhealthily thin.21 In light of this mandate, the Chelsea Art Museum organized the exhibition Dangerous Beauty in 2007. Acknowledging the dramatic new viewpoint espoused by Spanish officials, the museum explained the intent of the organizers: “The exhibition aims to raise questions about the mass ideology of beauty and explore the connections between beauty and violence, the phobia of aging, issues of self-perception and the element of power inherent in an ‘ideal.’ ”22 Including some of the artists addressed in this book as well as many other men and women, this exhibition addressed beauty standards for all types of people and included explorations not just of body size, but also body-building, fame, the cosmetic and plastic surgery industries, and more. That same year, French model Isabelle Caro posed for a campaign against anorexia sponsored by Italian fashion label Nolita. At the time of shoot, the 5'4" model weighed just sixty pounds.23 The pictures of her nude body, which was not only incredibly thin but also ravaged by malnutrition (as evidenced by discolored feet and a skin rash), were plastered all over Italy for the 2007 Milan fashion week with the slogan “No Anorexia.”24 More recently, France enacted legislation that requires models to

178  Beginnings, Again provide a medical certificate stating they are healthy to all employers. Wanting to avoid the hiring of models who are considered dangerously thin, the bill stops short of specifying a body mass index or weight limit, allowing doctors to determine the health of the models themselves. The punishment can be stiff: up to six months in jail and a maximum fine of $45,000. Additionally, in an attempt to restrict unrealistically modified bodies in advertising and fashion spreads, France also requires statements to be made that the photographs have been digitally modified.25 Although each of these instances of public outcry corresponded specifically to the fashion world, they represent available moments in which people in public positions responded to the pressures on women to be thin. Although perhaps more quietly, even self-harm practices are being discussed more publicly and presented with more sensitivity and respect. Not only is the need for more treatment being recognized, but also the scars themselves are being recognized not as ugly or negative reminders of the past but as marks of healing and surviving. Pop artist Alessia Cara’s “Scars to Your Beautiful” reached number one on the Billboard charts in 2017, with soaring lyrics proclaiming tortured young women can be beautiful.26 She sings, “So she tries to cover up her pain and cut her woes away/Cause cover girls don’t cry after their face is made.” Written by the singer, she assures the listener that scars are beautiful and that the sacrifices that women make daily (makeup or dieting for example) are needless. In this anthem of empowerment, Cara provides hope. Similarly, projects like the Scars Program and Scars Beyond Beauty work to provide free tattoos to cover self-harm scars. Former social worker Serena Solomon has seen the damage of self-mutilation firsthand, recognizing, For many who cut, the scars become a stubborn life chapter that just won’t shut. Unlike other forms of self-harm—say, alcoholism or anorexia—when you cut, burn, or self-injure in some other way, it’s a past that can be visible for the world to see years after you stop.27 Modifying or hiding the scars with tattooing is not an answer for everyone, but it can help many who have worked to move beyond self-injury. In modifying the scars, making them more acceptable to both those that self-injured and the world around them, these tattoos are attempting to usher in the same type of acceptance as that of different-size Barbies. Although these new messages are needed, it is also important to consider historical positions of the ideal female body type and both their lingering effects on today’s views and their contributions to the internalizations of what the female body should look like. In the past few years, a number of young artists have tackled the heralding of the ideal body form in art history. Although I have addressed the way contemporary artists are challenging contemporary society, historically, the female nude (not the naked woman) has been privileged and continues to be so.28 By causing viewers to realize their perceptions and understandings of the great masterpieces, and the privileging of a white, thin body over time, these artists help us to understand how we got to this point in contemporary society. For example, in her series Illusions of the Body (2013), Gracie Hagan29 uses images to show the way that lighting and body positioning can create an appealing depiction of a sitter or one that is distinctly unflattering. The positions and structures of portraits that have been painted and photographed for hundreds of years are most often

Beginnings, Again 179 done in a way to create extremely flattering images of the sitter. Hagan creates pairs of images, where in one image, her models pose as if being photographed for high fashion magazines or perfectly composed portraits. Hips and chins are positioned just so and the correct muscles are flexed. In the accompanying photographs, shoulders are hunched and bellies protrude. Hagan does not use any kind of digital manipulation; rather, it is just the lightening and the shapes created by body. She refers to it as the “Frozen Dinner Phenomenon,” explaining, “When you buy a pre-packaged meal, the cover of the box looks amazing. When you’ve opened the box and prepared it, never does it look as good as the photo on the box. Why? Because it’s advertising.” Hagan compares this to the way that bodies are packaged to the public as well, and she calls on people to challenge what they see: “Our job as consumers is to think critically about the things they’re selling us and help others realize that what they are being sold is something reminiscent but not the exact thing.”30 Hagan may challenge the composition of portraits, but Julia Fullerton-Batten (b. 1970) looks to reclaim the way that larger and more voluptuous bodies used to be the ideal form for both women and men. In her series Unadorned (2012), she photographed unclothed men and women in poses and postures that recall Baroque masterpieces. More importantly, she uses body types that mirror Peter Paul Rubens’s models more than they do today’s models. In carefully composed scenes and soft lightening, Fullerton-Batten’s photographs of flesh mirror the warmly lit and detailed bodies in Baroque paintings. Of this work, she elaborates, Larger-than-life models of both sexes unashamedly shed their clothes and posed for me in the nude. I placed them individually in a scene with appropriate props and asked them to pose in ways that would show off their shape naturally and enhance their beauty.31 By reviving the ideal body types of the past, Fullerton-Batten is able to show just how much the body type of the present has changed. The opposite strategy of Fullerton-Batten—shrinking the bodies of models in old master paintings—has become somewhat of a fad. Artists and designers like Nazareno Crea, Anna Utopia Giordano, Joshua Marr, and Lauren Wade have all digitally altered masterpiece paintings to make the women’s physiques conform to the average size of female models today.32 In these manipulated versions of paintings that are often focused on the goddess of beauty Venus, soft curves make way for tiny waists and protruding ribs. This gimmick sees numerous retreads of the same basic principle, while continually receiving press attention. The fascination with the manipulation of great works of art makes it increasingly clear that people are both still interested in and still shocked by the way the ideal female body image has changed in the past 600 years. These historical interventions all work to point to out the problematic handing of women’s bodies over the course of time. As artists continue to challenge how our perceptions about weight and body size have been molded, the conception of an ideal body size is increasingly revealed as a malignant cultural fiction. Furthermore, because publishers and advertisers rely heavily on airbrushing and retouching in their images, even those actual model bodies that most conform to the ideal have become increasingly unreal, not to mention impossible, to emulate. The artists discussed here have presented a diverse range of female bodies, types, and even mental health, encouraging the viewing public to be more skeptical of media messages about the way the female

180  Beginnings, Again body should look and behave. This requires constant vigilance and awareness as well as willingness to reprogram the ways we have been taught to consider the female body. Hopefully, more and more people, especially artists, continue to challenge these ideals so that our daughters and granddaughters can live in a more welcoming, understanding, and overall healthy environment.

