Let’s Discuss Body Image
Of all the style bloggers who’ve been brought to my attention recently, this one disturbes me the most.
I don’t want to link to her or hurt her feelings. I just want her to eat!
How can one become so delusional that one’s starving body looks like a pin-up girl? This blogger likes to post several pictures of the same outfit, often posing saucily in front of various landmarks. She appears to be youngish, but her face is wrinkled from starvation and perhaps bulimia.
Just the other day, my sister and I were recalling our bouts of teenage anorexia. She can remember the exact moment that she decided to lose weight. We both remember how it was triggered by our dad, whose offhand comment about her weight was devastating to a sensitive 13 year old.
I can’t remember what triggered my anorexa, but it started when I was living in a place for juvenile delinquents. I got down to 96 pounds but still worried about calories. When I ate eggs, I threw away the yolk.
When you have anorexia, the image you see in the mirror can never be thin enough. Even your bones look too fat. All you care about is being thin and staying thin. You lose all capacity for being rational about your body.
A couple of years ago, I met a girl with anorexia who was also a drug addict. She reminded me a little of my younger self, and she was like a wounded bird that I longed to protect. She confessed to me that she cried after eating an apple. I tried to explain that her thinking was distorted. She died from huffing, thin as a twig.
A new study suggests that the propensity for anorexia begins in utero, due to hormone fluctuations. There is also a genetic component. Therefore, it’s not just a reaction to cultural pressure and stereotypes. Maybe it’s an issue of seeking control when you feel powerless: If you can control what you put in your mouth, you are in charge. That is the fallacy.
I hope someone can help the poor blogger. I hope someone can reach out to her, although who knows how many people may have tried and failed.
The good thing is that once you start to eat, your brain can work again. You begin to end the struggle with your body, and the spell can be broken, just by gaining a few vital pounds.
If you’ve battled with this shit, or you have an opinion, let’s hear it!
Tags: anorexia, bloggers, body image
July 13th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
July 14th, 2010 at 12:15 am
I was bulimic. and exorcize bulimic. and anorexic. all at different-intersecting points. THe only thing that helped me is when somebody told me I was an idiot. and somebody started having sex with me all the time and liked my body no matter what (in the 1-5 pound variant.)
pathetic but true. I love my body now- though I DONT love it around my mother (who is, like I’ve said, anorexic.)
I really just needed people to tell me I was being an idiot. and I needed somebody to fuck me.
maybe Im a unique case though.
my mom has kept up her anorexia for about 28 years. the women has nearly died from meningitis, SARs, mono and god knows what else- but fuck if she starts eating we’ll abandon her, right?
I say all this…but who is to deny that I wouldnt still like to be 10 pounds thinner? oh fuck it. I want to look like carine roitfeld. But I’d like to have boobs.
also I would like a pony.
being alive is complicated and sad.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:16 am
I went through a bout of bulimia when I was 24. I had broken up with my boyfriend, with whom I lived, and he made me move out. I was a nervous wreck and there was some very, very heavy stuff happening to me simultanously which added to this complete feeling of lack of control over everything. I wasn’t into fashion so it had nothing to with that at all.
Controlling my food was the ONLY thing I had left. I think it lasted about 6 months and I went down to 87lbs and for someone who is above average height, well, you can imagine how I looked. The thing that brought me back to earth was that I was terrified of loosing my teeth, that, and seeing a photo of myself and seeing my wrists which looked like they belonged on an actual skeleton.
I just snapped out of it.
Now, I physically I can’t vomit and if I do, through illness, it makes me cry. I have no idea now how I could have been bulimic as I love food now.
I’m still thin, as I am naturally, but people have called me anorexic which hurts so much as I think I look pretty healthy.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:04 am
I found this girls blog. I can’t even begin to explain how sad and disturbed it makes me feel. What I find the most appalling are the comments other idiotic bloggers have left. Nobody should be praising her on how ‘cute’ she looks!! How can these imbeciles promot her disorder? The word is full of morons wahhhhh I give up!
July 14th, 2010 at 1:11 am
My battle with anorexia started 28 years ago when I was in med school and it was coupled with depression. My older sister also suffered from anorexia, bulimia and depression. Our father was an authoritarian who was controlling, demanding and obsessively focused on academic success.
Even though I’m no longer anorexic and I’m far from thin, I still can’t stop throwing away my egg yolks whenever I eat eggs. I’m now become an emotional eater who is constantly obsessed with food and who cannot enjoy food without feeling guilty. I’m beginning to think I may never have a normal relationship with food.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:15 am
It’s hard to look at some of her photos, especially of her arms; they are simply heart wrenching. I hope she gets some really good support.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:56 am
I was anorexic/bulimic (mostly bulimic to be honest) from 14 to up untill the end of last year (I’m 20 now). Basically, it got to the point of were my body stopped accepting food, I couldnt eat even if I wanted too (and I did really, at this point). I almost died, I was walking death, literally..I put myself into hospital or IP, stayed there for 6 weeks and it changed my entire life. I had been in hospital before this, but I was never a step away from ending my own life, I was never that close to death before then. I stripped myself of everything, no friends, no boyfriend, didnt work..Nothing, I was nothing, I lost myself in hatred and anger and the goal of destroying what I saw in the mirror. But..as they say, what doesnt kill you makes you stronger and it’s true. Through chaos I found myself..sometimes you have to destroy something to save it and that was true for me.
Besides writing very long comments on great blogs like yours. I hope to use my experience to help, I hope somehow..I can help someone else or atleast show them there is another way to life. You cant help people that dont ask for it first.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:58 am
also wanted to add. I got to 31kgs at 5′4 before entering hospital. I am a small person, I have a small frame but I’m proud to say I am now good and healthy at 48-49kgs.
July 14th, 2010 at 3:03 am
Women, when miserably unhappy, tend to internalize and take it out on themselves, while we men generously spread our misery to others in the form of violence, wars and general abuse. What a choice!
But I have a question: Does anorexia and self-cutting have something to do with young girls’ subconscious fear of sex? Cutting seems a massively widespread phenomenon. But why cutting? Why not finger-slamming-in-the-door or cigarette burning? Could it be that young girls subconsciously or consciously both fear and long for penetration, and fearing the initial pain, they choose to partially experience the pain of penetration beforehand by the symbolic phallic form of the knife? I know this may seem old fashioned Freudian, but what’s the reason? It seems too simple to say they are trying to mask psychological pain with physical. After all, you could just as easily hit yourself in the head with a hammer. Are there many reasons beside the obvious ones for ritual self-mutilation???
July 14th, 2010 at 3:34 am
Richie Edwards, former songwriter for the manic street preachers wrote ‘There’s such beautiful dignity in self abuse’ about his own anorexia -I clung to these words during my own dark period of starvation. I now look back with a grim kind of sympathy with my former self. It was all about control with me – I was able to control what I ate and how I looked. Both of my sisters and I all suffered from some kind of eating disorder at different time in our lives with differing consequences. I’m glad to say that we’re all happy and healthy now – thankfully. I’m quick to forget the horror I went through and sometimes find I get impatient and unsympathetic when I see or hear about someone going through an eating disorder – it’s all so clear in my mind now where before it was just murk. It’s good to be reminded sometimes. Sisiter, I hope you find your way out of your own murk.
July 14th, 2010 at 4:23 am
Caroline Knapp wrote a beautiful, albeit rambling, book called “Appetites: Why Women Want,” recounting her struggles with anorexia. She posits many theories, one of which, while seeming to be a little cynical, at least gives one something to think about: as women take up a larger amount of psychological space in the world, male-controlled “media” (including advertising and fashion) encourage images of women who take up less and less physical space, and who are systematically portrayed in submissive poses. (Think about fashion ads: women lying, mussed, clothes torn, in vulnerable postures; women in dog collars on their knees.)
A more compelling argument, I think (although I haven’t heard the the-damage-happens-in-utero theory before) regards women’s struggles with their own right to want. Not just the wanting of food, but for a rewarding career, and children who treat them with respect, and a husband who is kind and thoughtful and attentive. Near the end of the book she hypothesizes on why women cry. It’s one of the most powerful passages I’ve ever read. I’d quote it, but it’s in a box in my garage as we prepare to install wood floors in our living room.
July 14th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Sad. I ran on the university gym’s track once behind an anorexic girl who looked like a sack of bones about to come apart. I could see joints and parts of bones I’d never seen before outside of the skeletal lab.
I don’t get it though – I come from a long line of people who try to drown misery and fill up empty holes inside by eating and drinking everything we can, hopefully to the point of no longer feeling anything.
July 14th, 2010 at 4:41 am
I knew a girl in high school who was anorexic. I didn’t even know it, and I doubt many people who didn’t know her very well had any idea. She wasn’t thin. She wasn’t fat, but she never looked unhealthy. Although now that I look back, she also tended to wear bulky sweatshirts, no matter what time of year.
