There is fat on your hands. As you read this column, someone is on his or her hands and knees on a bathroom floor, inducing vomit, and it"s your fault. This according to a flier from our Student Health Center, headlined 'Do I Contribute To Another"s Eating Disorder?'--to which the short answer is 'Yes' and the long answer is 'Yes, and it"s worse than you thought.'
'The culture of disordered eating is pervasive in our society,' the flier continues, and it"s righter than its creators could have imagined. Not only are you responsible for eating disorders, but the shared guilt stretches back literally centuries. 'The culture of disorderd eating' is an apt name for Western Civilization itself.
A little research into what the Student Health Center calls 'the ways in which we might unintentionally encourage eating disorders' reveals it: The work of history"s most notorious promoters of negative body image is being taught, to this day, in our own curriculum. Herewith, the facts; proscribed thoughts and actions are quoted verbatim from the flier, which can be found in Perkins Library:
Crime: 'Praising or glorifying another"s appearance based on body size or attractiveness'
Criminal: Francesco Petrarch
Evidence: 'When from hour to hour among the other ladies
Love appears in her beautiful face,
By as much as their beauty is less than hers
By so much the desire that enamours me grows.
I bless the place, the time, and the hour
In which my eyes gazed to such a height,
And I say: My spirit, give thanks enough
That you were then found worthy of such honour.'
(Sonnet 13, lines 1-8; trans. A.S. Kline)
Crime: 'Talking negatively about our bodies'
Criminal: William Shakespeare
Evidence: 'Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart....
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp"d with tann"d antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.'
(Sonnet 62, lines 1-4, 9-12)
Crime: 'Assuming that a large person wants or needs to lose weight'
Criminal: Plutarch
Evidence: 'To make them brave, Lycurgus ordered that occasionally the Spartan girls had to dance and sing naked in front of all the young men. Therefore the girls were ashamed to be fat or weak.... Their supper was purposely made such a scant meal that they were encouraged to steal from actual hunger.... Another reason for feeding them so sparingly was to make them tall and pliant, rather than short and fat.'
(Lycurgus, the Father of Sparta; trans. Rosalie Kaufman)
Crime: 'Thinking or talking about foods as "good" or "bad"'
Criminal: John Milton
Evidence: 'See with what heat these Dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder World....
And know not that I call"d and drew them thither
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and flith
Which mans polluting Sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure, till cramm"d and gorg"d, nigh burst
With suckt and glutted offal.'
(God the Father; Paradise Lost, Book X, lines 616-617, 629-633)
Crime: 'Considering a person"s weight important'
Criminal: Egyptian Book of the Dead
Evidence: 'His heart is righteous, and it hath come forth from the Balance.... Thoth hath weighed it according to the decree pronounced unto him by the Company of the Gods, and it is most true and righteous. Grant thou that cakes and ale may be given unto him, and let him appear in the presence of the god Osiris, and let him be like unto the Followers of Horus for ever and ever.'
(Egyptian Book of the Dead, Book 2; trans. E.A. Wallis Budge; the text goes on to make clear that hearts found too weighty are fed to the crocodile-beast Ammit.)
Crime: 'Expecting perfection'
Criminal: Jesus
Evidence: 'Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'
(Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:48; New Revised Standard Version)
I could go on, but I trust you"ve apprehended the point, which is precisely this: Every one of these incitements to anorexia is there for the reading as part of Duke"s standard coursework; what the Student Health Center justly forbids with one hand, our professors force-feed us with the other.
Duke regularly offers no fewer than three courses on three on Shakespeare (English 143, 144, 220S), another three on the Italian Renaissance (Italian 165S; MedRen 141; Classical Studies 116S), one devoted to John Milton (English 145) and a whopping seven on the New Testament (Religion 41, 102, 108, 185S-02, English 179AS; Historical Theology 323; Liturgical Studies 78); Plutarch is standard reading for Classics majors; and as for the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it"s only a matter of time.
I know whrereof I speak: Of the courses listed, I myself have been subjected to five, and it"s surely pure chance that my body image isn"t by now absolutely shattered.
So to Provost Peter Lange and to every other academic peddling the agenda of disordered eating, I say: For God"s sake, sirs, call off your curriculum of mass destruction!
And to Francesco, William, Plutarch, John, Thoth and Jesus: Shame on you. Shame. On. You. Seriously.
Rob Goodman is a Trinity senior. His column appears on Mondays.
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