Empty

by Susan Burton

In my thirties I read a cultural history of anorexia. It was a serious book by an eminent historian. In the first chapter, she mentioned bulimia and bulimia memoirs, and of them she wrote, “These are among the most disturbing and unhappy documents generated by women in our time.” This comment roused something in me. The historian seemed to be falling into a trap she would describe throughout the book: valorizing anorexia simply by deeming it worthy of her study yet distancing herself from bulimia. In that word, “disturbing,” I detected the same distaste that characterized my peers’ mocking comments about the doors in Commons. What disturbed the historian? The graphic descriptions of purging or the orgiastic recollections of the binge? Or was it just disturbing to think that a woman’s life could be reduced to this? If that was it, my feeling toward the historian softened. It was disturbing that a person’s life could be reduced to this. I knew from experience.