I only found out that she was anorexic because I ran across her pro-ana blog online. And this is the saddest thing I have ever heard. People who know what they are doing to their bodies, and insist on calling it a “lifestyle choice” rather than what it is–a disorder. Can you help people who think they’re just making a valid lifestyle choice? I don’t think so.
I just don’t understand where this behavior comes from. It denies every level of human existence: the drive for basic survival as well as the ability to act and react rationally. How does it happen? I’m overweight, and I have been since I was thirteen. Never grossly overweight, never terribly unhealthy. But overweight. And I was teased about it, mercilessly, by kids at school. And I saw all the fashion magazines that told me I wasn’t thin enough to be pretty, and I had guys refuse to date me because I was “too fat,” and I even had my grandmother comment–well-meaningly–on my weight. And yet I never began starving myself to try to change those perceptions, or to fit into that perfect image. Why do other girls? More importantly, why does it always seem to be the girls that were never really big to begin with? I’ve never known someone who was incredibly fat to become anorexic. It always seems to be a girl who’s average or maybe 5, 10 pounds above average. Why is that?
Sorry for the rant, I’m just seeking to understand. If anyone has answers to my questions, please say so, they’re not rhetorical.
July 14th, 2010 at 4:55 am
I could not wait to turn 9, because then I would loose all my baby fat, just like the girl across the street. That did not happen to my satisfaction, and I remember clearly, the first time I made myself throw up. I was 9 years old, it was a sunny day, and my parents were somewhere else, and my sister and I had a babysitter.
By the time I was 13, I was in a full blown binge purge cycle and landed myself into my first of many hospitalizations. I had gotten down to 62 lbs, and I was on a mission to loose more. I had notes all around my bedroom room, reminding me how fat and ugly I was, and that I needed to get thinner. My poor mom did not know what to do. My first treatment lasted 9 months, and I really found no recovery there. I was stubborn, and managed to loose weight even in the hospital. The doctors would not let me see or talk to my mom, and threatened to tie me down and tube feed me if I did not comply with their plan. I finally did start consuming this horrible high protein drink, and managed to get my weight up to the doctors satisfaction. After I was released from that hospital, I coasted for about three months, then my mom died. My sister and I had to leave our roots and go to live with my dad and (at the time wicked step mother). Things were not pretty for many many years.
Early on, I had no media stimulation to make me think I was fat and ugly, that came later, probably in my 20’s, and yet that was not what motivated my insanity. I will say, that my neurosis came from deep within, and really had little to do with outside influence.
I often wished that I was anorexic and not anorexic/bulimic, because the anorexic has control, and the bulimic, in my mind, was a hideous animal. That shows you how sick I was.
I had many many years of struggle and resistance to health, and I fell into alcohol along the way. Alcohol, as crazy as this sounds, may have kept me alive at one point, because I threw up everything I ate, and the alcohol had calories that apparently sustained me (to a point). My lowest adult weight was about 79 lbs, and I was alone and miserable. I looked in the mirror, and said to the image that I was not connected to, that “I hate you, and want you to die”. Honestly, I was selfish and self centered enough, but too chicken shit to attempt suicide.
Shortly after that, I put myself into my 6th hospital, and FINALLY made a decision towards recovery.
It has been a process, and one that has required a lot of work. and I have done a lot along within the healing realm. I now teach yoga, and I must say, that yoga, is the one thing, that has allowed me to love, accept and appreciate my body. Yoga was not the only answer, and it came well into my recovery. I have had a lot of therapy too. I no longer drink, and am in recovery for that as well.
I am healthy and happy today, yet I still find myself having shame around eating. I wonder if that will ever be lifted from me. I hope so.
I remember a few years ago, a girl who frequently came to my yoga class. She was clearly anorexic. She kept getting thinner and thinner. I cant tell you how many people came to me, and told me to talk to her about what she was doing, and how thin she was. I emphatically said NO! It won’t do any good, and my efforts would be fuel for her cause. I chose instead, to send her love, and give her a lot of attention in my class. Finally she got to a place where she found the help she needed. She is healthy now, and we are good friends. The point here is, that we have to go through what we need to go through, to be liberated, and sometimes where the soul needs to go, is hell on earth. No one can bring you to health and freedom, that comes from within.
I can still spot someone with anorexia, and often bulimia. I no longer want to be thinner than them, but my heart goes out, and I feel the pain that they are in, even if they are not in touch with it yet.
I wish for health and happiness to anyone struggling with this, or anything for that matter.
xoxoxoxoxo
July 14th, 2010 at 5:07 am
I remember once my brother telling my mum I was picking on him and she said something about me using my size ‘and ‘bulk’…I remember it perfectly. Yet I could never be anorexic. I like food too much. I have days where I hate my body and I remember thinking of my mum’s comment every time someone was ever mean to me (about anything; I can’t remember anyone else calling me fat) when I was younger, and whenever I looked in the mirror. I was never bulimic, I was never anorexic. I hurt my body in other ways, but nowadays I just hit the gym and try not to think about it.
July 14th, 2010 at 5:37 am
I don’t know of any woman, myself included, who has not subscribed to the binge/purge ethic, in varying degrees, at least once in their life.
Think of how many wasted hours this amounts to. Hours we could spend doing other things, things that nurture our mind, body and soul.
I feel really sad for this blogger. Sad that ultimately no one close to her will care enough, or feel confident enough to tell her how it really is.
July 14th, 2010 at 5:49 am
I was twelve when it started, I think. I was not anorexic, not due to lack of trying, but only because I have a big structure and I could never be thin enough. For a twelve year old child, accepting constant criticism about her body and her weight is not easy, especially when it comes from family itself. I threw myself into exercise. Four hours a day, trying out each new combination I could. Constantly pushing myself, trying to burn more and more calories.
At first, it was exercise. I still wasn’t thin enough, despite a lot of compliments to prove otherwise. I cut back on food, on the stupid rationalisation that more people would tell me “I look too thin”. At one point, I was eating one cucumber a day.
It physically hurt me seeing beautiful girls who were just naturally thin.
Thankfully, even as a child, I read a lot of everything. Not so thankfully, I learnt innumerable ways to starve myself, to lose weight. I am not proud to admit I even tried to vomit my food. Didn’t work. I still remember how upset I was that I couldn’t even be bulimic. My skin was pale and drawn, I got a bout of major acne, and I was constantly hungry and irritated. All of this when I was only twelve.
The reason I keep mentioning how young I was is because it astounds me how idiotic I was once. I have since gained weight, I wear “plus-sizes”. But it doesn’t bother me, one bit. I was part of that vicious circle, trying to be skinny to impress people, failing at it, wasting an incredible amount of time dealing with the negativity that surrounded by body weight.
I have come to the realisation that it doesn’t matter. It is my body. I have to live with it, not my mother or my extended family.
It is still problematic for me to eat in front of other people, I just stopped doing that. I cannot eat a full slice of cake, I am paralysed by guilt. But you know what, I am getting there.
It upsets me that so many people are obsessed with how they look, how much they weigh. It reminds me of my obsession, and it is never pretty.
The saddest thing, perhaps, is how impossible it seems to get out of it. I am 19 right now, I still have a lot of insecurities, but what the hell. I need food, I am happy with my body.
I should apologise for my catharsis.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:04 am
Well i used to be very skinny, I was not anorexic and was perfectly healthy. I never had problems with the my image till the moment people ” found” that anorexia existed, and wanted me to admit to to have it, based simply on the way I looked. It became a full time obsession to some of my colleges to understand how I could be so skinny and eat what I wanted. It go so bad a teacher had to intervene. So making assumptions about someone, based on the way that person looks, to me is totally wrong
Now I’m in my 30s and although thin, finally i have a weight that is acceptable for society. It’s funny that till those accusations of anorexia, i never really thought about my body as something that had to conform with certain standards, i did not even looked at clothes sizes, i would pick up from the rack what i thought would fit. For better or for worse I became very aware of the way I looked.
Everyone is different, this girl may even have an health problem that is not related at all with anorexia, it’s wrong to diagnose a mental health disease just by looking at photographs.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:17 am
hmmm…found the blog…not my style but at least she seems to wear a lot of “normal” brands and is not obnoxious like most other SERIOUS FASHION bloggers.
However:
1) What a tragedy to be anorexic while living in Paris, a city with the most delicious…everything…markets, boulangeries, fromageries, bars, macarons, restaurants. SRSLY.
2) What’s up with the poses – the splits, the one in front of Grand Central that you posted?
That being said, good look to her and anyone else struggling with an eating disorder.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:17 am
How about this blogger?
http://mypreciousconfessions.blogspot.com/
July 14th, 2010 at 6:20 am
I was bulimic for around 4 years, starting when I was 18. I started “dieting” and got down to 79 lbs. I would freak out after I ate anything and throw it up. A few years later I started binging uncontrollably. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and I’d stop by the fridge and eat. I worked at a grocery store and I’d steal money from the register to buy food when I got off. I’d eat a whole pizza in one sitting. My whole day was planned around when and what I would eat. I tried to throw up as much as the food as I could, but inevitably, some stayed. I ended up gaining around 40 lbs and I still have the stretch marks on my thighs. Everyone called me fat and commented on my weight, so I binged and purged more.
