The dichotomy of food

The love affair between women and food is a bittersweet confection with a long and storied history. Food — the preparation and eating of, the deprivation from, the preoccupation with, the meaning of — is a uniquely distaff issue, a way women have of connecting to the world or alienating themselves from it. It’s punishment or reward, a masochistic tug of war where the biggest casualty is body image. In the most extreme cases, like anorexia nervosa, it can be fatal.

As someone who knows something about the disease, I can tell you that food takes on a world of meaning and power it should not have. Constant fasting is a way to exercise control when you have none, to impose order on chaos, and, bizarrely, offers the chance to excel at something when you feel inadequate at everything. The pursuit of thinness is not in the name of fashion or vanity. It may begin that way, but quickly spirals out of control, becoming a runaway train of self-loathing and punishing self-denial.

Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s book Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (Vintage Books) explores the origins of eating disorders. As early as the late 19th century, cases of “fasting girls” were documented in Europe and North America. These were mostly preadolescent, white females from middle- and upper-class families, whose tales of starvation became well-publicized in Victorian society. Moral and religious authorities linked this behaviour to claims of miracles and stigmata, but the medical establishment derided it as simple cases of hysteria.

According to Brumberg, women have gone to extremes to achieve what is considered at any given time to be the feminine ideal.

What is common in the span of a generation is the pressure on women to achieve an aesthetic, to buy into the idea that their outer shells dictate their inner worth, whether the ideal aesthetic is the curvaceous Victorian model or the current vogue of hyper-thinness.

Women are acutely aware of the power food has as a negative life force with the potential to harm. Self-punishment takes the form of self-denial in revolt against societal constructs like marriage, as Margaret Atwood portrays so adeptly in The Edible Woman (Seal Books). The main character, Marion, begins to imbue food with human qualities, little by little unable to eat more and more foods. First, it’s meat, then eggs, after that vegetables, then everything. The novel’s primary conceit is Marion’s rejection of classic gender roles, played out in her growing refusal to exercise the most basic of human instincts: staying alive.

The potential of food to nurture life, nourish love, and to be celebrated in glorious abundance is the flip side of this dynamic equation.

In Marusya Bociurkiw’s Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl (Arsenal Pulp Press), food is celebrated as a constant companion, in good times and bad, but always as a positive life force.

The beauty of Bociurkiw’s book is in the care she shows herself. She believes in the power of food to nurture and restore, and writes lovingly about the dishes of her childhood and of her parents’ youth, of the rituals she creates around food, of the memories certain foods evoke. Most importantly, she tacitly espouses a belief in satisfying hunger, not denying it, which translates into the kind of profound self-acceptance and self-love that every woman should know.

Elana Rabinovitch runs Propaganda Ink and is the administrator of the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

REVIEW

Author ditches the chick lit, keeps the ice cream

By Jennifer Lovegrove

Comfort Food for Breakups:
The Memoir of a Hungry Girl
By Marusya Bociurkiw
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007
171 pages, $19.95

The title Comfort Food for Breakups could easily be mistaken for a “chick lit” book about binge eating after being dumped. Don’t let it fool you: This is a sensual memoir in which Marusya Bociurkiw recounts moments from her personal and family history, all within the context of food. You’ll get to know the author, her family, her friends, and her lovers — and the delicious-sounding meals they ate — as Bociurkiw’s friendly and smart voice details her Ukrainian family’s past and her own relationships.

In this vivid and stimulating memoir, Bociurkiw depicts how tastes and smells trigger emotions and memories. You’ll learn what foods have resonated with her, and how certain dishes can become comfort food, evocative of “home” — whether it be the home you grew up in, or the one you create for yourself.

Bociurkiw recounts her family dynamics — rifts and connections both — in a compelling and clear style, first as a child helping her parents host cocktails parties in the ’60s, later as an adult coping with a close family member’s early death, all against a backdrop of food. For her, food is comfort, memory, communication, and experience. Hunger is not just for the edible, but for travel, for community, for connection, and for love. Ideas like this elevate the book beyond a memoir of anecdotes and recipes into a realm of social insight and cultural commentary.

Chapters are titled for specific dishes, like “Vegetable Curry” or “Radishes and Salt”. Each tells a pivotal story from Bociurkiw’s life: visiting her aunt Olena in a Ukrainian village (“Eggs”), a breakup with her girlfriend (“Grilled Salmon”), the death of a loved one (“Torte”), the sickness of another loved one (“Mushrooms”). Her writing is intimate and immediate, creating engaging scenes and emotion without succumbing to sentimentalism or heavy-handededness (she is also a successful fiction writer).

The short chapters are enticing, full of evocative sensory detail and a keen sense of narrative, focusing on what they ate and who they ate it with and what happened. Some sections even include the recipe for a dish featured in the preceding story, and I look forward to trying them. Each chapter is a bite-sized, easily digestible tale (sorry, couldn’t resist), and my only criticism is that I wanted more; some were a little too short, especially those involving Bociurkiw’s travels to alluring locales like Kiev, Prague, and Istanbul.

Not only did I enjoy this memoir objectively, with its sensuous writing and interesting stories, but it resonated with me personally; I could almost smell my own Ukrainian grandmother’s cabbage rolls and perogies cooking in her kitchen, where I spent so many hours as a child. Comfort Food for Breakups is an enjoyable and moving memoir, full of lush descriptions of delectable-sounding dishes and complex relationships. It made me want to have an elaborate potluck dinner party with witty and creative company, with Marusya Bociurkiw as the guest of honour. I have no doubt she would bring something delicious to share.

Jennifer LoveGrove is a writer, editor, and small press publisher.