Notes 1 The performance took place on February 12, 2014, at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, on occasion of the exhibition “Body Conscious” organized by Emily L. Newman. 2 Carole King and Gerry Goffin, One Fine Day (New York: Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 1963). 3 Five Alive Interviews, “Five Alive—Katya Grokhovsky,” Kind Aesthetic, June 28, 2014, http://kindaesthetic.com/blog/2014/6/27/five-alive-katya-grokhovsky. 4 Laura Mylott Manning, “Katya Grokhovsky: Exploring the Grotesque Zone,” Arte Fuse, February 19, 2015, https://artefuse.com/2015/02/19/katya-grokhovsky-exploring-the-gro tesque-zone-123898/. 5 Roxane Gay, Hunger (New York: Harper Collins, 2017), 300. 6 Gay, Hunger, 301. 7 Anni Irish, “Katya Grokhovsky: Challenging the Status Quo,” Art for Progress, 2015, www.artforprogress.org/katya-grokhovsky-challenging-the-status-quo/. 8 Allana Vagianos, “15 Questions for Women on the Red Carpet That Are Better Than ‘What Are You Wearing?’ ” Huffington Post, December 19, 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/15questions-for-women-on-the-red-carpet-smart-girls-ask_us_55fc2f8ae4b08820d91854a7. 9 The Representation Project was created following the release of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s film Miss Representation in 2011. Their mission statement is significant: “Using film and media as catalysts for cultural transformation, The Representation Project inspires individuals and communities to challenge and overcome limiting stereotypes so that everyone—regardless of gender, race, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, ability, or circumstance—can fulfill their human potential.” For more information, see “Mission,” The Representation Project, http://therepresentationproject.org. 10 Charlotte Cooper, “Maybe It Should Be Called Fat American Studies,” in The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 327–33; Laura Fraser, Losing It: America’s Obsession With Weight and the Industry That Feeds on It (New York: Penguin Books, 1994); Roberta Pollack Seid, Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War With Their Bodies (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1989); Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 11 Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age,” New York Times Magazine, August 2, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/magazine/weight-watchers-oprah-losing-itin-the-anti-dieting-age.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur&_r=1. 12 For example, this project is beginning important work, Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, eds., Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). 13 Jacob Dahlgren’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth (2006) is remarkably similar. Dahlgren’s piece included a different conglomeration of brightly colored Ikea bathroom scales arranged in the gallery in the same fashion that Kapon had fifteen years earlier. His work was first shown at the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm in 2006 and at Chelsea Art Museum’s 2007 show “Dangerous Beauty.” 14 Annetta Kapon, “Portfolio of Art Work: Measurability, Quantification, Repetition,” Annetta Kapon, http://annettakapon.com/measurability/measure_floorscale1.htm. 15 Margaret A. Morgan, “A Box, a Pipe, and a Piece of Plumbing,” in Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender and Identity, ed. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 71. 16 Morgan, “A Box, a Pipe, and a Piece of Plumbing,” 71. 17 Rosanne Olson, This Is Who I am (New York: Artisan, 2008), xi–x. 18 For example, Michelle Graham, Wanting to Be Her: Body Image Secrets Victoria Won’t Tell You (Nottingham, UK: IVP Books, 2005); Sarah Maria, Love Your Body, Love Your

Beginnings, Again 181 Life: Five Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2009); Thomas E. Cash, The Body Image Workbook: An Eight Step Program for Learning to Like Your Looks (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2008); Pat Ballard, Ten Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are) (Nashville, TN: Pearlsong Press, 2008); Substantia Jones, The Adipositivity Project, http:// theadipositivityproject.zenfolio.com/about.html; Natalie McCain, The Honest Body Project: Real Stories and Untouched Portraits of Women & Motherhood (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2017). 19 Rachel Abrams, “Barbie Adds Curvy and Tall to Body Shapes,” New York Times, January 28, 2016. 20 Laura Beck, “Is This What a Plus-Size Model Should Look Like?” Cosmopolitan, January 11, 2014, www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a18375/plus-sized-models/. 21 Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, “Fashion Group Sets Guides to Rein in Ultra-Thin Models,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2007; “Skinny Models Banned from Catwalk,” CNN.com, http:// articles.cnn.com/2006-09-13/world/spain.models_1_association-of-fashion-designersskinny-models-pasarela-cibeles?_s=PM:WORLD. 22 Chelsea Art Museum, “Dangerous Beauty,” press release, January 25, 2007, www.chel seaartmuseum.org/exhibits/2007/dangerousbeauty/index.html. 23 The photographer, Oliver Toscani, is best known for photographing the United Colors of Benetton ads (1982–2000). He gained notoriety for these campaigns, many of which took on challenging subjects like racism, the treatment of AIDS patients, and capital punishment. 24 William Grimes, “Isabelle Caro, Anorexic Model, Dies at 28,” New York Times, December 30, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/europe/31caro.html. 25 Kim Willsher, “Models in France Must Provide Doctor’s Note to Work,” The Guardian, December 17, 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/18/models-doctors-note-provenot-too-thin-france. 26 Alessia Cara, Warren Felder, Coleridge Tilman, and Andrew Wansel, Scars to Your Beautiful (New York: Def Jam, 2016). 27 Serena Solomon, “How Tattoos Can Ease the Emotional Pain of Self-Harm Scars,” Vice, August 21, 2015, www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqm534/summer-is-the-hardest-time-to-hideself-harm-scars-511. 28 Here, I am referring to Kenneth Clark’s famous discussion of how the nude form could represent the epitome of great art, transcend subjecthood, and become art itself. To Clark, to be naked is to be without clothes. For a much more nuanced discussion, see his tome, Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956). 29 Gracie Hagan does not list her age on her website, in any of her materials, or in any of the interviews or press she has completed. Possibly, by refusing to clearly state her age, she is rejecting society’s ageism. After all, her work consistently questions and challenges society’s expectations—often to get at something hidden or invisible. Sharing her age would be one way of just fitting into an expected mold. Perhaps, though, it is much simpler: she just does not want to share her age. 30 Gracie Hagan, Illusions of the Body (Chicago: Self Published, 2013). 31 Julia Fullerton-Batten, “Unadorned, 2012, Artist Statement,” Julia Fullerton-Batten, www. juliafullerton-batten.com/projecttext.php?catNo=1&gallNo=8. 32 These projects are explored in more detail in the following pieces, Tshepo Mokoena, “Venus de Lipo,” Don’t Panic, April 29, 2012; Hrag Vartanian, “Tired Photoshop Idea: Old Masters Lose Weight,” Hyperallergic, May 23, 2014, https://hyperallergic.com/128282/ tired-photoshop-idea-old-masters-lose-weight/.