At the time I had moved out of my parent’s house (so I could purge in peace) and was living with my boyfriend. He and I were together for 4 yrs and he never knew. I covered my tracks very well. I could purge without making any sounds.
One day I realized that I would kill myself if I didn’t stop. I ended up cutting back my binge and purge sessions from 10 times a day to 1 or 2 times, then to once a week. Shortly after I got a grip on bulimia, I became addicted to Vicodin, Valium and anything else I could get my hands on. I quit the pills 6 yrs ago and now I smoke pot to cope. I’ve traded one addiction for another.
Like many of us, I had a fucked up childhood. My dad was never around due to his work, my brother stopped speaking to me when he hit puberty, my mother was controlling and emotionally unavailable. I felt unloved by everyone. I’ve come to terms with a lot of shit, but I still have issues. I will, on occasion, still make myself throw up when I’ve eaten a huge meal.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:50 am
my heart goes out to you all who fight that loneliest fight there is.
my heart goes out to you all who try to survive the battlefield of the body.
xoxo
July 14th, 2010 at 7:01 am
The comments on this post are astonishing.
I became bulimic in college after a boyfriend broke up with me and called me fat (I was 5′7″ and an athletic 140 lbs). I insisted it wasn’t bulimia because I wasn’t binging/purging – I was simply purging everything I ate in the name of keeping my intake under 600 calories a day. I got down to 120 lbs in no time flat, which actually looked terrible on my medium frame, but I thought I looked great. I continued throwing up but called it weight control, not bulimia, as I wanted to stay around 120 lbs. I stopped the daily purging when I passed out in a department store and was rushed to a hospital, and the doctors knew immediately by my potassium levels and disintegrating tooth enamel what I was doing. They called me out in front of my parents who were horrified. I was forced to stop as I was being watched 24/7 by everyone who knew me.
I still fight bulimia to this day. If I am ever too full after eating a normal meal, I don’t think twice about sticking my finger down my throat. If my weight goes above that magic number of 140 lbs, my finger goes down my throat. When I go out to eat, I tend to pick places that I know have a single stall bathroom so I can lock the door and be alone and purge after an indulgent meal. My body image is shit, even though I wear a size 6.
July 14th, 2010 at 7:07 am
I can’t even look at pictures of anorexic people…because I’m reminded of the person I was/could have been.
I was struggling with a chronic illness (unknown to me at the time) and depression at 17. I still don’t know what triggered my anorexia…although my family and extended family (thanks for nothing) constantly dogged me about being 125 lbs at 5′3″…at that time, I wasn’t even thinking about that. I think it was just as much about control as it was about weight, like you said, Sister. I couldn’t control my body failing at 17 years old..I couldn’t control my life and the utter depression I experienced. But I could control my weight.
More alarming than my anorexia, I think, was my obsession with counting calories. I kept piles of papers and box labels hidden in my room. I literally counted and measured everything I ate. And when someone at the table was eating more than I was, I would try to “sabotage” their meal or I would stop eating and leave the table.
Sick.
I actually was able to end my anorexic habits myself…I struggled with it in private (I didn’t tell anyone about my issues). I heard my relatives talking about how “beautiful” I was at 89 lbs and I had a nervous breakdown. I was so upset that they thought that I looked beautiful when even I knew that I looked like a sick skeleton.
That year, I started eating. I helped myself to an extra cookie…more like five extra cookies. I gulped down the cans of soda I dearly missed and dumped gravy all over my plate. “Fuck you, family!” became my own private mantra. I bounced back to my healthy weight. I managed to find God and my husband at the grotesque weight of 135 lbs.
I actually gained a lot of weight in my senior year of college. I’m technically “overweight” now. My family still makes side comments. My aunt actually told me that I had to alter myself rather than my wedding dress. I want to stay this weight and find beauty with my current body out of spite, but I have incredibly high cholesterol levels due to my illness. I’m planning on lowering that number while losing as few pounds as possible. Fuck the family.
And now I just realized…..I think I still have an unresolved problem. Not with food, but with one of the greatest triggers of my anorexia. My family. :-/
July 14th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Last summer I stopped eating. I’m not sure why? I just couldn’t put anything into my stomach. Not even water. But I knew something was wrong and I admitted myself to the hospital where they hydrated me, did tests, and let me go back home. I keep losing weight and no one knows why? I eat a lot of healthy food, take my supplements, get blood work done . . . . however, I see myself as fat in my minds eye, more so than when I actualy was 30lbs heavier . . . I’m wondering if this is how it begins . . .
July 14th, 2010 at 7:26 am
What is the blog address? How can I find it?
July 14th, 2010 at 7:29 am
I went from over eating to not eating at all starting at age 12. It was a rollercoaster ride that lasted 6 years until I went to the doctor and was put on medications for blood pressure…amongst other things. That scared me. I don’t really know why I was motivated to eat more or less. I just didn’t like my self. I am not sure what “fixed” the problem, probably a mixture of yoga and good friends. I am now a healthy size 12 and I haven’t looked back.
July 14th, 2010 at 7:45 am
Oh, and Dexter, from my experience, self-harm has nothing to do with a fear of sex, just an expression of internal physical pain externally (trying to ‘let the pain out’) and as a selfish cry for help.
PS I am actually intrigued by this blogger girl (partly because of a recent article here in the UK about skinny couture models) and can someone tell me its name? I know Sister said not to link or malign the girl and I have no intention of doing so, I’m just interested.
July 14th, 2010 at 7:45 am
When I say ‘its name’, I mean the blog.
July 14th, 2010 at 7:54 am
To those with eating disorders — how can family members help once the eating disorder is out in the open?
I have read that being loving and supportive is the best thing, but is there anything else we can do? Sometimes I find it difficult to be supportive because my sibling’s eating disorder makes me so angry. It is so hard to watch someone I love be controlled by something so fucked up. Sometimes I feel so helpless. I try to be as loving as I can, but it is so hard to watch.
July 14th, 2010 at 8:37 am
I don’t have an eating disorder (I believe most people now eat in a disordered fashion, myself included, if only in terms of what motivates them – nonetheless I don’t purge or binge or eat compulsively…) but I do believe that the majority of eating disorders – in addition to many other compulsive physiological behaviours – are caused at the base level by neurotransmitter imbalance. Of course, life circumstances and pyschological factors cannot be divorced from this. Nonetheless, as a person who has struggled with OCD all her life, I see so many parallels between different ruminative and compulsive actions – from eating to hand washing to obsessive thought to vomiting to extreme environmental sensitivity. The expression is different, but the core indicator is the same.
July 14th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Kim – maybe it’s the best to be honest and say what you really think about it, although my relationship with food is what truly keeps me alive, as I need to avoid stuff that I love the most for health reasons. But when I struggle with control, nothing helps as much as the blunt opinion of some close, healthy person which cares about you. Go and tell your sibling what you feel and fear, it’s as valid and important as her disorder. Only, make sure you don’t hurt her dignity and don’t forget that you are not judge and jury, but somebody who has hurt feelings as well. Cry together, than laugh at some silliness. Sorry if I make it sound easy…
July 14th, 2010 at 9:59 am
When I was thirty, I hit the worst ever trough of my long-cycle depression, and couldn’t eat. I lost a hundred pounds in six months – half my bodyweight.
At first I didn’t notice; my world was black, I belted my pants and kept not eating. Then, suddenly, the world noticed.
I’ve done some interesting, creative things in my life; I’m an artist and performer and writer. Know what? Nobody gives a shit about that compared to the miracle of losing weight. I’ve never got so many compliments and comments in my life.
I looked like death. I was a good thirty pounds under even the “normal thin” weight for my height. At some point I’d shaved my head. I had black circles under my eyes because I wasn’t sleeping either, and the only things I was consuming on a regular basis were coffee and Diet Coke. I used to pass out regularly from hypoglycemia and low blood pressure. I’d lost my period twenty pounds before my lowest weight, and had lanugo sideburns. Hawt!
But as I say. Everyone wanted to know my secret. Completely strange men used to run up to me and hand me phone numbers on napkins. If this had happened to me in my teens, it would’ve changed my life, believe me; I always thought I was the chubby, geeky, unattractive girl. But hey, all I had to do was stand on the top step of Death’s basement and I was All That?
I became deliberately anorexic. I had a calorie counter in my head. I swore I’d kill myself if I ever started heading back up to the disgusting fatness I’d spent the rest of my life in. I couldn’t eat anything, even a wheat bran/eggwhite pancake (50kCal), unless I’d done my daily run (usually 10K).
My recovery is a long story, and is in large part thanks to my ex-husband. Why is he my ex-husband? Well, this bout of depression has a lot to do with it. It took another several years and more pounds (over the “optimal” BMI for my height) to get my period back and some kind of normal hormone function. I’m not as heavy as I was, but according to the world, I’m definitely plump.
