Orthorexia Nervosa?

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This is supposed to be a new psychological disease, that, from Dr. Helen, and to her from elsewhere, on down the line... you know how that goes... of women who obsess about healthy eating, often in lieu of a husband and family, and to the detriment of their health.  Cat women who go into cuisine instead of pets?  So it seems.

In my opinion, this is a case of psychologists having too much time on their hands, not of women having obsessions.  Women ARE obsessive.  Whether it is related to work, family, pets, food, even some rare birds who dive into the whole of domestic life.  They obsess for a few years, then move on quite often.  It's like they put themselves through school on various topics, then when they have what they can, just go back to maintaining and using that education.  Unmarried women obsess with how they look.  And that is fair, and a part of their draw to a potential mate.  But if they have priced themselves out of marriage, say by wanting a man with better qualifications than what they have, while they have a ph. d. (even a useless one, to them they want someone with better, or equal).  The problem with that latter example, is that there are few men with ph. d.s, and those men do not seek, as a general rule, women in their education bracket.  Actually, those men often spurn such women.

Actually, obsessing about food is an excellent thing for unmarried women to consider.  That, along with looks, and a few other domestic skills and womanly ways, will draw a man to her.  If I find out a woman can't, or won't, cook, or is stupid about food, I won't even consider her.  Well, now that lovers have no interest to me.  I don't do short term relationships, and I want dinner and pie, from time to time.  Sexist?  Why do you think women are returning to domestic obsessions?  Because they are realizing that men don't think much of a "smart" girl, or a "powerful" girl, or an "educated" girl, they just want a partner who can handle what men generally can't.  I can cook.  I can chef.  But not well, certainly not on my own, and it isn't food you would want to feed a family.  What I cook is too expensive, too rich, too... and too rare.  I am not a good family cook.  Just a barbarian getting by.  I am lousy about nutrition, actually, especially as family goes.  And my system is a little different.  What I eat won't work for women, certainly not for children. 

No, I think this sort of a diagnosis is more about shooing women away from the domestic, and another attack on the potential for family life, than it is about anything wrong with this focus that young and unmarried women are obtaining.  All I have to say is, ladies?  Keep it up.  You cook a man four or five dishes, without much thought, that satisfy his hunger, you will do more to catching him than having two or three ph. d.s plus a six figure salary (unless you are willing to go really low on the male totem pole).  Cook, have a clean home, help him with his, smile even when you don't want to, and keep those knees closed until after marriage, then keep them as open as possible.  You want a man, then do the work for it.  And make sure to have children, almost immediately, regardless of what he says.  Grumpy as we are, there is something about mini-me's, and the women who suffer to bring the children before us.

Can food become an obsession?  Sure.  Can it go off kilter?  Yeah.  But, if survived, this fixes itself.  And, as I suggested, obsessions are native to women.  I am obsessing myself, of late.  At least before I fell on medical malpractice.  Kefir, my wheat grinder is in, a dehydrator, canner, vacuum sealer... sure...  Though each as a purpose and capacity that fills roles I already had going, which were much more expensive otherwise.  So... if I am considered to have issues with food, again, I toss it back at the doctors, who are probably hurting, clinically, as the Great Depression 2.0, Zerocare, and the rest, guts their angsty middle class out of the money that they used to waste on the faux sci-med that is psychiatry.  Kitschy, I suppose, but no longer affordable to the social class that used to buy into it.  A very good thing.  There are good parts to great depressions.

Later.