The Famine Within
By Katherine Gilday
Canada, 89 minutes, colour
From February 21, Valhalla, Sydney, and the Carlton, Melbourne
Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
One of the more engaging moments in this devastating film occurs when a girl, perhaps seven years old, opens her mouth wide and chomps down on an enormous, creamy dessert. Looks of intense concentration and enjoyment cross her face. She finishes with a defiant little "what are you staring at?" shrug.
Then the madness returns. Emaciated women explain how everything would be all right if they could just lose a little more weight. An everything-under-control businesswoman recounts her growing obsession with food and throwing up.
This film, a documentary weaving personal stories, feminist commentary and theatre, is a savage attack on the obsession with thinness that has overtaken North American women. In the 1950s, models and movie stars were 8% thinner than the average North American woman; now, the gap is 23% and growing. The ideal gets further and further out of reach, and North American women get crazier.
The film was made in Canada, but it could be anywhere in the developed countries. The March edition of Cleo gives an insight into the extent of the misery here. Readers were asked to write their responses to four photographs: two of naked women in the healthy weight range and two of underweight women. Those in the healthy range were described as "obese" or "overweight" while the underweight women were described as "perfect".
Women are simply not used to seeing realistic images of themselves. This generation of 15-year-olds has branded itself "fat and ugly". As a psychologist in the film wearily comments, feminism has provided an alternative vision, but it has not been strong enough to dilute the onslaught in the mass media.
The Famine Within is an angry antidote to the madness. If this film — and others like it — were compulsory viewing for every 12-year-old girl, perhaps the nosedive in self-esteem that hits at about 13 would not go so deep.
The night of the preview, just about everyone stayed around for an impromptu discussion afterwards. For a film like this, there could hardly be a better measure of success than that.
That said, there are three points to be made. First, eating disorders hit both men and women. This point complicates the analysis.
Secondly, there is perhaps too much emphasis in the film on the very thin and the very fat, and not enough images of women's bodies in the healthy range. Bearing in mind the impact on body-obsessed teenagers, some more positive images of healthy possibilities might have been effective.
Finally, in her laudable campaign against the obsession with thinness, Gilday seems to go too far in the direction of playing down the problem of compulsive overeating. But as opposed to simply "eating a lot" or "enjoying one's food") is just as irrational as compulsive undereating, has many of the same psycho-social causes, and can be just as painful. This end of the disordered eating spectrum could have been taken more seriously.