Selected Bibliography

Aaronson, Deborah, Diane Fortenberry, and Rebecca Morrill, eds. Body of Art. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2015. Abramovic´, Marina. 7 Easy Pieces. Milan: Charta, 2007. ———. Walk Through Walls. New York: Crown Archetype, 2016. Acconci, Vito. Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body 1969–1973. New York: Charta, 2006. Adams, Brooks. “The Camera and the Flesh.” Art in America 93, no. 2 (February 2005): 59–62. Aliaga, Juan Vicente, Yolanda Romero Gómez, Martha Rosler, and Alan Gilbert. Martha Rosler: la casa, la calle, la cocina = the House, the Street, the Kitchen. Granada, Spain: Diputación de Granada, 2009. Anderson, Patrick. So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Antin, Eleanor. “An Autobiography of the Artist as Autobiographer.” LAICA Journal, no. 2 (October 1974): 18–20. ———. It Is Almost That: A Collection of Image+Text Work by Women Artists & Writers. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2011. ———. Conversations with Stalin. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2013. Antin, Eleanor, Huey Copeland, Malik Gaines, Alexandro Segade, Henry M. Sayre, and Emily Liebert. Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves”. New York: Wallach Art Gallery, 2013. Aston, Elaine and Geraldine Harris. A Good Night Out for the Girls: Popular Feminisms in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Aubry, Timothy Richard and Trysh Travis, eds. Rethinking Therapeutic Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Ayerza, Josefina. “Maureen Connor.” Lacanian Ink, no. 8 (Spring 1994): www.lacan.com/ frameVIII14.htm. Banner, Lois W. American Beauty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Battista, Kathy. Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Art in 1970s London. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Baumgartner, Frédérique. “Reviving the Collective Body: Gina Pane’s ‘Escalade Non Anesthésiée.’ ” Oxford Art Journal 34, no. 2 (2011): 247–63. Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010. Beccaria, Marcella, ed. Vanessa Beecroft Performances, 1993–2003. Milan: Skira, 2003. Beecroft, Vanessa. Vanessa Beecroft. Senefelderstraße. Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2004. Bell, Susan E. “Photo Images: Jo Spence’s Narratives of Living with Illness.” Health 6, no. 1 (2002): 5–30. ———. “Living with Breast Cancer in Text and Image: Making Art to Make Sense.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, no. 1 (January 2006): 31–44. Bellamy, Dodie. When the Sick Rule the World. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2015.

Selected Bibliography 183 Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. Faith Ringgold: Change: Painted Story Quilts. New York: Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 1987. Best, Susan. Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Beverley, John. “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative).” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 11–28. Biesenbach, Klaus, ed. Into Me/Out of Me. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2007. Birringer, Johannes. “Video Art/Performance: A Border Theory.” Performing Arts Journal 13, no. 3 (September 1991): 54–84. Bishop, Claire. “Vanessa Beecroft: VB:43.” Make: The Magazine of Women’s Art, no. 88 (Summer 2000): 31–2. Blessing, Jennifer. “Gina Pane’s Witnesses.” Performance Research 7, no. 4 (2002): 14–26. Bolaki, Stella. “Recovering the Scarred Body: Textual and Photographic Narratives of Breast Cancer.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 44, no. 2 (June 2011): 1–17. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. Bowles, John P. Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Bradley, Patricia. Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Braziel, Janaevans and Kathleen LeBesco, eds. Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Broude, Norma and Mary D. Gerrard, eds. Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994. Brown, Caroline A. The Black Female Body in American Literature and Art: Performing Identity. New York: Routledge, 2012. Brown, Caterina and Karin Jasper, eds. Consuming Passions: Feminist Approaches to Weight Preoccupation and Eating Disorders. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1993. Brownmiller, Susan. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. New York: Dial, 1999. Bruch, Hilde. The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa. 1978. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa. 1988. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: Random House, 2000. Brunsdon, Charlotte and Lynn Spigel, eds. Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Burkard, Lene. Jana Sterbak: Video Installationer. Odense, Denmark: Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, 2004. Butler, Cornelia H. and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Campos, Paul. The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Caplan, Usher and Claire Rochon, eds. Jana Sterbak: States of Being = Corps à Corps. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1991. Carr, C. On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1993. Case, Sue Ellen, ed. Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Chadwick, Whitney and Dawn Ades. Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Chaudhuri, Una, ed. Rachel’s Brain and Other Storms—Rachel Rosenthal: Performance Texts. London: Continuum, 2001. Chavanne, Blandine. Gina Pane. Dijon, France: Les Presses du Réel, 2011.

184  Selected Bibliography Chen, Nancy N. and Helene Moglen. Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations. Santa Cruz, CA: New Pacific Press, 2006. Cheng, Meiling. In Other Los Angeles: Multicentric Performance Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Chin, Daryl. “Models of Fashion.” Performance Art Journal 20, no. 3 (September 1998): 22–5. Collins, Gail. America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003. Colls, Rachel. “BodiesTouchingBodies: Jenny Saville’s Over-Life-Sized Paintings and the ‘Morpho-Logics’ of Fat, Female Bodies.” Gender, Place & Culture 19, no. 2 (2012): 175–92. Conesa, Chema. Laia Abril (Bibioteca Photobolsillo). Madrid, Spain: La Fabrica, 2016. Connelly, Frances S. Modern Art and the Grotesque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Connor, Maureen. Maureen Connor: Narrow Escape. Munich: Kunstraum München, 1997. Cooper, Charlotte. Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size. London: The Women’s Press, 1998. ———. Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement. Bristol, UK: HammerOn Press, 2016. Corinne, Tee. “Review: Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes.” Afterimage 22, no. 5 (December 1994): 10–11. Costello, Diarmuid and Dominic Willsdon. The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Cottingham, Laura. Seeing Through the Seventies: Essays on Feminism and Art. Australia: G+B Arts International, 2000. Critser, Greg. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Cullen, Kathleen. “Maureen Conner [sic].” Journal of Contemporary Art 6, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 16–28. Curtis, Harriet and Martin Hargreaves, eds. Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies). Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2018. Danieli, Edie. “Rachel Rosenthal: A Life History.” Artweek, December 13, 1975. Davidov, Judith Fryer. Women’s Camera Work: Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Davis, Jen. My Body Your Body. Chicago: Photography Dept. of Columbia College Chicago, 2003. Davis, Jen, Anne Tucker, and John Pilson. Eleven Years. Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer, 2014. de Bruijne, Ellen, ed. L. A. Raeven: Analyse/Research. Zeppelinstrasse, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2010. de Zegher, Catherine M., ed. Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ———. Women’s Work Is Never Done: An Anthology. New York: Artbook D.A.P., 2014. Della Monica, Lauren P. Bodies of Work: Contemporary Figurative Painting. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2015. Di Bella, Maria Pia and James Elkins. Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture. New York: Routledge, 2013. Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done. New York: Times Books, 2010. Dow, Bonnie J. “Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 127–60. Doyle, Jennifer. Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ———. Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Duggan, Patrick. “The Touch and the Cut: An Annotated Dialogue with Kira O’Reilly.” Studies in Theatre and Performance 29, no. 3 (2009): 307–25.