And I like clothes. It was bliss, being a size 0, let me tell you. Everything fit. Everything looked good. All the really cool samples would be on sale in those tiny sizes. I dressed really well for less for those five hellish years. Now that I’m heavy again? I wonder what the point is. I can’t find clothes as easily, and proportions are never consistent for larger sizes. The Internet tells me, all over the place, that there’s no POINT in anyone who’s not tiny showing an interest in style; they are, by definition, ugly and unfashionable. A couple of “fatshionista” bloggers don’t do much to counter that. I still try; despite the undeniable convenience of being period-free, I don’t know that I really want to spend another few years in that headspace. But it’s hard to shut up the voices in your head when you know – YOU KNOW – that what they say is really what at least some people in the world are also saying as you walk by.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Oh, by the way, here’s some wtf for you: apparently Courtney Love now has a fashion blog:
http://whatcourtneyworetoday.com/
It’s written in second person, but the HuffPost says it’s hers; I guess one of her people is putting it up.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Constance made a good point…but this girl does look like she needs help in some form or fashion. I hope she gets what she needs.
Your stories are heart-wrenching, guys. I’ve never had to battle with an eating disorder, but I did lose a huge amount of weight because of a combination of stress and depression. I didn’t realize until a friend who hadn’t seen me in a while asked if I was ok and told me that I looked sick. If nothing else, it made my relationship with my food and body a bit more mindful.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:40 am
I keep wanting to think that maybe this blogger just has some condition that makes her thin and she’s just unaware. But obviously that’s wishful thinking. It’s so sad. And so damn common, judging by everyone’s responses. I’ve never had eating issues but I’ve had my own major problems with other addictions which, thankfully, are long behind me. That experience, and reading all these posts helps me TRY to have compassion and not be a judgy bitch. I feel for everyone here who posted and wish you all the best.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Miss J has NEVER been this thin. Miss J has never been this thin. But she has used drugs, laxatives and over-exercise to TRY to be this thin. She has also gone the opposite direction- stuffing herself with food to stuff down feelings of worthlessness & low self-esteem. Mama J put her on her first diet at age ten and she’s been a yo-yo dieter ever since. In 2006, she was diagnosed with an unspecified eating disorder and body dysmorphic disorder and started treatment. She actually got much worse before she started to get better. Thanksgiving 2007 was her bottom- she tried to kill herself. Part of it was hating her inner self, part of it was hating her body. Obsession with body and appearance is a great way to distract oneself from inner turmoil and self-loathing. It has taken years of therapy and working a 12 step program to get out of this cycle. Even today, Miss J’s disease will tell her, “Life would be so much better” if she were just a size 6. At least she now recognizes the lie and knows feeling good starts from the inside.
Eating disorders are killing diseases. Under eating AND overeating will kill a person eventually. It’s very difficult to explore and deal with the FEELINGS driving eating disorders. If a person could deal with those feelings, they probably wouldn’t have an ED to begin with. Therapy, support groups… whatever it takes to beat it, do it.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am
I self-injured from a very early age up until the age of 21, when my college roommate turned out to be a classic case of borderline personality disorder, threatening suicide when we’d ask her to do her dishes or pay up for last months rent, cutting in front of her boyfriend to make him feel pity instead of anger when she cheated on him. Combined with the emerging emo scene and general trendiness of it all, I was able to stop. What made me feel better only made me feel stupid, that if anyone caught sight of my scars and keloids, I’d be grouped with all the other attention-seeking idiots. It didn’t matter that it began around first grade, digging nails into my arm until I bled when I was frustrated, that I did it before I read about it or watched terrible made-for-TV movies with Sean Young about it. It’s surprising there’s not a similar backlash against eating disorders, this offensive reduction of a mental condition to a fad, a style, that girls just want to look like models (and for some reason don’t stop losing weight until they look like AIDS patients or Auschwitz victims).
Dexter, I have mottled skin on my left ankle from burning myself with a cigarette and needing antibiotics after it got infected. The skin turned slimy and oozed green. Circular marks and raised bumps now where the burns overlapped. I banged my head against the doorframe before, threw myself downstairs, heated metal against my skin, scalded my hands, smashed my fingers, broke my hand punching holes in my wall, etc. Not everyone engages in cutting, which obviously isn’t a clinical term. For the ones who engage in self-harm for attention-seeking, blood is scarier. And it has nothing to do with sex or fear. It’s all anger. I’m not sure how you pulled that one out of your ass unless it’s related to old eating disorder fallacies that anorectics want tiny, childlike bodies to appear asexual. Nor is it necessarily a “selfish cry for help” either. Teenagers today might assume destructive behavior and a psychiatric diagnosis make them interesting or relatable, but just like people who are really drunk, don’t think they’re drunk, those who have this problem free of affectation are hiding. They don’t want help, or at least, don’t think they can ask for it. I was dragged to a series of therapists, didn’t talk to any. Was only caught by my parents when they found my stash of boxcutters, x-acto knives, etc. in the pocket of an old flannel shirt, when my sister burst into the bathroom without knocking when I got out of the shower, when I didn’t notice my sock was seeped in blood. I was subjected to strip searches and the door was taken off my room. I didn’t know anyone else who did the same thing until my junior year of high school and didn’t even tell him in fear of judgment.
I don’t have any coping mechanisms left anymore but avoidance. I’ve emptied my life of everything (but family) that would make me sad or mad or happy. There’s no fight or flight but deflate. I never had any real problems besides maladjustment, so maybe there’s no comparison to the rest of you.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:06 am
This is kind of a weird question, but was starving or bingeing/purging ever fun for some of you? When I was young and the behavior already so entrenched, I would sometimes carve myself up or do light damage, like listening for the little POP! when a hot paperclip touched skin, when I was bored. Maybe it’s because I was always socially awkward and never had many friends that I had too much time in my own head, but still. Was it fun? Did you do it even when you didn’t have an emotional justification?
July 14th, 2010 at 11:07 am
So… I still like talking shit about fashion blogs, I’m not perfect. And some people just deserve it. Sorry Sister if your blog has become my place to slam other bloggers – I hope you don’t mind. But this bullfuckery I am not “stoked on”. Maybe you can make a thread where the comments are just all mean and shitty semi-personal attacks on bloggers who suck.
I’ll start! The blogger who glorifies drugs and opiates and then over-dramatically mourns the year anniversary of a young man who od’d when he relapsed, not in his right mind – will she ever see the height of her hypocrisy and ignorance? Yet another “good friend” of hers… another name to drop. Does she think anyone who saw him try to get clean over and over gives a shit what she feels? Was she there for any of that? I want her to post how she knew this person and when – because no one else knows her, she’s a ‘fame’ jocker weirdo.
Sorry off topic but fuck it. Her comments are off. Yours are on, so thanks for letting me vent.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Anorexic behavior (though not always classified as nervosa) has been around for so long–long before supermodels and magazines–and its progression has been fascinating. Anorexic behavior was literally worshipped during the Middle Ages until the early 20th century; though some people argue that it is still worshipped in the form of professional high fashion modeling today. Prolonged fasting, or living off of nothing but communion wafers, was the mark of saintly and mystical behavior for women in the Middle Ages. Tale after incredible tale of female mysticism allude to their bizarre eating habits. This same thread of female starvation was continued in the 1800s and early 1900s in the form of young female fasters who claimed to not even eat communion wafers. These women were paraded as mystics or other religious phenomena. Unfortunately, the scrutiny by the press often lead to these girls’ deaths as they struggled to keep up with their images as fasting women.
I think part of anorexia is biological but I think certain social factors have checked anorexic behavior throughout history so those with the genetic disposition for it were less likely to indulge it. Healthy female body fat, motherhood, etc. was glorified in a particular day and age and probably provided social incentives to eat normally. I think the fact that anorexia has become more and more serious as a problem also relates to the lack of those same social checks that existed a couple hundred years ago.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I clicked on the images and took a good long look at young woman, and was surprised to feel the prick of tears. Since when have I become the empathetic one?
Goddammit, I’m mad, too. She is starving in midst of plenty, dying by degrees in front of the eyes of everyone reading that blog.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Look at her blog entries from Aug and Sept 2009. She was thin but nowhere near skeletal. Now, her arms are…. omg!! Her face has gone all crinkly, it’s horrible.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
SCARY, you are right. A year ago she was thin but looked fine. The contrast to the current pictures is very sad.
July 14th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Dust – Thank you so much for your advice. It’s really good. I know the discussion is going to be really tough, though.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Apologies in advance for the gigantic comment that I am about to post! My close friends, family and therapists know my story but I’ve never told it to an audience like this – there is something very liberating in sharing it in this way. Whether you go on to read my story or not, I just wanted to thank Sister Wolf for asking us to share our stories and opinions, and thank those of you who have done so. I wish you all peace and acceptance in your thoughts towards your bodies.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
It’s interesting to see from the comments, and I know from my own experience, that anorexia and bulimia can both be triggered by something as seemingly innocuous as an offhand comment. It can also be a response to genetic factors, a traumatic event or life stress, or a desire to be “perfect” (where only one aspect of perfection equals being thin and beautiful). Or some combination of the foregoing. Or something else. I don’t know if it’s ever only/solely motivated by a desire to be thin like fashion models. I definitely think the fashion industry and media contribute to reinforcing certain images as beautiful, but they are not the sole catalyst or cause of these illnesses.
