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Eating disorders are one of the least visible and thereby least examined forms of violence experienced by women in the South Asian American community. However , the invisibility of eating disorders does not indicate its absence among South Asians. As more women of the South Asian diaspora are willing to discuss openly their challenges with body images and food, they are helping to raise the community ’s consciousness about eating disorders and the ways in which these disorders reflect the exacerbation of existing and initiation of new forms of gender violence in the community. Through a cultural and theoretical framework, this chapter assesses the identity politics circumscribing South Asian women’s relations to food and body image in America. Roots of South Asian Femininity Whether they are members of the first- or second-generation immigrant groups, South Asians, male and female alike, are influenced by the traditions of their society .1 Primarily, the culture’s impact is rooted in the principles of shame and honor, which demand the subjection of individual desires in favor of those of the family and the larger community. This framework affects myriad social constrictions in order to stabilize patriarchal moral norms, which consistently privilege the agency and value of men over women in all processes such as social, political, economic, and religion. For example, in cultural parameters of shame and honor, any attention to the self is likely to incur a stigma of shame and weakness, whereas those who sacrifice for the larger community are viewed as strong and proper, and therefore worthy of respect. Furthermore, shame visited upon an individual is inevitably reflected onto all members of the person’s family. Consequently, individuals in South Asian societies are expected to resolve their personal problems without displaying any need for assistance from outside (Waters ). Additionally, psychiatric treatments, or “talking through one’s issues,” are considered oddities that 7 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Fragmented Self Violence and Body Image among South Asian American Women V. G. JULIE RAJAN 94 Ch007.qxd 11/3/06 5:04 PM Page 94 are often symbolically associated with immorality, weakness, and disease. Stemming from this logic, South Asian norms assume that there are no problems that cannot be handled privately. Consequently, the notion of individuals displaying problems that they cannot solve is considered abnormal. As this chapter will underscore, these norms more heavily circumscribe the female gender in the South Asian community. Lata Mani () notes, “Questions of tradition and modernity have, since the nineteenth century, been debated on the literal and figurative bodies of [South Asian] women. . . . It thus comes as no surprise that the burden of negotiating the new world is borne disproportionately by women, whose behavior and desires, real or imagined, become the litmus test for the South Asian community’s anxieties or sense of well being” (). In all patriarchal frameworks, especially in those emphasizing the community’s desires over those of the individual, women’s agencies are subjugated to those of men. In conservative communities, South Asian females of all ages are expected to defer to male relatives; first, in their natal families, and, second, in their marital families. From the moment of birth, a South Asian woman’s social, political, economic, and spiritual disenfranchisement is rooted in patriarchal mechanisms that require the control of female sexuality. Sonalde Desai () notes how South Asian power structures purporting “seclusion, subservience, and self-denial” have a profound impact on women’s subjectivities (). Although complicated and impacted by layers of economic class and caste, certain basic processes of patriarchal sexual control permeate all class and caste divisions within the broader South Asian community (Pande ). The theoretical beliefs of patriarchy are manifested physically in the community through the medium of the female body. The regulated masculine control of women’s bodies (and therefore women’s sexuality) allows for the production of consistent moral norms that support the code of shame and honor underscoring South Asian traditions (Desai ). Because these beliefs have been associated with South Asian traditions over the centuries, they have gained a symbolic moral signi ficance and credibility that renders them proper and customary. Hence, the subjugation of women, though truly a social process, has attained the representation as being correct and normal in the traditional framework of South Asian society. Since the well-being of the community is dependent on the proper sexual behavior of South Asian women, a restrictive nexus of shame and honor tempers their sexual expressions. As a means of guarding family honor, for example, certain...

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