(RE)COVERED IN FRUIT Unmasking Eating Disorder Recovery Counternarratives in the Internet’s Vegan Community An Honors Thesis for the Department of Sociology Anna Mae Ellis Thesis Chair: Freeden Blume Oeur Second reader: Caitlin O. Slodden Tufts University, 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Boxes (and Boxes) of Bananas………………………………1 CHAPTER ONE: Tracing Vegan Recovery………………………….…………...6 I. The Current State of Eating Disorders……………….…………..10 II. Literature Review………………………………………………...14 III. Methods…………………………………………………………..30 IV. Overview of Chapters………………………………...………….33 CHAPTER TWO: From Medicalization to Morality: Making the Claim……….35 I. The Counterclaim………………………………………………...35 II. Moral Evidence…………………………………………………..53 CHAPTER THREE: Vying for Legitimacy……………………………………..66 I. The Doctor Said So…………....……………...………………….69 II. The Borders of Knowledge…..…………………………………..75 III. The Body Recovered…………...…………………………...……81 CHAPTER FOUR: Forging Community: Networking against Stigmas………...89 I. Myriad Stigmas…………………………….…...……………..…89 II. Networking Resistance…………………….…………………...100 III. Exclusion………………………………………………...…..….110 CONCLUSION: Scrapping Definitions…………………….…………..……...118 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………….….127 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………131 NOTES……………………………………………………………………….…138 INTRODUCTION Boxes (and Boxes) of Bananas One of the best-kept secrets of the vegan community is that you can buy bananas for a few dollars a case from wholesale produce markets, as long as you arrive shortly before dawn. And for some in the community, this secret is their sustenance: when you live on 30 bananas (or 20 mangoes, or 8 papayas, or 6 watermelons) a day, not buying in bulk is a surefire way to go broke. People who eat diets consisting mostly of fruit, with small amounts of uncooked vegetables, nuts and seeds often call themselves, aptly, fruitarians (or high-carb, low-fat vegans). These HCLF vegans subsist a small yet vocal community that finds its nexus on Internet, with proponents of high-carb, raw vegan diets hunkering down on video platforms like YouTube, in myriad social forums, and within the healthism blogosphere also characterized by fad diets, popular recipe-sharing content, and discussions of celebrity (and individual) bodies. One controversial community centerpiece is Freelee the Banana Girl, an outspoken (and for some, grating) proponent of the fruitarian lifestyle, who often shares YouTube videos that evidence her eating exorbitant quantities of fresh fruits, and who has drawn criticism towards a diet that is practiced by no small subset of the population. The general refrain against fruitarians like Freelee consists of statements like, “What the hell are you thinking? You're clearly not healthy” (Krista Smith, from Elle Tayla) or “You are extremely ignorant. Our body requires fats. All the sugar you're eating, despite it being from fruits, is excessive and is harmful. 4 mangoes for lunch?” (Jinal Patel, from Elle Tayla). 1 The community of vegans online consists of wide swaths of individuals whose dietary practices vary, from fruitarian to raw to ‘regular’ veganism. While not all consume as much fruit as Freelee and her followers, and many even reject the prospect of eating such an extreme diet, they are often treated as a unit by Internet users who denounce their practices, exemplified by comments like, “The lack of meat in her diet has caused brain damage clearly” (Ryan Ross, from Freelee). Whether or not banana meals make up their days, the vegans online frequently field external criticism from voices that question their cutting boards covered in produce. However, there is a reason that the community of online vegans, and especially the raw or high-carb vegans, continues to flourish online in spite of such contention: their lifestyle is attractive. In highly stylized digital spaces, vegans within this community portray their lifestyles with glamorous, carefully edited content, replete with images of thin, smooth bodies and even catchy music. Furthermore, through the (mostly) rose-colored visage streams a consistent message of support and community for other vegans, which invites others to join in the fun, and many viewers seem to respond in kind. Blog and vlog comments like “Keep up the amazing work and great videos! You inspire me!” (Rachel Kiran, from Alice Olivia) and “I just started on a vegan lifestyle, it's my 1st week and so far I honestly love it so much. I totally wanna recreate [your] breakfast” (Kellbell15, from Claire Michelle) reveal a network of supportive viewers who derive inspiration from the vegan’s narratives and who view their lifestyles as templates. 