Like Arline, it wasn’t the media or fashion that initially motivated me into anorexic behavior. As a child I was overweight and, coupled with the fact that I came from a migrant family, this made me very self-conscious. I clearly remember a 10 year old family friend telling an 8 or 9 year old me that he would not be my “boyfriend” because I was “too fat.” I recall during my primary school years being terrified of being weighed in class (as part of a whole class weigh-in for the purpose of science experiments, graphs, etc – terrible practice!), to the point where I would feign illness and beg to stay at home if I knew a weigh-in would take place that day. Upon my graduation from primary school at age 12 I asked my classmates to leave a parting comment/wish on a big poster I’d made, and one kid wrote “I know you’re fat but I hope it keeps you warm” right in the middle of the page. I can laugh these things off now, but at the time they devastated me. Then in my teens my parents went through a very messy separation and divorce and I believe this sparked in me a desperate need to regain some control of a life that went completely bat-shit crazy. That plus I was a perfectionist and in addition to wanting to do extremely well at school/sport/extra-curricular activities etc, I also wanted to have a faultless body.
It was relatively easy for me to lose weight and I simply reduced my food intake to the point where I was barely eating. I remember people telling me I looked too thin and I would laugh at them and genuinely think they were completely overreacting. I was anorexic from around age 15 to around 17, and although I was never hospitalized I almost got there… I lost my period for two years, a lot of my hair fell out, I grew downy hair over my arms and torso, I was always cold, I would faint frequently, and so on.
I was definitely delusional about the fact that (to me) I looked fat, but I was not delusional in the sense that I thought I looked great and wanted to display my body for all to see. There were no fashion blogs at that time but I was certainly not putting myself up for display anywhere – if anything, the further into it I got, the less self-confident and neurotic I got, the more frustrated I got that I still wasn’t looking “good enough”. I can’t remember exactly how I pulled back from anorexia but I think it had to do with a combination of a threat of hospitalization and exhaustion from following such a grueling routine of maintaining the anorexic behaviors and the associated mental demonization of the self. I just couldn’t keep it up anymore.
I continued to have a difficult relationship with food into my late teens and 20s, and developed bulimia at age 20. I can remember the exact event which triggered my first purge. I was preparing a speech for a friend’s 21st birthday party and felt very pressured to come up with something fabulously witty and entertaining. Time was running out and I was getting increasingly stressed… As I sat and scribbled out line after line of text, I managed to plough my way through an entire box of pecan nut cookies, which is something I’d never done. Suddenly I realized I’d reached the bottom of the box and the self-loathing and disgust that overcame me prompted me to lock myself in the bathroom and vomit it up. I don’t necessarily know why that was the next ‘logical’ step in the action (overeating) – reaction (disgust) chain, but I’m sure I’d read about bulimia somewhere and knew what to do. In any event, after I’d purged I felt an incredible sense of calm descend over me (many bulimics can identify with this) and found myself able to start writing what turned out to be a very funny, clever and ultimately well-received speech. From that experience, the act of bingeing and purging became a coping mechanism for me to deal with stressful situations. Whenever I’d find myself subjected to considerable stress (and this occurred frequently in my job) and feel unable to accomplish something, I would binge and purge… and then all of a sudden the seemingly impossible became possible. Eventually I was doing it so often that it became an every day (or several times per day) occurrence. That post-purge ‘high’ can be very addictive and I do believe (at least some) bulimics chase it. It can also be elusive – and when you have a ‘failed’ vomiting session (when your body won’t cooperate and rid itself of all, or even most, of what you put in), the self-loathing hits harder than ever.
Arline, a lot of what you said really resonated with me and I know what you mean about feeling inferior as a bulimic compared to an anorexic. I definitely considered the ‘Bulimic Me’ a lazy or failed version of the ‘Anorexic Me’. Like you and Jillian, I also transitioned from having issues with food to having issues with something else (in my case, binge drinking). Now in my early 30s, I still find myself struggling to moderate my drinking and I definitely still have a complicated relationship with body image/acceptance although I do mostly eat what I want and would be considered ‘average sized’ for my height. I don’t own a scale and can’t weigh myself for fear of what that number will be. I still find myself hating my roll of stomach fat and my pudgy thighs and wishing I could be a couple of sizes smaller – but I know that’s a slippery slope. As I get older I am constantly examining and reevaluating my concept of happiness and how it can be achieved and I think this is helping me love and accept myself more too.
Kim – as for your question about what you can do once you’re aware someone has an eating disorder – I think this is a really hard one. My family knew and tried to address it with me, but I wouldn’t listen. A teacher at school had words with me at the instigation of concerned friends, but still I wouldn’t listen. Maybe on some subconscious level it helped to know that I had people who cared about me, but I still think at the end of the day it was very much a case of me needing to decide for myself to stop the behavior at issue – the person themselves has to want to stop. A particularly difficult situation arises where a person who is recovering from an eating disorder lives with someone who has an eating disorder. I experienced this with my cousin, when she was in the grips of a strict diet and exercise regime that smacked of anorexic behavior. From my own experience I could see what was going on, where she was going with this and on the one hand it made me so upset and sad for her because I know how tough it is being there, and yet on the other hand it would stoke my feelings of jealousy at her ability to not eat and lose weight and my feelings of self-hatred for not being disciplined enough to follow suit. In the end a family intervention was required to salvage her health, our relationship and both of our sanities.
For anyone who has/had anorexia or bulimia or is struggling to understand the mindset of someone with anorexia or bulimia, I recommend the book ‘Wasted’ by Marya Hornbacher. It is a first-person account of the author’s experience of both anorexia and bulimia and it is very frank, raw and moving – there’s no window-dressing here. It’s not a theoretical book by some shrink who has never personally had to deal with the thoughts and feelings that drive one to do those things to oneself. It is by no means a literary masterpiece but that book was a great comfort to me and really helped me make sense of what I’d been through.
Sorry again for the length of the comment!
July 14th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Oh, what the heck, full disclosure: I had an occasional bulimia problem. I mean, I sometimes ate totally normally but whenever I was feeling low, I’d go and throw up. It happened in bouts.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lily Nguyen. Lily Nguyen said: A must-read: http://www.godammit.com/2010/07/13/lets-discuss-body-image/ [...]
July 14th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Just found her blog. It’s so sad.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
@redheadfashionista would you let me know what it is? i do not wish to malign or ridicule her, i am just interested.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Really frightening. I found her page as well and some of it almost seems fetish-esque, with people commenting in praise and adoration. Like another commenter – Wish – I’ve never had an eating disorder so it’s hard for me to really understand what goes through one’s mind and how they feel, but I’m trying to be non-judgmental and realize how hard it is to overcome. I think a lot of it has to do with genetics and personality traits as opposed to media exposure, because if it was just the latter then I would definitely have an eating disorder, as I do have some issues with my body when compared to society’s ideal standards. But I’m able to see that even though I may not look exactly like that, I don’t look bad, and don’t let negative thoughts about my appearance control my life.
I do hope this woman gets some help though, from looking at her pictures and trying to push aside how skeletal she looks, it does appear that she genuinely enjoys life and knows how to have fun.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
My case, anorexia and then bulimia when working as a runway model. Don’t know about present, but then it was rather common.
Blogger from Cheryl’s link makes you wonder.
July 14th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
i found it… she has many commenters, and they always tell her how great she looks. it’s really sad, i wish for her to get help.
July 14th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Looked at her blog and, like many others here, found it to be sad and frightening. Since my eating “disorder” involves consuming large quantities of high carb, high fat, high chocolate, and high sugar content processed & packaged foods to fill any gaping emotional holes in my life, I can’t understand or judge real eating disorders. However, having a friend who was an anorexic bulimic and who is now, in her 30s, suffering a bevy of horrible medical problems as a result of her disorder, I pray that this woman, and all others, get the help they need.
PS – Do her freaky commenters not see what we’re seeing???
July 14th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Arline, Elizette, et al – I cry for your past agonies and rejoice in the happiness you have found for your bodies now.
I know how hard it is to be a woman sometimes.
July 14th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Not surprisingly, I’m actually crying as i’m writing this, having read this post and all your stories. I hate to hear how people struggle with things like this, and even more that society seems to turn a blind eye.
