Lauren Malka. “In the Middle Ages, priests believed that a woman revealed her worst sexual and murderous tendencies in the kitchen”

Who could spoil women’s appetite? Why is eating almost never without consequences for most of them, often tinged with guilt? Journalist Lauren Malka wonders. Reviewing the experiences of the women around her and gathering the testimonies of others from youth to old age, she affirms: oppressing them. If we often associate eating disorders with the dictates of thinness that intensified in the 1970s, and with the age of image that was in full swing, Lauren Malka has the intuition that the real culprits struck much earlier. In Eaters, a story about those who devour, feast or over-deprive themselves (1), she explores through history and literature and tries to prove that women’s connection to what they take for granted has been disrupted for several centuries.

Madame Figaro: You show that women’s gluttony has always been demonized. When exactly did this come back?
Lauren Malka:
To the two first female figures in human history, Eve and Pandora. The first bites the apple out of greed, which leads the world to disaster. In the Middle Ages, after a long theological debate as to whether Eve or Adam was responsible for original sin, many treatises came to this conclusion: unable to control himself, he will have to watch what he eats. About Pandora, the first human woman in Greek mythology, the poet Hesiod writes that she is extremely beautiful, but hides a spotted belly in her belly. It drains men’s energy and their pantries. A figurative way of evoking sexual and alimentary appetites, of associating gluttony with lust. In summary, by giving in to the call of food, women risk taking humanity to its worst, over-heating man’s senses and distracting him from important tasks. This demonization of female gluttony occurs in all eras.

In other words.
In the Middle Ages, for example, priests questioned couples to find out how the wife cooked and ate; they believe that the woman revealed her worst sexual and murderous tendencies in the kitchen. Throughout history, women have stayed away from anything that could ennoble the act of eating and limited themselves to gluttony. In ancient times, for example, Greek women were forbidden to participate in public feasts because, not being citizens, they were excluded from the public sphere. With the emergence of gastronomy in the 19th century, food became a science, an erudition, an intellectual refinement that allowed people to escape from sin and elevate themselves. Women are excluded and kept in dangerous, or at least primal, animalistic mischief.

Throughout history, women have stayed away from anything that could ennoble the act of eating and limited themselves to gluttony.

Lauren Malka

Are women doomed to be greedy?
Sociologist Anne Dupay has studied how we approach sweet treats in the family. From the age of 3, girls are encouraged to be greedy and suppress it, while boys are encouraged to educate their palate by experimenting with more complex tastes and flavors such as mustard or cheese. We find it in children’s literature as Sophie’s Misfortune Countess of Segur. Little Sophie spends her time getting slapped on the wrist because she eats too much candy or chocolate. The work also showed how little girls and boys are fed differently. Thus, the anthropologist Françoise Héritier notes that in many civilizations, mothers devoted more time to breastfeeding boys than to girls. According to him, the message to boys will be “your impulses will be sovereign” and to girls, “disappointment will be your lot”.

You should be thin, but also fat in the sexiest parts as a sign of access to the basic functions of sexuality and motherhood.

Lauren Malka

Has thinness always been the norm?
Yes, for women and men. Since ancient times, according to treatises on physiognomy (which established a link between physical appearance and moral virtues or vices), thinness has been a sign of moral balance, social propriety, and obesity, laziness and degradation. supreme But in all ages, including our own, women are subjected to an additional dictate. one should be thin but also fat in the sexiest parts – breasts, thighs, butt – as a sign of access to basic functions. sexuality and motherhood. To conform to these rules, women in many eras and many civilizations have imposed toxic diets on their bodies. Thus, in the late 16th century, women in Western societies were subjected to strict weight-loss diets, eating only vinegar or lemon juice, for example, and wearing corsets to shape their bodies.

However, you assert that thinness is one of the first feminist demands…
At the beginning of the 20th century, women’s aesthetics changed, women aimed for slender thinness. In doing so, they strive to get rid of all traces of fat, which is perceived as a sign of passive, domestic femininity available to men. This corresponds to the moment when they begin to work more and more massively in offices. Clearly, the body is changing to free itself from sexual and generational commitment.

How did this liberating quest turn into the tyranny of thinness?
That’s what Susan Faludi calls it opposition or backlash, retrograde with every feminist advance in women’s rights. So the moment women demand this thinness, which removes them from a form of femininity they don’t want, capitalism reverses the demand and turns it into a command. Want to be skinny? You will suffer for being so. Then there is a whole marketing around sports and Dukan, Montignac diets… and a whole new eroticism of the thin woman.

In your research, you hypothesize that eating disorders (TCAs) may be women’s resistance to the restrictions and conversations their bodies are subjected to. In other words.
I begin and end the book by talking about these disorders (anorexia, bulimia,… Editor’s note) for I consider that the whole story I tell leads to them. From the beginning of my investigation, I actually feel that they are a way for women to express their disagreement with the way society turns them into objects of pleasure, without letting them become the objects of that pleasure. I discovered in the philosopher Michel Foucault a striking concept of discreet political resistance. It consists in interrupting the mechanism of work, and to which we are subjected without dissonance, without showing it in its entirety. Thus, an anorexic or bulimic person excludes herself from the food chain and the codes of femininity through the loss of breasts and the cessation of periods. By not eating at all or too much, women will block others from entering their bodies and exclude themselves from the human world. This is a philosophically fascinating resistance.

Food anxiety is not about who we are, but about a series of socio-historical constructions based on assumptions and suspicions that go back several centuries.

Lauren Malka

Finally, are all women destined to experience food anxiety one day?
No, but I still noticed that most of us deal with it at one time or another in our lives and in a more or less disturbing, alien, tragic way. This concern is not about our nature, but about a series of socio-historical constructions based on imaginations and suspicions that go back several centuries. While I don’t have any advice for anyone to maintain a more peaceful relationship with food, I believe that shedding light on these ancient mechanisms allows us to be more mindful of this construct and therefore more equipped to engage with it.

(1) Eaters, a story about those who devour, feast or over-deprive themselvesLes Pérégrines published on October 6, 283 p., 20 euros.