The Eight Bites of Society
Readers can examine the detrimental effects of society on a person in Carmen Maria Machado’s story “Eight Bites.” In the short story, the unnamed narrator seeks relief from the suffering she experienced as a child through bariatric surgery, though the outcome is one she didnt expect. It is possible to use a Freudian perspective to investigate the disruptive impact of a woman’s mental health and her relations to her loved ones as she battles body dysmorphia. The ideas of unconscious, repressive, and wishful impulses in the Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis are shown throughout Machado’s “Eight Bites,” allowing the writer’s critiques of how harmful beauty standards can lead to the deterioration of the mind and the connections to loved ones.
Machado begins illustrating Freud’s theory of wishful impulse by describing the narrator’s feelings and thoughts before bariatric surgery. The protagonist discovers from her mother that it only takes eight bites to make her look attractive. The narrator’s mother often told this when she was young; she needed to eat only eight bites to remain attractive. Thus, she tried to stick to this philosophy but felt dissatisfied after only eight bites of food. The story states, “I sat down again, picked up my fork and had eight more bites… After, I finished what was in the pot on the stove and I was so angry I began to cry” (Machado). She wanted to achieve a more fantastic body with a change to her diet, but this sadly could not be accomplished. The narrator, unsatisfied with only eight bites, went for another, and another, and another, until no more food was left in the pot. Finally, with the inability to complete the desire for a better body due to her wishful impulse, the narrator took it upon herself to get bariatric surgery. This operation removes fat from the body. This method was to repress the wishful impulses of wanting to eat more and to negate the negative feelings associated with the inability to comply with her wishful thinking. Sigmund Freud explored this concept and that “incompatible wishful impulse… would have produced a high degree of unpleasure; this unpleasure was avoided by means of repression” (Freud 2212). As seen in “Eight bites,” the narrator could only have eight bites after having bariatric surgery, suppressing her wishful impulse and the negative feelings that went along with it.
Though wishful impulses are shown within the story, unconscious repression is just as heavily, if not more or less, shown throughout the story. Freud says repression is people pushing “the pathogenic experiences in question out of consciousness.” (Freud 18). This idea is shown multiple times throughout Machado’s story, as the narrator tries various methods to push away the thoughts of eating while trying to attain a better body. One instance is through the narrator’s sister, who has undergone bariatric surgery, which is an additional source of repression (Machado). The narrator’s sisters help her suppress her negative thoughts by exuding joy after undergoing their operation. By assuring the narrator that she will be happy and content after the surgery, the sister helps suppress the narrator’s thoughts rather than bringing up her anguish. This influence makes the narrator set aside uncomfortable emotions and turn to surgery as a means of happiness and fulfillment. In the Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Freud argues, “It is true that they have driven it out of consciousness and out of memory and have apparently saved themselves a large amount of unpleasure. But the repressed wishful impulse continues to exist in the unconscious” (Freud 2215). Wishful impulses that have been suppressed can relieve pain, but because these impulses still exist in the unconscious mind, they have the potential to resurface in the conscious mind. For example, Freud’s thoughts can be present when the narrator throws out her food again, but this time after the surgery: “I stand over the can for a long while…I spray window cleaner into the garbage can so the food cannot be retrieved.” (Machado). The narrator throws the food but looms over the trash; she is hesitant to throw food because she has never done so. The idea of not throwing the food and eating it whole should have been repressed, and it was, but the thought resurfaced, which in turn shows that the narrator is suffering from the backlash of repressed wishful impulses. These impulses directly result from the imperfect body standards present during our time; are they too harsh?
Machado shows how the effects of harmful beauty standards can lead to the deterioration of the mind and the connections of loved ones of those suffering from such harsh measures. The story “Eight Bites” starts with an unnamed protagonist instantly going through surgery, which is bariatric surgery, due to the character’s battle with bodily dysmorphia. Before the surgery, the character was overweight, and after, she was slim and beautiful; all should be well, but her mental health seemed to slowly get pressured by the guilt and traumas of her past. The harsh body standards society sets tend to drive people away from their bodies and desire an unrealistic figure. A study by City Tech students found that most people chose the “Attractive” body over the plus-sized body (Mckenzie). When people look for those who are “good-looking,” those who do not fit that category will soon try their hardest to change and conform to the norms of society. The narrator did that by undergoing bariatric surgery, which is what Machado is trying to show through her story, that beauty standards are affecting everyone negatively. Let us also take job finding as an example; no matter how much companies plead, “Looks are. superficial,” they are not. In an article published by C.I. Chiang, they found out, “For the position of receptionist in the hospitality industry, the callback odds for those with an attractive appearance are 7.94 times higher than those who are unattractive” (Chiang, 1995). With nearly an eight-times gap of callbacks, the issue of appearance takes the skill of work and puts it on the back burner, while beauty is in the forefront. With this gap in acceptance, wouldn’t you take any measure to change the way you look just to secure your well-being? With this gap in acceptance, wouldn’t you do anything just to be accepted into society? This approval is what Machado tries to invoke in her writings; the unnamed character wants to change her looks, and she wants to be beautiful, but this change is what ultimately brings her downfall. The protagonist slowly loses her mental sanity and soon starts seeing a pile of mass: “It is a body with nothing it needs: no stomach or bones or mouth. Just soft indents” (Machado). Readers can assume that the mass is the fat cut off from the main character. Her past traumas are returning to haunt her, and in her final moments of life, the character accepts that she had made a mistake, she is sorry, and she didnt know. With her judgment being so skewed by the beauty standards, she didnt realize that she ultimately cut off part of her body, which was hers to take care of; she was a “caretaker” no more. This damage to her mind would also lead to losing her connection to her daughter. Because of the body dysmorphia because of the beauty standards, now with no one to call, the protagonist is alone in a world she changed for; she lost everything to gain nothing.In Carmen Maria Machado’s story “Eight Bites,” it is possible to find correlations between the story and Freud’s Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis. For example, the Psycho-concepts of unconscious, repressive, and wishful impulses are evident throughout Machado’s “Eight Bites,” enabling readers to understand the author’s criticisms of destructive beauty standards. Likewise, the struggle of suppressing irrational desires illustrated by the bariatric surgical procedure aids others in comprehending the languages of psychological notions.
Sources:
Machado, C. M. (2017). Eight bites. Gulf Coast Magazine. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from
http://texas.gulfcoastmag.org/journal/29.2-summer/fall-2017/eight-bites/
Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., 1961. Semantic Scholar.
Chiang, C. I. “Do Good Looks Matter When Applying for Jobs in the Hospitality Industry?” ScienceDirect, 1 Mar. 1995,
Mckenzie, Kishana, et al. Unrealistic Body Standards Produced by the Media. CUNY Academic Works.