Selected Bibliography 185 Dykstra, Jean. “The Community of Difference.” Art in America 96, no. 11 (2008): 128–36. Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Ellin, Abby. “Girth and Nudity, a Pictorial Mission.” New York Times, May 13, 2007. Elstgeest, Tanja. “Wild Zone: A Conversation with L. A. Raeven.” From, no. 4 (2001): 54–6. Enguita, Nuria. Sanja Ivekovic: alerta General: obras 1974–2007. Barcelona: Fundacio undació Tapies, 2008. Epstein, Rebecca. Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2017. Erdrich, Loren. “I Am a Monster: The Indefinite and the Malleable in Contemporary Female Self-Portraiture.” Circa 121 (Autumn 2007): 43–9. Fahey, Tracy. “A Taste for the Transgressive: Pushing Body Limits in Contemporary Performance Art.” M/C Journal 17, no. 1 (March 2014): http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index. php/mcjournal/article/view/781. Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Favazza, Armando. Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry. 3rd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Feaver, William. Lucian Freud. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. Ferree, Myra and Beth Hess. Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change. New York: Routledge, 2000. Filipovic, Elena, Joanna Mytkowska, and Alina Szapocznikow. Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2011. Fox, Howard. Eleanor Antin. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999. Fox-Kales, Emily. Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. Foxcroft, Louise. Calories & Corsets. London: Profile Books, 2011. Fraser, Laura. Losing It: America’s Obsession with Weight and the Industry That Feeds on It. New York: Dutton, 1997. Freeman, Jo. “The Origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement.” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (January 1973): 792–811. Frieser, Hannah. Contact Sheet 165: Looking & Looking. Syracuse, NY: Light Work, 2012. Frueh, Joanna, Laurie Fierstein, and Judith E. Stein, eds. Picturing the Modern Amazon. New York: Rizzoli, 2000. Fuchs, Anneli, Lars Grambye, and Jana Sterbak. Jana Sterbak. Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Særkatalog, 1993. Gale, Peggy. “Color Video/Vulgar Potential.” Parachute 29 (1982): 18–23. Galloway, Munro. “I Prefer Nudity.” Art Press, no. 265 (February 2001): 24–8. Gaulke, Cheri. Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building (Volume II). Los Angeles: Ben Maitz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, 2011. Gavin, Francesca. “Mixed Doubles.” Blueprint, no. 192 (February 2002): 30–2. Gay, Roxane. Hunger. New York: Harper Collins, 2017. Gill, Rosalind and Christina Scharff, eds. New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Glabush, Sky. “Genealogies of Blood and Breath.” Border Crossings 19, no. 2 (2000): 89–91. Golden, Marita and Susan Shreve, eds. Skin Deep: Black Women & White Women Write About Race. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1995. Goodman, W. Charisse. The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America. Carlsbad, CA: Gurze Books, 1995. Graham, Michelle. Wanting to Be Her: Body Image Secrets Victoria Won’t Tell You. Nottingham, UK: IVP Books, 2005.

186  Selected Bibliography Grover, Jan Zita and Jo Spence. “ ‘Sharing the Wounds’: Jan Zita Grover Interviews Jo Spence.” The Women’s Review of Books 7, no. 10–11 (July 1990): 38–9. Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Hanley, JoAnn and Ann-Sargent Wooster. The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75. New York: Independent Curators Inc., 1993. Haralovich, Mary Beth and Lauren Rabinovitz, eds. Television, History and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Harris, Jennifer and Elwood Watson, eds. The Oprah Phenomenon. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2007. Harris-Moore, Deborah. Media and the Rhetoric of Body Perfection: Cosmetic Surgery, Weight Loss and Beauty in Popular Culture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014. Harth, Marjorie, ed. The Twenty-First Century Odyssey Part II: The Performances of Barbara T. Smith. Claremont, CA: Pomona College Museum of Art, 2005. Hepworth, Julie. The Social Construction of Anorexia Nervosa. London: Sage Publications, 1999. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 2015. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy. The Cult of Thinness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Honigman, Ana Finel. “Enabling Art: Self-Expression/Self-Harm in the Work and Reception of L. A. Raeven.” Third Text 28, no. 2 (2014): 177–89. Horsfield, Kate and Lucas Hilderbrand, eds. Feedback: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art and Artist Interviews. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006. Hulick, Diana E. “Laura Aguilar.” Latin American Art 5, no. 3 (1993): 52. Ivekovic, Sanja. Public Cuts. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., 2006. Ivekovic´, Sanja, Nataša Ilic´, Kathrin Rhomberg, Keith Patrick, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Sanja Ivekovic´: Selected Works. Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2008. Janus, Elizabeth. “Vanessa Beecroft.” ArtForum 33, no. 9 (May 1995): 92–3. Johnson, Clare. Femininity, Time, and Feminist Art. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Jones, Amelia. “Bodies and Subjects in the Technologized Self-Portrait: The Work of Laura Aguilar.” Aztlan 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 203–19. ———. Body Art: Performing the Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Jones, Amelia and Erin Silver, eds. Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016. Jones, Amelia and Andrew Stephenson, eds. Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London: Routledge, 1999. Juhasz, Alexandra, ed. Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Kogelnik, Kiki and Ciara Moloney. Kiki Kogelnik: Fly Me to the Moon. Oxford, UK: Modern Art Oxford, 2015. Kogelnik, Kiki, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Susanne Längle, and Alexandra Hennig. Kiki Kogelnik: Retrospektive = Retrospective. Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2013. Küppers, Petra. Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge. New York: Routledge, 2004. ———. The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performance and Contemporary Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. LeBesco, Kathleen. Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Levenkron, Steven. The Best Little Girl in the World. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1978. ———. Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

Selected Bibliography 187 Levy, Ariel. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. New York: Free Press, 2005. Lindenberg, Charlotte. “Barbara T. Smith Revisited.” N. Paradoxa, no. 24 (2009): 85–93. Linton, Meg, Sue Maberry, and Elizabeth Pulsinelli. Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building. Los Angeles: Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, 2011. Lobel, Brian. “Playing More Than the Cancer Card.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 15, no. 2 (June 2010): 29–33. Lopez-Huici, Ariane and Joan Ramon Escrivà. Ariane Lopez-Huici. Valencia, Spain: Generalitat Valenciana, 2004. Louderback, Llewellyn. Fat Power: Whatever You Eat Is Right. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1970. Lovejoy, Meg. “Disturbances in the Social Body: Differences in Body Image and Eating Problems Among African American and White Women.” Gender and Society 15, no. 2 (April 2001): 239–61. Lupton, Ellen. Skin: Surface, Substance + Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. MacSween, Morag. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge, 1993.Marcoci, Roxana and Sanja Ivekovic. Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011. Maria, Sarah. Love Your Body, Love Your Life: Five Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2009. Marranca, Bonnie and Gautam Dasgupta, eds. Conversations on Art and Performance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Martin, Courtney E. Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. New York: Free Press, 2007. Martin, Rosy. “The Performative Body: Phototherapy and Re-Enactment.” Afterimage 29, no. 3 (November/December 2001): 17. McLerran, Jennifer. “Disciplined Subjects and Docile Bodies in the Work of Contemporary Artist Jana Sterbak.” Feminist Studies 24, no. 3 (1998): 535–52. McMillan, Uri. Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Meagher, Michelle. “Jenny Saville and a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust.” Hypatia (2003): 23–41. Mears, Ashley. Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011. Mendible, Myra, ed. American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016. Mileaf, Janine A. Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art. St. Louis, MO: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2004. Millett-Gallant, Ann. The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Moeslein-Teising, Ingrid and Frances Thomson Salo. eds. The Female Body: Inside and Outside. London: Karnac Books, 2013. Montano, Linda. Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Morgan, Robin, ed. Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. Moss, Karen. “Martha Rosler’s Photomontages and Garage Sales: Private and Public, Discursive and Dialogical.” Feminist Studies 39, no. 3 (2013): 686–721. Murray, Samantha. The ‘Fat’ Female Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Nemiroff, Diana, ed. Jana Sterbak: States of Being/Corps a Corps. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1992.

