Opinions of a Wolf

A woman in eating disorder recovery explores the world of eating disorders and treatment in the west through a pop culture lens.

Summary:
Emmeline Clein tells the story of her own disordered eating alongside, and through, other women from history, pop culture and the girls she’s known and loved. Tracing the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and orthorexia, Clein investigates the economic conditions underpinning our eating disorder epidemic, and illuminates the ways racism and today’s feminism have been complicit in propping up the thin ideal. While examining Goop, Simone Weil, pro-anorexia blogs, and the flawed logic of our current treatment methods, Clein grapples with the myriad ways disordered eating has affected her own friendships and romantic relationships.

Review:
This collection of essays consisting of research intertwined with memoir was an engaging read. I particularly liked how Clein approached talking about the negative aspects of Big Pharma in a historical context. That wasn’t something I was expecting in this book, and it was well done. Expect to learn about how amphetamines were marketed as a weight loss drug post WWII because the manufacturers needed a new market now that soldiers were no longer using them to stay awake. Or about how it was Big Pharma who advocated for the labeling of obesity as a disease in the early 2000s (so insurance would pay for drugs to “treat” it.) Or about how the company that originally marketed amphetamines for ADHD was fined for “inappropriate marketing.” (For more about the impact of big pharma on our everyday lives, see my review of Drugs for Life.)

Another thing I appreciated as a person in recovery from addiction was how Clein analyzed addiction and eating disorders as systemic, rather than personal, issues.

The addiction model still requires that we understand ourselves as addicts, rather than see our culture, our food systems, and drug and diet companies as conspiring to encourage addictive patterns. When we believe we are sinners and criminals who deserve to be punished because we are out of control, we don’t demand change to any of the underlying structures that are actually out of our control, controlled by corporations. In it current iteration, the addiction model still makes us blame ourselves and then retrofit our stories into some fictional hero’s journey of abstinence and discipline over the compulsion to consume–stories rooted in the very values at the heart of anorexia and its hold on so many minds.

There were a few things that I did not like about the book, though.

First, her take on the intersection of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and eating disorders is woefully short-sighted and lacking empathy for not only those with IBS but other chronic illnesses that the medical industry offers little to nothing for. (Strange for a book that takes down big pharma so aggressively.) Clein presents the opinion that IBs is essentially always second to developing an eating disorder. That IBS symptoms are the body’s natural response to being starved or facing binges. But EDs can be and are triggered by IBS. The fact is, for many people, an ED develops in response to suffering from IBS.

Second, her choice to exclude men from a book about ED is troubling. The overall thesis seems to be that a minuscule number of men have EDs so it’s not worth talking about. In fact, approximately 1/3 of those known to have an ED are men, and there is concern that EDs in men are underreported. Even if it was the case that very few men have EDs (which again, it is not), leaving them out of the book hurts the overall arguments about EDs.

Third, Clein does not talk at all about the interplay between EDs and OCD. This is a more glaring lapse given how much space is given to discussing depression, anxiety, and EDs.

Fourth, while drinking is mentioned repeatedly, drunkorexia is not discussed at all, nor is alcoholism, something which, again, often comes hand-in-hand with EDs and is even seen in vignettes in the book but not addressed.

Fifth, there is a chapter about religion and ED. It completely ignores all other faiths except Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism. Clein does not understand Protestantism enough to discuss it in the ways that she does. Every time she brings up Protestantism, it’s clear she doesn’t have a high level understanding of it. She basically makes comments about Protestantism being all about asceticism and self-denial and then moves on. Unlike Catholicism, she does not limit her comments about Protestantism to only the chapter when she’s discussing religion explicitly either. It trickles in throughout the book. (She does also discuss Judaism throughout the book, but she is Jewish, and her faith comes up in the memoir portions, which makes sense.)

As you can perhaps tell from both the featured quote and how long this review is, this is a long and dense book. It seems to have attempted to do something very large when perhaps it might have been better served with a narrower focus and more memoir.

Overall, this book features important information on the intertwining of Big Pharma and eating disorders in the west but it does fall short of an inclusive portrait of eating disorders in the west.

If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, using one of my referral/coupon codes, or signing up for my free microfiction monthly newsletter. Thank you for your support!

3 out of 5 stars

Length: 288 pages – average but on the shorter side

Source: Library

Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)