The Waiting Room / Bulimia Tableau
BULIMIA TABLEAU
Gut Reaction Chair
Modified chair frame, foam, tubing, plunger, and custom designed/printed fabric
Guilty Pleasures: Interactive Writing Station
Candy and bakery papers, writing pens, table
The gut reaction chair viscerally expresses bulimia’s binge and purge cycle. Grotesquely distorted, the full seat and back are bloated by all-consuming emotional and physical distress. The pattern on the fleshy upholstery fabric evokes eyes or even galaxies, but actually depicts a varied collection of belly buttons.
Bulimia and anorexia are complex, misunderstood disorders in which food is a coping mechanism for underlying psychological and physical issues. Still, the extreme attention to bodily perfection, dieting and unobtainable ideals of thinness that inundate contemporary culture act as triggers. While bulimics may perceive themselves as overweight, they often fall within ‘normal’ weight ranges, so unlike visibly underweight anorexics, they often can keep their condition secret. Out-of-control feelings (such as shame) lead to binges, which bulimics must then relieve by purging (which causes shame). According to NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness), 2-3% of adolescent women develop bulimia (twice the amount for anorexia). Like “Ana,” its sister disorder, this condition destroys bodies, families, lives—insidiously silent, it can also be deadly.
Our culture of excess upholds dangerous double standards: McDonald’s ads and Weight Watchers shrinking waistlines flash across screens so often we hardly notice. No one is immune to the pressures to consume.
Written ‘food journals’ are common treatment methods for eating disorders. What is in your food journal? Visitors may record their own private food notes on candy and bakery wrapping papers and stuff them into the opening atop the chair ‘gut.’ If your secret gets caught, push it down with the plunger… and watch it release out the back onto the blue disk. Plunk, it has joined the collective spill of secrets on the floor.
The Waiting Room / Bulimia Tableau
BULIMIA TABLEAU
Gut Reaction Chair
Modified chair frame, foam, tubing, plunger, and custom designed/printed fabric
Guilty Pleasures: Interactive Writing Station
Candy and bakery papers, writing pens, table
The gut reaction chair viscerally expresses bulimia’s binge and purge cycle. Grotesquely distorted, the full seat and back are bloated by all-consuming emotional and physical distress. The pattern on the fleshy upholstery fabric evokes eyes or even galaxies, but actually depicts a varied collection of belly buttons.
Bulimia and anorexia are complex, misunderstood disorders in which food is a coping mechanism for underlying psychological and physical issues. Still, the extreme attention to bodily perfection, dieting and unobtainable ideals of thinness that inundate contemporary culture act as triggers. While bulimics may perceive themselves as overweight, they often fall within ‘normal’ weight ranges, so unlike visibly underweight anorexics, they often can keep their condition secret. Out-of-control feelings (such as shame) lead to binges, which bulimics must then relieve by purging (which causes shame). According to NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness), 2-3% of adolescent women develop bulimia (twice the amount for anorexia). Like “Ana,” its sister disorder, this condition destroys bodies, families, lives—insidiously silent, it can also be deadly.
Our culture of excess upholds dangerous double standards: McDonald’s ads and Weight Watchers shrinking waistlines flash across screens so often we hardly notice. No one is immune to the pressures to consume.
Written ‘food journals’ are common treatment methods for eating disorders. What is in your food journal? Visitors may record their own private food notes on candy and bakery wrapping papers and stuff them into the opening atop the chair ‘gut.’ If your secret gets caught, push it down with the plunger… and watch it release out the back onto the blue disk. Plunk, it has joined the collective spill of secrets on the floor.