188  Selected Bibliography Newman, Emily L. “Fashionable Flesh: Meat as Clothing.” Fashion, Style, & Popular Culture 4, no. 1 (January 2017): 105–20. Newman, Emily L. and Emily Witsell, eds. The Lifetime Network: Essays on Television for Women in the 21st Century. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2016. Nimoy, Leonard. Shekhina. New York: Umbrage, 2002. ———. The Full Body Project. New York: Five Ties Publishing, 2007. Nochlin, Linda. The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995. ———. Representing Women. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999. ———. “Floating in Gender Nirvana.” Art in America 88, no. 3 (2000): 94–7. O’Dell, Kathy. Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Oliver, Eric J. Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. O’Neil, Ashley. “A Call for Truth in the Fashion Pages: What the Global Trend in Advertising Regulation Means for U.S. Beauty and Fashion Advertisers.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 21, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 619–41. Opie, Catherine. Catherine Opie: American Photographer. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008. Orbach, Susie. Fat Is a Feminist Issue. New York: Berkley Books, 1978. ———. Bodies: Big Ideas, Small Books. New York: Picador, 2009. O’Reilly, Sally. The Body in Contemporary Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2009. Overeaters Anonymous. Beyond Our Wildest Dreams: A History of Overeaters Anonymous as Seen by a Cofounder. Rio Rancho, NM: Overeaters Anonymous, 1996. Penny, Laurie. Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. New York: Routledge, 1993. Phelan, Peggy and Jill Lane, eds. The Ends of Performance. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Piper, Adrian. “Food for the Spirit.” High Performance 4, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 34–5. ———. Out of Order, Out of Sight. Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Portmann, John. Bad for Us: The Lure of Self-Harm. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004. Raisborough, Jayne. Fat Bodies, Health and the Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Reilly, Maura. “The Drive to Describe: An Interview with Catherine Opie.” Art Journal 60, no. 2 (2014): 82–95. ———, ed. Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Renov, Michael and Erika Suderburg, eds. Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Rhode, Deborah. “Media Images, Feminist Issues.” Signs 20, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 685–710. Ringgold, Faith. We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold. Boston, MA: Bulfinch Press, 1995. Robinson, Hilary. Reading Art, Reading Irigaray: The Politics of Art by Women. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. Rosenbach, Ulrike. Ulrike Rosenbach: Video and Performance Art. Boston, MA: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1983. Rosenthal, Rachel. “The Death Show.” High Performance 2, no. 5 (March 1979): 44. ———. The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! London: Routledge, 2010. Rosler, Martha. Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975–2001. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Rosler, Martha and Stephen Squibb. Culture Class. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013. Roth, Moira, ed. The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970–1980. Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983.

Selected Bibliography 189 ———, ed. Rachel Rosenthal. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Saketopoulou, Avgi. “Catherine Opie: American Photographer, American Pervert.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 14, no. 3 (2013): 245–52. Saville, Jenny. Jenny Saville. New York: Rizzoli, 2005. ———. Jenny Saville: Continuum. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2012. Sawelson-Gorse, Naomi, ed. Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender and Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Scala, Mark. Paint Made Flesh. Nashville, TN: Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 2009. ———, ed. Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art. Nashville, TN: Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 2015. Schimmel, Paul and Jenni Sorkin, eds. Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016. New York: Hauser & Wirth, 2016. Schneemann, Carolee. More Than Meat Joy: Complete Performance Works & Selected Writings. New Paltz, NY: Documentext, 1979. Schneider, Rebecca. The Explicit Body in Performance. London: Routledge, 1997. Schoenfielder, Lisa and Barb Wieser, eds. Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Book Company, 1983. Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat. New York: Free Press, 1986. Seid, Roberta Pollack. Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War With Their Bodies. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1989. Seward, Keith. “Classic Cruelty.” Parkett 56 (1999): 99–100. Sigman, Jill. “Self-Mutilation, Interpretation, and Controversial Art.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 27, no. 1 (2003): 88–114. Smith, Barbara. Barbara Smith. San Diego: University of California Art Gallery, 1974. Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, eds. Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Smits, Lisette. “Looking for Trouble: Interview with L. A. Raeven.” Casco Issues, no. 6 (2000): 34–6. Solovay, Sondra and Esther Rothblum, eds. The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Soussloff, Catherine M., ed. Jewish Identity in Modern Art History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Spector, Nancy. “Flesh and Bones.” Artforum 30, no. 7 (March 1992): 95–9. Spence, Jo. Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal, and Photographic Autobiography. London: Camden Press, 1986. ———. Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression. London: Routledge, 1995. Spence, Jo and Louisa Lee. Jo Spence: The Final Project. London: Ridinghouse, 2013. Stearns, Peter N. Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Steinhoff, Heike. Transforming Bodies: Makeovers and Monstrosities in American Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Steinmetz, Julia, Heather Cassils, and Clover Leary. “Behind Enemy Lines: Toxic Titties Infiltrate Vanessa Beecroft.” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 753–83. Stern, Nathaniel. Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance. Canterbury, UK: Gylphi Limited, 2013. Sternudd, Hans T. “ ‘I Like to See Blood’: Visuality and Self-Cutting.” Visual Studies 29, no. 1 (January 2014): 14–29. Strong, Marilee. A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain. New York: Viking Penguin, 1998. Thein, Ivonne and Heide Häusler. Zweiunddreißig Kilo. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2008. Thompson, Becky W. A Hunger So Wide and So Deep: A Multiracial View of Women’s Eating Problems. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

190  Selected Bibliography Tosatto, Guy, ed. Ariane Lopez-Huici: Visions d’excès. Grenoble: Actes Sud/Musée de Grenoble, 2004. Travis, Trysh. The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Vergine, Lea. Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. Milan: Skira, 2000. Wacker, Kelly Ann, ed. Baroque Tendencies in Contemporary Art. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007. Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly, ed. Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Wann, Marilyn. Fat!So? Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1998. Ward, Frazer. No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2012. Wark, Jayne. “Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson.” Woman’s Art Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 44–50. ———. Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. Weinstock, Jane. “Interview with Martha Rosler.” October, no. 17 (Summer 1981): 77–98. West, Lindy. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. New York: Hachette Books, 2016. Westcott, James. When Marina Abramovic´ Dies: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Wipplinger, Hans-Peter, ed. Kiki Kogelnik: Retrospective. Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2013. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. 1991. Reprint, New York: Perennial, 2002. Wong, Paul, ed. 21st Century Art of Steele + Tomczak: The Long Time. Vancouver: On Main and VIVO, 2012. Zeisler, Andi. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, The Buying and Selling of a Political Movement. New York: Public Affairs, 2016. Zweig, Ellen. “Constructing Loss: Film and Presence in the Work of Eleanor Antin.” Millennium Film Journal, no. 29 (Fall 1996): 34–41.