Probably the shortest comment here, but I feel like that’s all I have to say
July 14th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I had no idea that eating disorders are so common. I didn’t know anyone in my class – actually, in entire school – who was obese or significantly overweight, but I’m old as hills – and food was not so readily available when I was growing up in communist Poland; you had to stand in lineups to buy it, the choice was limited, no vending machines, no pop etc. Middle-aged Poles tended to be somewhat overweight, but real obesity was rare. My first exposure to bulimia was in Canada – I worked with a size 2 girl, who lived on candy bars and throwing up. I personally never purged or binged – unless overindulging in ice cream is binging. My heart goes to everyone who is struggling; my body still provides me with a lot of pleasure and not too much trouble, and I’m trying to take a good care of it – after all, it’s the only one I have…I wish you re-discover the pleasure!
July 14th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
There are so many new eating disorders too.
My anarectic looking friend claims to be not able to really eat anything. Allergies, you know.
So rather than eat more of what she can, she is starving herself.
I used to look like the old one out of the two of us. (We are the same age)
Now however, rather than looking young and thin, she is deep line-y areoun her mouth, and caved in under her eye sockets. There is not a drip of fat on or in her anywhere. She looks like a little boy, and on the verge of collapse.
We have been friends for 28 years. She wont listen to anything anyone says. And is always docot shopping to find one who will discover what is “really” wrong with her and fix it.
The real problem is depression and an eating disorder. But no one in her family will admit that is the problem, and so it all continues.
Her last thing was a “thyroid problem”.
She went to a few doctors, until she found one who finally said “yes, you have a thyroid problem”.
What did she do???
Never even got the medicine filled to fix it.
Becuase she knows that really isnt the issue. But it gave her something to think about in the mean time.
July 14th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
i know one who’s actually confirmed she’s an anorexic and she’s admitted to a clinic now. Am glad for that blogger. She’s very open about it. THe first time i saw her blog i was so shocked. Cos she’s skin and bone and I can’t believe those anonymous comments she’s receiving for it.
It’s a very sensitive subject. Personally I won’t comment about a person’s weight. It’s never an issue. But it’s really alarming to see a stick thin person than those who are overweight right?
anorexia and bulimia never exist in a poor country like mine. There are some but it’s a very small number.
July 14th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Denise, maybe that’s it? I’m sure that it existed very marginally in Poland, when I was growing up, but now, with a constant availability and incredible variety of food, it changed; apparently, both bulimia and anorexia became a problem. When a popular women’s magazine published a diary of an anorexic young woman last year, they received tons of letters from readers with both disorders.
July 14th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Cricket, when I was growing up, in Poland, anorexia was already a known issue.
July 14th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
You are all so brave for sharing your stories. I hope that your courage helps others facing the same issue. May the young woman pictured be moved to get the help that she so sorely needs to stay alive.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Yeah, what is up with women hating their bodies? Nearly all of my female friends have said something along the lines of “ugh I’m so fat” to me at some point, when none of them actually are. And I have definitely said the same thing about myself to them a whole bunch of times.
People do tell me that I’m fat though. I actually am a normal weight — 5′4″ and 120 pounds — but I have kind of a roll of abdominal fat. My mom tells me that I’m fat pretty much every other day, and she says stuff to me like “you have as much abdominal fat as me and I’m going through menopause.” I tell her to stop and then she apologizes, but the next day she says something about it again, because she literally does not understand that it makes me feel bad and she thinks that she is just trying to help. My ex best friend used to say stuff to me about how I was too fat to wear certain items of clothing, and once she told me that I was too fat to wear anything at Topshop except for the men’s clothes. She would say it in a sort of offhand, joking manner too, as if I wasn’t supposed to feel bad about it…I never said anything to her about it, but because of her, in senior year of high school I wore jeans and t-shirts all the time because I thought I was too fat to wear anything else. I wouldn’t even wear shorts when it was 90 degrees out.
In 10th grade I went on an 800-calorie-a-day diet for 3 days to try to get rid of my abdominal fat. I got tired of waiting for it to work though and I got tired of having to think about food all the time, and I just got plain tired, so I stopped. I went on periodic, less extreme diets throughout high school, but I would always get bored of counting calories after a few days. However thinking about it now I feel like a total pussy for not having stuck with it, and I feel like people who are anorexic are somehow better than me since they actually had the resolve to go through with it. I guess that’s pretty dumb. I think I might be anorexic if I had more willpower, and if I wasn’t so busy working and going from place to place all the time and not getting enough sleep. However I didn’t even lose my abdominal fat when I was on the track team doing 2+ hour practices a day, so I’m probably stuck with it no matter what I do.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
I was fortunate enough to never struggle with an eating disorder of any type. I once heard in a communication class that African American woman are less prone to eating disorders because our lack of representation in the media. It makes perfect sense to me. However African American woman have their own kettle of fish to tackle. A big one is bad self image. Thanks America. I can’t speak for everyone but many of my favourite singers (Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald), never felt beautiful and this is a known fact. It breaks my heart because it effects me too. 90% of the time, I don’t feel attractive. I think that’s why I dance ballet. So I can pretend to feel beautiful. So that’s my disorder, out in the open. Being a woman is fun, isn’t it?
July 14th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I don’t really want to play the ‘ethnic’ card here, BUT growing up i personally didn’t know any african girl who was anorexic ( not by choice anyway)… could some of it be cultural as well?..Anorexia isn’t really that prevalent in most black communities. Alot of African cultures tout ‘plumpness’ as an indication of not only good health but beauty. Thick we were told was the ideal.
that said..
I am in no way trying to diminish the seriousness of the issue, but i think that we sometimes tend to ignore the fact that perhaps some of the girls who are anorexic started off just wanting to be thin just to fit in? and look the part, they knew ppl personally who were thin and thriving, they had role models to aspire to, they had cultural pressures to live up to yes but they also really just wanted to be thin. plain and simple.
In a culture where thin is widely valued and accepted, alot of girls will do anything to be part of it. Yes eventually, anorexia takes over and you possible become ‘mental’ but at some point the main purpose was to achieve thiness non?. Anorexia is mostly a choice….you had food available, but you just chose not to eat for whatever reason. simple as that. the fact that it takes over your life eventually i’d suggest is just the after effect. Sometimes i really get thrown off with the ‘mental disease’ , sounds sometimes like a cop out excuse. isn’t it sort of like picking up smoking, you know that you could get addicted to nicotine or develop some chronic disease or even die YET you pick up the habit anyway. Human beings sometimes know better but they also sometimes choose to do otherwise.
also, isn’t it possible that some of these girls just want to be accepted. Growing up is hard as it is, maybe being thin is just an easier way out?
i know there are numerous reasons why ppl develop eating disorders but somtimes the reasons still aren’t enough.I know alot of this is going to sound quite insensitive, but i think most girls wouldn’t be anorexic if they saw the whole picture .. There are plenty of children born everyday around the world in the poorest nations who will probably die because they don’t have food to eat or water to drink. Do you think these little babies could imagine someone forgoing food on purpose just to be thinner on purpose. Knowing what they know why would anyone choose that? sounds a bit ridiculous doesn’t it.
anorexia is not a superpower so is not as if you will be able to control your life at as soon as u become it. isn’t it ironic that alot of the girls who become anorexic because the only thing they can control is food end up losing control of their body anyway. even if you could ignore your stomach pangs and the food u put in your mouth, you still have to worry about your brain and your mind and your head and your eyes all decieving you. u can’t even rely on them to tell you when enough is enough. ( to be thin and still look in the mirror and see only FAT? what sort of control is that. it will be like taking a medication for tummy ache and ending up with major sideeffects that probably have little to do with your ailment. u go from bad to way worse. in hindsight, u might as well just have kept the stomach ache init.
At some point, don’t you eventually loose control (loss of energy, loss of ’sanity, and in some cases loss of your life). is it really worth it?
this is how i see it. Thin is achievable, anyone can aspire to that. if we all were thin and anorexic and ‘in control’ what would be the point of life? The standard of beauty is whatever you make it. If achieving thinness is a life goal, then with little effort you can certainly get to that….i just wish that alot of young girls actually see beyond that….after you get thinner then what? is your life going to be perfect? NO. is the world going to seem more ‘ in control’? hardly likely. boys will still be shit, models will still exist and so will barbies. parents will still not understand….. you get the point. alot of us had strict over protective parents who put impossible academic pressures on us (try having African parents). Shit happens i know, but we gotta teach our girls how to deal with life not escape it. No one can ever prepare you for heartbreak and death and tough times, but the only way to survive this ride is to imagine that no matter how out of control you may believe your life to be, there is someone out there who is going through much worse.
we need to teach our young girls how to navigate through life not how to avoid it. even if you can excape one sad part of your life, there are many more sadder shit that will happen down the line if not to you to ppl you know. that’s the reality. in the grand scheme of things, there are really other things u can actually have control over besides food…if not , get a pet, make an imaginary friend, do a painting, shave your head whatever…..
if all else fails , may i suggest a sort of exchange student program where aspiring anorexics and bulimics and ‘thinner is better’ subscribers can all be shipped to a wretched third world village so the kids who ACTUALLY didn’t choose to be ‘anorexic’ can come take a gander at their life. You think your life is shit? try not having an option to even choose whether you want to eat or not. but seriously, We really just need to put some things in perspective.
i would even go further and also suggest a rather crazy idea. how about finding a way to sell the food you wouldn’t eat because of your anorexia and donating the money made to charities around the world who are trying to actually prevent world hunger and not ‘chosen starvation’, if you won’t eat the food, save the money and give it to someone who will…if u willingly accept that u may die from anorexia might as well just transfer your wasted ‘privilege’ to someone who is dying to live..
