thoughts on Kevin Khatchadourian’s disordered eating habits
using clips from the movie but with further elaboration in the novel. Go read the book if you want to see more on what I’m talking about because it’s a lot clearer in there.
I can’t imagine Kevin necessarily having the exact correlation of: I want to be skinny → I will restrict. But I do think remnants of both restricting and body image are there.
restrictive EDs have far deeper root causes than just wanting to be skinny; whether that be a need for control, body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, self harm, trauma, obsessive compulsive tendencies, etc. for Kevin I think it comes from his mothers influence, control, body dysmorphia in the form of wanting to stay young, and a general aversion to food.
Autistic sensory issues can also be a strong cause for restricting. As a kid Kevin is shown to prefer lots of salt. Mainly eating sodium rich junk food and pouring copious amounts of salt on his food. Salt cravings is a pretty common trait in autism. But it can also cause food aversion by taste and texture. I imagine just the process of eating to be pretty lame to Kevin, as well as on an ideological level. The infinite process of always having to eat for the rest of your life or else you starve, to be tortuously dull; You can never be satisfied. He hates that he’s reliant on it. It feels like a weakness. There are hierarchies of people, but we all have to stoop down to the vulnerability of hunger. He thinks he’s above that, he won’t be dragged down by the bodily prison of hunger. Cooking and presentation seems like a useless vanity. What’s the point of putting in all this effort, making it look pretty, perfecting the taste, if it’s all going to become the same disgusting slop in you mouth and then shat out. he wishes he never had to eat, he would never eat out of boredom or just cause he wanted to. It needs to have a purpose. Often times he doesn’t notice his body’s signals that it’s hungry until it’s debilitating.
His mother is quite vain in her appearance, especially her weight. Kevin picked up on it. He never cared for the praise you get from being slim, like his mother. But Eva’s habits of small portions and comments on the weight of herself and others stuck in his psyche. Pushing the idea that food wasn’t for enjoyment, It was a challenge.
There are many things you can speculate on how Kevin views his appearance and his body. But he does put considerable thought into it. For several reasons I suspect that as Kevin got older, he desperately desires to regress back to a child. His clothing choices for one. Going off that I think the effects of restricting and then losing weight may be, if unintentional, a result he desires. Staying underweight keeps him looking young. I’d say he doesn’t enjoy the fat and muscle that fills his body reminding him that he’s growing old. Reminding him he too is becoming the adults he despises, that he must now engage in the stupidity of adult society.
Overall I think his eating habits aren’t intentional in trying to lose weight. It’s a result of his aversion to food, physically and ideologically. But he has an underlying satisfaction of the results. As all EDs are, they aren’t as simple as JUST wanting to lose weight. Kevin’s reasons are complex, multiple factors that cause him to restrict, and keep him in that harmful state. He’s not tracking calories, checking his weight, or fearing getting fat. He just doesn’t like eating, for his own reasons.
Everyday I think about this guy I hated , he looked just like Kevin k. and he ended up bringing a knife to school I just can’t help but wonder where he is now
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