Oprah Winfrey recently announced that she’s never dieting again. Her decision was apparently prompted by reading the book Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth. I tend to tune out Oprah when it relates to anything religious or self-esteem-y, so I was definitely surprised to find some powerful (even familiar) ideas at work here, and ones that are by no means restricted to the fairer sex. From a post on the topic over at That’s Fit:
Roth firmly believes that your relationship with weight is a disguise for your relationship with yourself.
“We turn to food when we are not hungry because we are hungry for something we cannot name. A connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life, something sacred. But replacing the hunger for a divine connection with Double Stuf Oreos is like giving a glass of sand to a person who’s dying of thirst.”
The more you recognize your inner problems, anxiety or discomfort, the better your relationship will be not only with food but of course with your soul. You’ll be happier, and the weight will fall off more naturally. “You keep trying to feed yourself with that which cannot feed you,” Oprah said. “I turn to food because if I deal with whatever it is I have to deal with in the moment, I’m going to fall apart.”
Her words reminded me of a passage from Who Will Deliver Us? that Drake highlighted a while ago, about the Gospel in relation to the “assimilation of negativity”:
“Assimilation of negativity” refers to a person’s willing, painful embrace of the sorrows of life, of himself and his flaws, in coexistence, almost union, with his confidence, aspirations, and joys. It is the opposite of splitting– the phenomenon of distancing our conscious self from unacceptable feelings and experiences to such an extent that a fissure opens between the conscious self and the unconscious self.
With reality knocking at the door, the age-old message persists – “Accentuate the Positive!!”, if you don’t, there is no way to survive. The message of the Gospel – of God unjustly crediting us as good – allows us to unsplit (break down the wall, let the shark back in the water) and deal with the real troubles that we have long cordoned off and do so without being crushed and devoured.
p.s. Confession: I shamelessly stole all of this and used it in a sermon recently.
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6 responses to “Women, Food and God (and Oprah)”
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Interesting stuff, DZ. But after reading the whole Oprah link, I am left wondering if she's not right back where she's been for so long, seeking to perfect her relationship with "herself." Yes, there's some talk about God, but it's all very amorphous and "whatever you THINK god is…" The piece ends like this:
"Finally, Oprah left viewers with a burning question that she has clearly asked herself many times. 'Look into the mirror, and look deep into your eyes,' she said. 'Look beyond the flaws and the blemishes, look right through to your soul and ask yourself: What do you see? And can you begin to love that?"
In my experience, no. I CAN'T begin to love that. Not on my own, anyway. Am I missing something here?
Yeah, Margaret, I totally hear what you're saying. The reason I didn't quote the end of the article is because she blows it so royally with her overwhelming Oprah-ness. It just rings so false, esp after such an honest diagnosis. And the conception of God/the sacred/divine that they allude to is too silly to address… It's just nice that something other than inner strength gets lip service, period.
That said, I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that some viewers would hear Oprah as the voice of God – and as a voice of love from outside, regardless of the go-get-em auto-suggestive content… And maybe there's some worth in that.
STILL, the stuff about our relationship with food being a stand-in for our relationship with ourselves – indeed, food as a means or evidence of "splitting" from inner unpleasantness – is pretty insightful. I know it functions that way for me. And the self-medication/god-shaped hole talk is certainly not something you hear coming out of Oprah's mouth every day.
All this to say, until she contradicts herself with the closing pep-talk, it seems to correspond pretty directly to the Mark 7 dynamic we talk about so often on here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to reading The Secret.
DZ,
And how did the sermon land? Any feedback?
The best stuff in Christianity is all plagiarized. Steal away!
One more: Do we observe the following here?
1. The diagnosis of the condition is apt. There is something seriously amiss with us (with Oprah more than her waistline), and we will do anything to not have to face it, both negatively (Double-stuff Oreos) and positively (the active resolve and repeated resolutions to be better accompanied by action, in this case dieting, etc.).
2. The resolution to this state of affairs is just more of the same, though subtler and more sublime. (Oprah's effort to get at her heart and love herself and not just get her waistline and love her figure)
Though I don't doubt that Oprah is the voice of (a) god for many, no voice is separate from what it says. Is it love when it points you to yourself?
"'Assimilation of negativity' refers to a person's willing, painful embrace of the sorrows of life, of himself and his flaws, in coexistence, almost union, with his confidence, aspirations, and joys."
"Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
This particularity of the "who" that brings deliverance, this knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified, is what makes this "assimilation of negativity" possible. The fat, however, will probably hold its own this side of heaven 🙂 That's the way it is with all "thorns in the flesh."
Wow! Great post, Dave. Really interesting!