Index

Abramović, Marina 18, 105, 107, 115 – 18; Rhythm 10 105, 116; Thomas Lips 116 Abrams, Rachel 176 – 7 Abril, Laia 18, 83 – 97, 119 – 20, 132; A Bad Day 18, 85 – 6, 119 – 20; The Epilogue 18, 85, 89 – 92; Thinspiration*Fanzine 18, 85 – 8, 120 Acconci, Vito 105, 108 – 9; Conversions 105, 108 – 9; Rubbing Piece 108 – 9 Adios Barbie 176 African-American ideal body type 33 – 4, 41 Aguilar, Laura 19, 140, 143 – 51, 159 – 62; 12 Lauras 146 – 7; The Body 147 – 9; The Body II 149; dyslexia 144; Grounded 149; Motion 58 151; Motion 59 151; Nature Self-Portrait 2 also known as Her Spirit Moves Me, A Homage to Judy Dater 149 – 51; In Sandy’s Room 146 – 7; Stillness 26 151; Three Eagles Flying 145 – 6 Alberro, Alexander 14, 16, 77 alcoholism 63 – 4, 106, 178 Aldebaren see Fishman, Sara Golda Bracha Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls 174 Anderson, Patrick 7, 79 Angier, Natalie 160 anorexia 14 – 17, 24, 41, 61 – 2, 64 – 104, 106 – 7, 119 – 20, 177 – 8; side effects 61 – 2, 95; symptoms 15 – 16, 61 – 2, 64 – 5, 79, 95; see also eating disorders Antin, Eleanor 1 – 3, 5, 10 – 13, 17, 25 – 6, 32 – 3; Carving: A Traditional Sculpture 1 – 3, 5, 11 – 13, 17, 26, 32; Representational Painting 10 – 13 Athey, Ron 133n15 Atkins Diet, The 13, 24 Aunt Jemima 35 Babes (television show) 152 – 3 Bacon, Linda 151 Barbie 19, 176 – 8 bariatric surgery 49 – 50, 54; gastric bypass 49; insurance coverage 50; LAP-BAND 49 Barr, Roseanne 34, 152

Baumgardner, Jennifer 81 Beck, Laura 177 Beecroft, Vanessa 18, 67 – 83, 95 – 7; Book of Food 18, 69 – 70, 81 – 2; drawings 69 – 70; “girls” 70 – 1, 80; VB01 (Film) 18, 69 – 70; VB02 71; VB03 71; VB04 71; VB08 71; VB12 71; VB35: Show 71 – 2; VB46 78 Beuys, Joseph 65 Big Burlesque 159 – 60 binging 24, 37, 63, 66, 86, 90 – 1; see also bulimia birth control pill 2 Bishop, Claire 39, 99n55 blogs see social media Bloom, Lisa E. 32 Bluemel, Carl 11; Greek Sculptors at Work 11 Blum 165 – 6; The Nu Project 165 bodily violence see self-harm BodyBugg 49 body dysmorphia 84, 88, 114 Body Mass Index criteria 94 – 5, 140 – 4, 177 – 8 Bordo, Susan 44 Bowles, John P. 6 Brodesser-Akner, Taffy 140, 175 Brown, Caterina 80 Buchanan, Nancy 107, 109 – 11; With Love from A to B (with Barbara T. Smith) 111 bulimia 15, 18, 28, 41, 62 – 9, 81 – 6, 91 – 2, 107; see also eating disorders Burden, Chris 7, 79, 82; Five Day Locker Piece 79; Shoot 105 Buszek, Maria Elena 80 – 1 Cara, Alessia 178 Caro, Isabella 103n139, 177 – 8 Cassils 78, 100n80 Celant, Germano 68 Chamberlain, Kerry 44 Chang, Patty 161; Shangri-La 161 Cheng, Meiling 4 Chin, Daryl 71

192  Index Clark, Kenneth 181n28 Clauson, Hailey 177 computer manipulation and modification 18, 92 – 5, 103n147, 161, 178 – 9 conceptual art 5, 8, 10 – 11, 82 Connor, Maureen 63, 66 – 7; Thinner Than You 66 – 7 Cooper, Charlotte 147, 166n1; “headless fatties” 147 Corinne, Tee 139 – 40 cosmetic surgery 14, 32, 106, 112 – 13, 177 Cottingham, Laura 110 Crea, Nazareno 179 Crisp, Arthur 61, 75 Cuadros, Gil 149 – 50 cutting see self-harm Dahlgren, Jacob 180n13; Heaven is a Place on Earth 180n13 Dangerous Beauty (exhibition) 177 Dater, Judy 149 – 50, 161; Self-Portrait with Stone 149 – 50 Davis, Jen 17, 25, 50 – 5; Aldo and I in Bed 53; Conforming 51; Eleven Years 17, 50 – 5; Fantasy No. 1 52; Fantasy No. 2 52; Maxwell Street 52; Pablo and I 53; Pressure Point 50 – 2; Purity 51; Recessed 52; Untitled No. 26 52 – 3; Untitled No. 28 51; Untitled No. 42 53; Untitled No. 53 54; Vestige 52; What was left 52 – 3 Designing Women (television show) 152 dieting 7, 11 – 17, 24 – 60, 63 – 5, 68 – 9, 106, 143, 152, 173 – 4, 178 digital modification see computer manipulation and modification domestic violence 109 Donna Karan (clothing company) 66 Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution 13 Drum, Meredith 72 Duchamp, Marcel 160 – 2 Dunham, Lena 95, 103n147 durational art see endurance art eating disorders 14 – 18, 28, 41, 61 – 104, 106 – 7, 119 – 20, 132, 141 – 3, 162, 174 – 5; face-to-face communities 67 – 83; internet communities 83 – 97, 132; physicality in art 62 – 67; statistics 60; see also self-harm Ebony (magazine) 41 Edison, Laurie Toby 138 – 40, 142 – 3, 164 – 5; Debbie Notkin 138 – 9; see also Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes endurance art 78 – 9, 82 Engström, Einar 124 Erić, Zoran 79

Fabrey, Joyce 141 Fabrey, William 141 fashion industry 14, 35, 40, 64, 67 – 8, 71 – 3, 78, 83, 92 – 7, 112 – 13, 177 – 9; couture 93, 122 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 80 fasting 5 – 7, 18, 62, 96; liquid fast 34, 42, 44; Optifast 34, 42, 44 Fat-Bottom Revue 159 – 61 fatness 2, 18 – 19, 30 – 1, 33 – 45, 52 – 5, 82 – 3, 120, 138 – 71, 174; American context 2, 16 – 17, 24 – 5, 55, 61, 143, 168n32, 174, 177; discrimination 2, 19, 140 – 2, 166; obesity epidemic 140 – 2, 165; terminology 140 – 1, 166n1; see also weight Fat Underground 141 – 3, 166 Favazza, Armando 106 feminism 2 – 5, 26, 80 – 1, 138 – 43 Fen-Phen 90 Feuer, Jane 152 – 3 Fishman, Sara Golda Bracha 141 – 2 Flanagan, Bob 133n15 Flickr see social media Fluxus 10 Ford, Tom 71 Forte, Jeanie 4 Fox, Howard 11 Fraser, Laura 54, 59n109 Freespirit, Judy 141 – 2; “Fat Liberation Manifesto” (with Aldebaran) 142 Friedan, Betty 4 Fullerton-Batten, Julia 19, 179; Unadorned 179 Gallasch, Keith 117 gastric bypass surgery see bariatric surgery Gaultier, Jean Paul 73 Gay, Roxanne 173; Hunger 173 Gebelle, Samantha 54 – 5 Gilman, Sander L. 24 – 5, 32 – 3 Giordano, Anna Utopia 179 Graham, Ashley 177 Green, Vanalyne 18, 63 – 7; Trick or Drink 63 – 4 Greer, Germaine 105 Grey, Stephanie Houston 96 Grokhovsky, Katya 19, 172 – 4; One Fine Day 172 – 3 Gucci see Ford, Tom Hagan, Gracie 178 – 9; Illusions of the Body 178 – 9 Hairspray (movie) 151 – 2 Hardy, Leah 95 Harper, Charles M. 25 headless fatties see Cooper, Charlotte Health at Every Size 151

