What I Loved question

I appreciate the detailed reply. I know, like many if not all readers, i impose my experience onto what I read. she may not have a true disorder just a difference. .maybe at times she used it as an added "research tool" and/or a "way in to her subject matter rather than a self.

late in replying, but i definitely thought she had some form of "disordered eating" and occasionally slid into the ED side of that sprecturm (see Psychology Today on the difference, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...). Having some familiarity with the field but by no means trained or formally educated on body issues, I also wonder is she has a varying degree of body dysmorphic disorder http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anx...)

Hmm. This never crossed my mind. I just assumed, that like so many women in that time period (I'm assuming mid to late '70's when Leo meets Bill, after having bought the portrait of Violet, Bill being still married to Lucille), anyway, I assumed that like so many women of that period, Violet's Ph.D. dissertation was concerned with debunking the 19th and early 20th century medical and psychiatric "science" about women. Violet is never described as being overweight; in my copy, a paperback from Picador, 2003, at the bottom of page 85, Violet is described as having the curves of "the rounder movie queens" of Leo's youth, and of "eating with gusto -- often dribbling in the process." That gusto is just enjoyment, and the dribbling is most likely just a part of loving to eat with people she cares about, and talking, and eating, and talking, talking, whoops, dribbling. I think it's familiar (to me) and endearing. Her second book is about anorexia and "starvation artists," some, at least one, were men, by the way, and her third is titled "The Automatons of Late Capitalism," (p. 387), a study of young women buying into media images of female beauty. (I love her theory of "over-mixing.") Violet's childhood is described as without incident, not traumatic in any way (bottom page 53). No, I took it as one part of her field of study -- which is broadly women's studies -- and did not see an eating disorder as something she suffered from personally.

Now Bill's first series of paintings that receive notice are the series of Violet. Bill states (p. 12) that his work is about doubt. Leo asks him why he paints one of a fat Violet, and Bill describes his motivation as "more of an urge than an idea". (More men, as in the 19th century, imposing their visions upon women without women's consent?)

No, I didn't feel Violet had any sort of eating disorder. People in the book stopped eating out of grief and loss, for a time, but food is an important and I believe healthily perceived part of their lives. (Except Lucille, who had no feeling for food, I didn't feel (p. 17), but she was not as mentally well adjusted as she could be -- remember Bill rescuing her from her suicide attempt and falling in love with her? One more example of projection -- he projected himself as her hero into the scene her mental illness had created, he made her illness a fable. But I'm a bit of a radical...)