July 14th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
chomy – I see what you’re saying, and what bothers you about girls who purposely starve themselves.
But it is an illness, not a choice.
Recently, I listened to a friend exclaiming that depressed and suicidal people need to just “change their thinking”….
There are some mental disorders that seem to provoke denial in those who are not afflicted, but nonetheless, the disorders are REAL. To attempt to dismiss them as “life choices” is to bring more shame upon the victims.
July 14th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
http://www.godammit.com/2010/03/11/jessica-simpson-not-just-fat/
July 14th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Simone – Yep, I called Jessica Simpson “fat.” Truthfully, I would not be comfortable at this size. Perhaps that’s one of my “issues.” I eat whatever I feel like eating and I don’t binge, purge, or exercise. But I still fear Fatness.
I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I do like making fun of people. But I sincerely don’t want to add to anyone’s misery about their body (or anything else.) God knows I’ve been miserable about mine.
I need to work harder to be more accepting of different body shapes and different types of beauty.
Jessica Simpson and Sea both rile me for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with weight. Calling them fat felt good. I ‘ll just call them fat in my head, how’s that?
July 14th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
To all – Your stories are heartrending, and it is so courageous of you to share them, WHETHER OR NOT YOU IDENTIFIED YOURSELF!!!
I know each story is so personal and painful. Those of us who recovered are simply luckier than those who haven’t. I wish there was something magic I could do or say to free anyone who is stuck in the endless loop of a serious eating disorder.
Keep talking about it here if you have something to say! I will never turn off the comments here. It seems like we have a lot to learn and a lot to share. Compassion is key, because suffering is suffering, no matter what causes it.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
I hope I have not inspired you to censor yourself. The truth is, there is an agreed-upon standard, and many techniques to control body size and shape are used regularly by people who exemplify this standard — shared widely, and tacitly enforced in some communities, e.g., modeling, ballet. I suspect these extreme examples (at the point at which an outsider would be able to tell if someone is overdoing the weight control) surface rarely compared to the widespread habits that maintain our shared standards across the board. chomy’s comment resonated with me, this feels very culturally driven, and when I become isolated from a community that is ethnically diverse I become less able to appreciate deviation from the agreed-upon ideal (Barbie) shape. I understand that our respective assessments of this woman’s weight is subjective and I too would not be comfortable in those jeans, for other aesthetic reasons. I do not think Jessica appears fat in these pictures. But I do expect to continue to live a life where seeing any photograph of myself makes me cry. And yet still I ate chocolate last night and continue eating it deep into tonight. (Because what, I’m expected to make my own serotonin now too?) So I may get fat and someone else not get fat, but we are mostly in the same boat: extreme pain, and so little to do about it.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
I think suicidal people DO need to change our thoughts.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
A couple of years ago my sister battled with the early stages of anorexia. She used to get up before dawn and secretly walk 7 kilometres for 3 hours to school every day. I didn’t know what to say to her – I was scared of making her feel more judgmental about her body and disturbingly part of me was jealous that I didn’t have the determination to slim down. Thankfully she recovered and we are now better friends than ever though I can’t talk to her about food.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
@Cricket9 i never knew about anorexia and bulimia till i saw Karen Carpenters E true Hollywood story. And right away my mom explained it to me. I was 13 then. The way my mom explained this to me was smart, i think in a way she tried to focus on the psychological part of it. She said it always start with the family. I was a little round on my teens but my parents liked it. In a poor country like mine, if you’re thin you are POOR. So parents don’t want their kids seen as that as it reflects back to them.
Here in the Philippines it’s alarming to see number of young girls suffer with this illness, but especially alarming to the number of girls from the rich society.
There’s no clinic here that will treat you for eating disorders. It’s very few. For drug and alcohol abuse it’s everywhere but for bulimia and anorexia it’s considered your own battle to fought within the confines of your brain.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
like you sister wolf i fear fatness. HONESTLY. So i run and eat healthy. And there’s a history in my family for high blood pressure and heart disease so I don’t want that for me. But am not naturally thin, i get fat easily so i always watch what i eat. I know it will be for the rest of my life but it’s just me, It’s a personal issue.
July 15th, 2010 at 12:45 am
It breaks my heart to see so many responses to this subject but at the same time it’s wonderful to see all of the support and recognition of this debiltating condition.
I myself have never suffered from anorexia or bulemia. I HATE throwing up and adore food, so it was never an option. HOWEVER, I am also naturally thin, and was always complimented on my body so I think that has a huge part to do with it. I still have a deeply ingrained fear of gaining weight though- I am now at my heaviest I’ve ever been: 132 and 5′7″…I also have been getting more male attention than ever..which is a catch 22…I “feel” fat, but apparently I am more attractive now? and I wonder if my metabolism continues to slow down if I would take riskier measures to maintain my size?? Eventhough I am not physically taking steps to be thinner at the moment, the idea of thinness is something that I think almost every woman carries around with her. I know that I do…It’s such a waste of brain space, and a pity…
July 15th, 2010 at 1:25 am
From my experience, whilst the media/fashion does not neccessarily CAUSE anorexia, it can make it a lot harder to break out of. I think mine was caused by a mixture of factors – personal unhappiness and a desire for change (which prompted the intial desire to lose weight) our culture of thin being good (and the compliments I recieved in the early stages of losing weight), wanting control and probably some other stuff I haven’t worked out yet.
I never planned to become as underweight as I did. But I feared putting on weight and losing control, so a calorie counted routine felt safe. Even at my thinnest I feared that changing one thing would cause me to balloon. I would search the shops for the right brand of diet bread – the thought of an extra 20 or 30 calories caused me distress and panic.
I knew that I was wrecking my health: my periods had stopped, I was always freezing, I had grown hair all over my body. But I still couldn’t stop. And part of the reason not to change was fashion. I loved clothes, I loved being able to wear short skirts, having a constantly flat stomach, fitting into the skinniest of jeans. I loved the way my body looked like the skeletal catwalk models. I never visited “pro ana” blogs. But fashion blogs where thin girls were showered with compliments definatley had an impact – I wanted to be part of that world. I am ashamed to say I had a short spell on the website chictopia (god…I know…it’s bloody embarassing to admit!) and the amount of compliments I got on my style and body are now disturbing to look back on. Equally disturbing: I was in American Apparel one day and the saleswoman asked me if I wanted to work there. I wanted people to think I was naturally skinny, I wanted to still fit into my clothes, I loved standing out in normal society and feeling “part” of some kind of weird fashion, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” club.
Wow this has turned into a long comment. I’m pretty much fine now – still have certain food anxieties and could definatley be described as “fussy” but I am a healthy weight and don’t think about calories. I am not suggesting that promoting healthier body images will “cure” anorexia, or that the media/fashion is all to blame, but I think it would certainley help some people – and maybe if thin wasn’t so valued in our culture some people might not fall into dieting which leads to disordered eating.
and re Kim: My advice would be to not give up, and don’t be scared to keep reminding them that what they are doing is harmful. My mum never stopped telling me the scary truths regarding health and I believe that is part of the reason why I managed to decide to recover by myself rather than getting to the stage of hospitalisation. There will be a voice in your siblings head listing reasons why change would be the most terrible thing ever, and they need something to counter that and hopefully eventually overwhelm it.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:11 am
I scouted out the blog. I’d happened upon it a while ago and found it amusing, but almost sweet in its silliness. Now the blogger’s appearance has changed so much that I almost can’t look at her. What’s more, one of her posts praises/links to another blog featuring a similarly eating disordered girl (what confirmed my suspicion was that the latter blog has actually been flagged – one must click a waiver button before being able to view it). The internet is quite a double-edged sword.
I write this as somebody still struggling with her own food issues. Why is it that I can still judge “one of my own,” as it were?
And to all who’ve posted before me, I wish you a safe journey in finding happiness with yourselves.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:47 am
@Umaa – I’m most likely older than you – in the fifties and sixties it wasn’t really widespread. In the country “looking good” meant being a bit chubby; very thin meant your are either very poor and don’t have enough to eat, or you are sick – both situations not desirable. I don’t know enough about the eating disorders to form any sort of a theory, but I do think that there is a cultural component, and the availability (or lack) of food has something to do with it as well. I remember an American visiting Poland in the eighties, and constantly making remarks about girls being fat – while in my opinion their sizes were perfectly normal; he looked rather emaciated himself.