Index 193 Healthy Choice meals 25 Helms, Jesse 115 Hill, Faith 95, 103n147 Honigman, Ana Finel 81 Hospes, Laura 18, 107, 120 – 4, 131 – 3; Death Feather 122 – 3; Scream I 120; UCPUMCG 120 – 4 Howard, Ella 41 Hsieh, Tehching 82 Hulick, Diana 145 Ibasyo Book Journey Project 136n68 Instagram see social media Iveković, Sanja 107, 111 – 13; Instructions No. 1 112; Make-up 112; Paper Women 112; Personal Cuts 134n29 Janashvili, Victoria 95 Janus, Elizabeth 69 Jasper, Karin 80 Jenny Craig 24 Jet (magazine) 41 Jewish identity 26, 32 – 3 Jezebel 95 Jones, Amelia 9, 144 – 8 Jones, Substantia 165 – 6; The Adipositivity Project 165 – 6 Jones, Willy Posey 35 Kahlo, Frida 145; Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States 145 Kant, Immanuel 5 – 7; Critique of Pure Reason 5 – 6 Kapon, Annetta 175 – 6; Floor Scale 175 – 6, 180n14 Kent, Le’a 143 Kessler, Katy 165 – 6; The Nu Project 165 Kilgroe, Dick 7, 21n24 Klein, Jenni 9 Knipe, Kristina E. 18, 107, 127 – 32; Artist Seeks Self Injurers 127 – 31; Courtney’s Razors 130; Erick and his Archive 130; Leannet in the Rain 128 – 30; Leannet’s Arm 128 ; Leannet’s Arm Healed 128 – 30; Raggedy Ann 130; Smashed Birthday Cake 128 Kogelnik, Kiki 107, 111 – 13; It Hurts . . . 113; It Hurts With a Scissor 113; Untitled (Women’s Lib) 112 – 13 Konner, Melvin 32 Kozerski, Julia 17, 25, 45 – 50, 54 – 5; Absolution 48; Avert 47 – 8; Casing No. 2 47; Changing Room 17, 45 – 9; Half 47 – 9, 54; Lover’s Embrace 47 – 8; Ruins No. 1 47; Ruins No. 2 47; Surrender 47 – 8; Untitled 47 Kuppers, Petra 116 – 18

Lake, Ricki 151 – 2 Landau, Sigalit 133 – 4n18; Barbed Hula 133 – 4n18 Lean Cuisine 25 LeBesco, Kathleen 143 Lee, Brenda 109; “I’m Sorry” 109 Leggatt-Cook, Chez 44 Levenkron, Steven 98n31, 106 Levy, Ariel 80 LeWitt, Sol 17 Life with My Best Friend Ana (blog) 85 Lochner, Stefan 109; Madonna of the Rose Bower 109 Lopez-Huici, Ariane 10, 19, 140, 153 – 62, 166; Aviva series 154 – 8, 166; Dalila Khatir series 154 – 8; Rebelles 154 – 8; Toak 162; Triumph 157 – 8 Louderback, Llewellyn 142; Fat Power 142 Love Your Body Day 176 LoveYourBody.org 176 MacAllister, Heather 159 – 61 MacSween, Morag 61 magazines 4, 14, 34 – 5, 41, 45, 61, 94 – 5, 112, 173, 174, 179; advertisements 14 – 15, 64, 73 – 5, 111 – 13; see also Ebony; Jet; Ms.; People; Vogue Manet, Edouard 154; Olympia 154 Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (book) 81 Mannequin 64 – 7 Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) 155 – 6, 159; Minotaur 159 Marr, Joshua 179 Martin, Daniel 39 – 40 Martin, Rosy 119 Mary Cameron Robinson Foundation 90 Matisse, Henri 160 – 2; The Dance (I) 161 Maughan, Cynthia 107, 109 – 11; Razor Necklace 111; Scar/Make-up 110; Scar/ Scarf 110; Suicide 110 Mayer, Vivien see Fishman, Sara Golda Bracha McCain, Natalie 165 – 6; The Honest Body Project 166 memento mori 65 Miss America Pageant 2 – 4, 17 modeling 12, 18 – 19, 52, 64 – 83, 88, 92 – 7, 111 – 13, 122, 138, 153 – 8, 176 – 80; see also fashion industry; Stone, Aviva Morgan, Margaret A. 175 Morgan, Robin 2 – 3 Morgan, Thomas 33 Morris-Cafiero, Haley 19, 140, 162 – 6; Anonymity Isn’t for Everyone 162 – 3; Athletics 165; Dress 165; Flander 164;

194  Index Something to Weigh 162; Wait Watchers 162 – 6; The Watchers 162 Ms. (magazine) 4 Muybridge, Eadweard 11 Narcissus myth 150 – 1 National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) 141 – 3, 166 National Eating Disorders Association 84 National Organization of Women 4, 176 Nemiroff, Diana 65 Newton, Helmut 67 – 8, 80, 101n98, 160 – 2; photograph of Vanessa Beecroft 67 – 8, 101n98; Sie Kommen, Dressed/Sie Kommen, Naked 160 – 1 New York Radical Women 2 – 4 Nidetch, Jean 13 Nimoy, Leonard 19, 140, 158 – 62; Classic Nudes 158; Full Body Project 158 – 62; Matisse Circle 161; Shekhina 158 – 9; Sphinx #2 159 Nitsch, Hermann 116 Non Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) see self-harm Noriega, Chon A. 148 Notkin, Debbie 19, 138 – 40, 142 – 3, 164 – 5; see also Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes obesity see fatness O’Dell, Kathy 105, 115 O’Hagan, Sean 82 Okahara, Kosuke 136n68 Okun, Jenny 161 Olson, Roseanne 176; This is Who I Am 176 Omedes, Silvia 88 Opie, Catherine 18, 107, 113 – 15; SelfPortrait/Cutting 114; Self-Portrait/Pervert 114 – 15 Opifast see fasting Orbach, Susie 31, 36; Fat is a Feminist Issue 31, 36 O’Reilly, Kira 18, 107, 115 – 18; Sssshh . . . Succour 116 – 17; Untitled (Syncope) 117; Untitled Actions for Bomb Shelter Kuopio 117; Wet Cup 117 Ortner, Sherry 150 Overeaters Anonymous 1, 28, 39, 49, 63 Owens, Craig 9 Pane, Gina 105, 107, 115 – 18; Sentimental Action 115 – 16; Theoretical Wound 115 – 16; Unanaesthetized Escalation 115 – 16 People (magazine) 34 – 5, 41, 152, 164 performance art 1, 4 – 11, 17 – 19, 26 – 33, 37 – 40, 63 – 4, 67 – 83, 105 – 9, 115 – 18, 172 – 4