2 Whether the response is exuberantly positive or almost abusively negative, there is clearly a buzz about the vegan diet online. The vegan diets, and the more extreme versions practiced by raw and HCLF vegans in particular are either highly attractive or downright repulsive to many viewers. The hubbub is worth investigating, especially when considering that the vegan community has been embedded in society for centuries. The practice of abstaining from consuming (or wearing, or using) animal products is hardly new. Notably, however, as the vegan community establishes itself online, an intriguing pattern becomes apparent, best captured by one blog contributor: “As the vegan community continues to grow on social media, I’ve noticed that a lot of people who end up turning vegan come from a past of struggling with an ED,” (ED=eating disorder) (from Kati Morton). This commenter has not been the only Internet user to notice the correlation between vegan Internet bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers, including YouTubers), and for good reason. Among the Internet’s vegans (of which the subtypes are outlined in the Appendix), a compelling majority publicly state that their vegan diet is a product of eating disorder recovery. Their many voices, synthesized, claim that veganism ‘cured’ their eating disorder. This statement is alarming to many viewers, who often claim that such eating practices, viewed as restrictive, perpetuate existing eating disorders, as in one comment appearing below a video of a fruitarian claiming to have recovered from severe anorexia: “No! No no noo! Thats not your full recovery. You're still making your old mistakes. Having a balanced diet will eventually satisfy all the nutrients that your body needs. Having only fruits is 3 NOT A HEALTHY CHOICE” (Simran Sehgal, in Elle Tayla). People are passionate about whether fruitarian, raw vegan, and even ‘typical’ vegan foodstyles constitute a valid recovery, and wrestle with the contradiction that eating disorder recovery forbids restriction while vegan-centered diets require it. Laypeople and clinicians alike often condemn the methods of the vegan recoverers, unable to reconcile the practices of the vegans (especially the fruitarians) online with what is currently viewed as a “healthy” recovery. This is even (especially) so for some non-vegan recoverers, who are often, apparent from the comments, the most vocal opponents of this lifestyle: Sorry not sorry, love, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. I went down the same rabbit hole, came up […] I realized what a jerk-around anorexia is […] The fact that your diet is vegan because veggies and shit are ‘clean’ is a lie […] You deserve a fucking treat other than fucking fruit. And you know it. (Veronica Gombar, from Elle Tayla) Regardless, vegan videos and personal web pages online continue to proliferate, and the persistence of this trend despite mainstream pushback further demands attention to the significance of these individuals’ foodstyles in the context of eating disorder recovery. By claiming that veganism can enable the attainment of successful ED (eating disorder) recovery, members of the community subvert the dominant medical, psychological, and cultural beliefs about what is, and isn’t, a “real” way to heal. This thesis takes seriously the ways that vegan recoverers, including those with more ‘extreme’ dietary practices, negotiate how they recover from their eating disorders. Setting aside both the vitriol and the adulation, the narratives that are being voiced to a wide Internet public are, at their heart, subversive; they point 4 out and counteract the limitations in the typical model of recovery, and conceive of powerful, if controversial, alternatives. This work provides an inroad and outlet to a community seldom heard at the level of public consciousness and seeks to unearth its underlying eating disorder counternarratives. 5 CHAPTER ONE Tracing Vegan Recovery A search for the vegan recovery community online returns a seeming plethora of colorful, well-crafted blogs and vlogs in individual websites and on popular sharing services like YouTube. The creators’ photographs reveal them to be young, mostly female, Western, and largely either white or Asian. The creators’ screen names and website titles often reflect their focus, including “Crazy Vegan Kitchen,” “Sweet Simple Vegan,” and “Happy on Fruit.” While this work will reference their food practices as singularly “vegan,” their practices vary dramatically and include what I will call “typical” veganism: whole foods plant-based veganism, raw till four veganism, raw veganism, and high-carb low- fat veganism (also called fruitarianism, and usually acronymed HCLF vegan). Raw till four, raw, and HCLF veganism can be considered more extreme forms of dietary practice, and thus attract significant traffic online from viewers come to gawk or admire. This sample includes 9 ‘typical’