Phelan, Peggy 8 photograph editing see computer manipulation and modification photo therapy 119 Piper, Adrian 5 – 7, 18, 62; Food for the Spirit 5 – 7, 18, 62 Plus Model Magazine 95 pro-eating disorder websites 62, 83 – 97, 120 purging see bulimia quilts 17, 35 – 44 Radical Feminist Therapy Collective 141 Radnitzky, Emmanuel see Man Ray Raeven, Angelique see Raeven, L.A. Raeven, L.A. 18, 67 – 83, 96; “army” 77, 80; Cutting Edge’s “Trapped by My Twin” (documentary) 81; Ideal Individual 18, 73 – 8; L.A. Raeven Analyse and Research Service 73; LA. Raeven: Beyond the Image (documentary) 81; Test Room 18, 72, 77 – 8 Raeven, Liesbeth see Raeven, L.A. Ratcliff, Carter 154 – 5 Rees, Thomas 33 religion 106, 116 – 18; see also Jewish identity Renoir, Pierre-August 153, 157 – 8; Bathers 157 – 8; The Large Bathers 153 Representation Project, The 174 Richards, Amy 81 Ringgold, Faith 17, 25, 35 – 44, 55; Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Weight Loss Story Quilt 17, 35 – 44; Change 2: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Weight Loss Story Quilt 38 – 42; Change 3: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Weight Loss Story Quilt 42 – 4; Echoes of Harlem 35; Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? 35 Ritts, Herb 160, 162; Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood 160 Roberto Cavalli (clothing company) 67 Robinson, Mary “Cammy” Cameron 89 – 92; see also Abril, Laia, The Epilogue Rose, Rhylorien n’a 143 Roseanne (television show) 34, 152 Rosenbach, Ulrike 105, 108 – 9; Don’t Believe I’m an Amazon 109; Sorry Mister 105, 108 – 9 Rosenthal, Rachel 17, 25 – 33, 39, 41, 55; Charm 26 – 8, 30 – 2; The Death Show 26, 28 – 32; Replays 26; Thanks 26 Rosler, Martha 5, 13 – 17, 25 – 6, 62, 77, 91; Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain 13 – 14; Cargo Cult 14; Hot Meat 14; Losing: a Conversation with the Parents 13 – 17, 62, 91; Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained 77

Index 195 Roth, Moira 36 Rousey, Ronda 177 Rousseau, Ann Marie 146 – 7 Rowe, Kathleen K. 152 Rubens, Peter Paul 153, 157, 179 S., Rozanne 28 sadism 27 sado-masochism 27, 68 Saltz, Jerry 45 Saville, Jenny 18, 107, 113 – 15; Branded 114; Plan 113 – 14; Prop 113; Trace 114 Sayeau, Michael 85 Scars Beyond Beauty 178 Scars Program 178 Seko, Yukari 132 self-harm 18, 96, 105 – 37, 174, 178; with eating disorders 96, 106, 119 – 20, 132; Non Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) 18, 105 – 37, 115 selfie 45 – 7, 88 – 9 Self Inflicted (documentary) see Zinn, Monica self-mutilation see self-harm Seward, Keith 80 sexuality 4, 8 – 10, 14, 17, 36, 110, 115, 140, 144, 151, 153, 155, 161, 166 Shadow on a Tightrope (book) 142 Sichel, Berta 150 – 1 Smith, Barbara T. 1, 5, 7 – 10, 17 – 18, 26 – 7, 33, 107, 109 – 11; Feed Me 1, 5, 7 – 10, 17 – 18; With Love from A to B (with Nancy Buchanan) 107, 109 – 11; Mass Meal 7; Ritual Meal 7 Smith, Sidonie 41 Snider, Stefanie 151 Social Issues Research Centre 84 social media 18, 36, 44 – 5, 49, 62, 83 – 97, 122 – 4, 132 – 3, 166; blogs 44 – 5, 83 – 8, 92, 95 – 6, 166; Facebook 36, 83; Flickr 132; Instagram 83 – 4, 96; message boards 44, 84; online communities 18, 44, 49, 62, 83 – 97, 132 – 3; Tumblr 83 – 4, 7, 96; see also pro-eating disorder websites Solomon, Selena 178 South Beach Diet, The 24 Spector, Nancy 65 Spence, Jo 18, 107, 118 – 19; Narratives of Dis-ease (Excised, Exiled, Expected, Expunged, Included) 118 – 19; The Picture of Health? 118 Sports Illustrated 177 Steele, Lisa 107, 109 – 11; Birthday Suit: Scars and Defects 109 – 10 Steinem, Gloria 4 Sterbak, Jana 63 – 7; Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic 64 – 6

Sternudd, Hans T. 131 – 2 Stevenson, Rebecca 117 Stone, Aviva 154 – 9, 166 Strong, Marilee 107, 119 talk shows 14 – 17, 33 – 4, 62, 152 testimonio 148 – 9 Thein, Ivonne 18, 83 – 97; Thirty-Two Kilos 92 – 7 Theung, Linda 10 Thinspiration 18, 83 – 9, 91 – 2, 95 – 7, 119 – 20 Thompson, Becky W. 41 Thurman, Judith 81 – 2 Tiravanija, Rikrit 39 Tomczak, Kim 110 Tomić, Milica 134n29; I Am Milica Tomić 134n29 Toscani, Oliver 181n23 Toxic Titties 78 triple-X syndrome 75 Tucker, Anne Wilkes 55 Tumblr see social media valet see mannequin vanitas 65 Venegas, Sybil 144 Venus of Willendorf see Women of Willendorf video art 10, 14 – 19, 63 – 4, 73 – 83, 85 – 6, 109 – 12, 147 – 9, 172 – 4 Vogue 10, 67 – 8, 103n147 vomiting see bulimia Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution (exhibition) 1 Wacks, Debra 10 Wade, Lauren 179 Wagner, Anne 13 Wann, Marilyn 141, 159 Waters, John 151 – 2 weight 1 – 3, 7, 11 – 17, 24 – 60, 61 – 104, 138 – 71, 174 – 6, 179; ideal weight 4 – 5, 9 – 10, 12 – 14, 18 – 19, 25, 31 – 2, 38, 40 – 4, 55, 62, 66, 70, 72 – 9, 83, 88, 96, 112 – 13, 155, 161, 173 – 4, 177 – 80; weight loss 1 – 3, 7, 11 – 14, 17, 24 – 60, 61 – 104; see also fatness Weight Watchers 1, 13, 17, 24, 39 – 40, 44, 49, 176 Weinstock, Jane 16 Whitney Museum of American Art Annual 11 Wilke, Hannah 9 – 10; Art News Revised 9 – 10; S.O.S.—Starification Object Series 9 – 10 Winfrey, Oprah 33 – 5, 39 – 42, 152; The Oprah Winfrey Show 33 – 4

196  Index Wolf, Naomi 12 – 14; The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women 12 – 14 Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes 19, 138 – 43, 153, 164, 176; see also Edison, Laurie Toby; Notkin, Debbie Women of Willendorf 166 Women’s Building 111

women’s liberation movement 2 – 4, 174 Wood, John 158 Yarboro-Bejarano, Yvonne 145 Zhe, Chen 18, 107, 124 – 7, 130 – 2; The Bearable 124 – 7; The Bees 124 – 7 Zinn, Monica 133n9