July 15th, 2010 at 4:27 am
I was eight years old the first time my mother told me I was getting fat. She may not have been wrong, and she had reason to fear it- she’d gained a great deal of weight as a result of a thyroid disorder, and at 11, I was tested and it turned out I had the same problem as her. It took three years of hormone medications from age 11-14, to ‘fix’ the imbalance.
I was already a shy kid, but being larger than all the girls in my class by a dress size and being ragged on all the time for it really did not help my confidence (sample: attempting to wear a dress I thought was pretty, and getting: “oooh, Fatso’s dressing up!” as a response. Or the teachers casting me as one of the Three Kings in a school Nativity play because “you’re fat, you look the part). It didn’t help that my mother, in her well-meaning way, constantly told me I was “big-boned” and shouldn’t attempt to dress like the (thinner) girls- good logic in its own way, but also a route that led to years of oversized and unflattering clothes because I thought my body was disgusting and no part of it deserved to be visible. It didn’t help that my just-about visible boobs (at age 12) led to my being felt up in the street by grown men, and called names by other girls. More reason to cover up and be invisible, see. I really wanted to disappear, or take up less space, since I couldn’t be like the others. I never actually developed the symptoms of an eating disorder, but I thought about ways to get thinner all the time.
The name-calling I dealt with by pretending I was spaced-out and it didn’t register that I was being insulted (and to some extent, it worked- that public image is something I hold on to till this day), though it still hurt. But my mother’s constant comments on how I looked like I’d “poured myself” into my clothes if I happened to be wearing anything that was even remotely the right size, were harder to get over. I understood, later, that she had her own issues with body image – she spent large chunks of my later teens asking me if I thought she was fatter than certain random women she’d spot on the street, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve assured her that she looks better at her age than people half her weight.
Oddly, it was an interest in fashion that allowed me to really embrace being the “weird”, “ugly” one and simultaneously escape from extreme hatred of my body. The stuff I saw in the magazines and books I read seemed so far away from what my peers and I knew, it helped in some very strange ways to make me more comfortable with my body- sure, the models still made me feel ugly and fat but they were practically aliens to me (mostly white and European/American, which I am not ) so it didn’t affect me as much as comparisons between me and my actual teenage peers. It was an eye-opener to my pubescent self that clothes (for grownups, even) had a purpose other than to make you look “pretty”. And to this day, the persona of “ugly girl” is still one that I’m most comfortable in- it sounds weird to say so, but having walked that side of the fence, I never want to turn into the kind of girl who’s never had those struggles with her body and with her self-image. I’ve been in some dark places, and don’t want to forget the lessons I learned there -do I even make any sense?
As a current 34-26-38 on a 5′5″ frame (and those measurements were considered massive for a 14 y/o, even though I had 2 inches less in the boobs back then), I’m sort of ok with my body, but I still have a deathly fear of being larger. It almost feels like I have some control over my body and my life only as long as I stay at this size or slimmer. I still feel like my boobs are too big or gross sometimes, but I really do try not to sweat it and I’m lucky enough to have friends who do not body-snark and keep my head out of my arse for the most part- we are not our dress sizes. It’s still an effort to remember that.
I never actually developed an ED so I don’t know whether there’s a point to my sharing on here, but I do feel like I’m lucky to get to a point where I can think I look ok while not feeling like I need to dress or present myself the way someone else thinks women who think they look ok, need to do.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:05 am
I’m a worthless shit unless I’m skinny. My dad made fun of fat women in front of me when I was a kid and my mother was a model. I was given a blueprint for an eating disorder! Signed, sealed, delivered.
I think it was Kate Moss who said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, and I completely get that.
I eat a vegan diet and am terrified of gaining weight. I crept up to being 100 pounds overweight when I was unhappily married many years ago. I now am a bit underweight and I feel power in that. I equate a miserable marriage with being fat, and so will never again marry.
How’s that for a fucked up outlook!
July 15th, 2010 at 5:12 am
Hi Kim,
My sister’s got an eating disorder. I know you want to do the best by her. My advice would be to look afetr yourself. There isn’t one thing you can do to help. I probably did a lot of things wrong. But here’s my little story about it, in case you are curious. I would be interested to hear more of yours because I find it strengthening.
So, my sister is two years younger than me. She is taller than me, she is blonde, she has always been slimmer than me, her face is more symmetrical than mine and judgnig from walking down the street with her she is definitely more attractive than me to blokes who like to stare in the street. This kind of stuff made it really hard for me to deal with, because she is so obviously remarkably, unusually attractive at a healthy weight.
I felt like perhaps I had done something wrong, perhaps by not being happy or successful enough I had taught her that being a UK size 12-14 was unbearable, something she should risk her health and attampt suicide rather than follow me into.
When she did try to kill herself it was about a month after I had moved away to uni. I was shocked and scared and terrified. I felt as though I had struggled through my teenage years and I was furious because I felt that she had given up the fight. I tried hard to protect my family from my feelings, and I was LIVID that she had hurt my parents so much. I was sad, scared and the easiest thing to do was skip to the ends of my patience and get angry instead of sad.
If I were to try and offer advice I would say to do the things I didn’t do.
Accept your feelings without wallowing
Talk to your friends about it
Don’t shout
Don’t let it take over your life
Don’t make excuses for your sibling
Don’t hide away from it, but don’t make it the focus of how you relate to your sibling
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You will make mistakes and break the rules from time to time. Do not hate yourself for that, it will not stop recovery
Hang on. It is horrible to watch, but it won’t always be. The worst outcome is not inevitable, there is hope.
Yesterday I went to visit my grandmother in hospital. She is wasting away. When I saw her as such skin and bones it was so sad.
It also made me think of the fear I had of my sister dying like that, but as a teenager.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:09 am
It’s interesting (or deeply depressing) that without getting into d1ck size or ho status, one of the worst insults you can give a North American is to call them fat.
And, from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale study, 2006:
4,000 respondents in varying numbers between 15% and 30% also said they would rather walk away from their marriage, give up the possibility of having children, be depressed, or become alcoholic rather than be obese. 18% would rather give up 10 years of their lives than be obese.
5% and 4%, respectively, said they would rather lose a limb or be blind than be overweight. (ref here, along with other sad stats: http://www.respectrx.com/archives/girl_stats_studies/)
July 15th, 2010 at 6:32 am
“Somehow I can’t feel sorry for an anorexic, you know? Rich cunt, don’t wanna eat? Fuck her.” -George Carlin
July 15th, 2010 at 6:33 am
@Someone – “I think suicidal people DO need to change our thoughts”
You know NOTHING about mental illness. Why don’t you educate yourself? Talk to someone that understands the subject before you open up your ignorant yap!
July 15th, 2010 at 6:57 am
@Dru: I understand you on the wanting to disappear part. I grew up being very tall with large boobs at an young age and had people insult and grab me on the street. I’ve spent all my childhood and adolescence wearing baggy clothing to hide myself, even now I don’t dare to wear anything with cleavage, short or figure hugging . At a point I was bordering on anorexia, combined with a lot of substance abuse and felt empowered by being very very thin. Now I’m 143 at 5′10” and still have some issues about my body image but I am happier than ever and don’t want to disappear anymore. I guess the way we grow up influences us a great deal and if some imbalance takes place we spend the rest of our lives trying to sort that out.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:14 am
First of all it is so sad to see there are so many women out there who have struggled or are struggling with an eating disorder. I hope if you are still struggling you will one day find peace and be happy with your body.
SW Seriously, could you be any more of a hypocrite! Today you are chiding some blogger about being an anorexic and having body issues then a few months ago you are abusing Jessica Simpson for being fat!! Have you read any of the stories above how so many women were called fat and that led them on an abusive course to lose weight? I suspect you don’t give a shit about anyone except yourself and your lofty opinions and write whatever narcissistic thought that enters your head and the driving force behind everything you espouse seems to be some sort of pathological envy. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were envious that this blogger was thinner than you and that spurred your criticism, I have seen pictures of you and you seem to revel in your figure and how thin you are which makes you no different to the blogger that you have issues with except she is thinner than you and I suspect this sparked your weird pathological rant
July 15th, 2010 at 8:45 am
It’s brutal that so many stories here have a starting point relating to how parents treated them in the formative years.
I have daughters, but never in a million years would I tell them they were fat, even if they were.
I am almost obsessed by leading by example, I never talk to them about diets or go on them, I eat a healthy balanced diet with a few naughty treats thrown in and I never talk about or judge other women in front of them. (unless they were too much makeup, or speak in a stupid voice)
Society does so much to fuck them up, I am having no part in it.
No barbies, brat dolls, make up, stupid clothes, silly shallow tv shows/films, no worrying about my weight in front of them, I am fighting an insurmountable fight because it would break my heart, if in 10 years, they had stories like some of the stories here.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:46 am
@HelOnWheels: “You know NOTHING about mental illness. Why don’t you educate yourself? Talk to someone that understands the subject before you open up your ignorant yap!”
Look, there is some truth in the notion that a person with a depressive illness DOES need to change their thoughts. Of course, right? If a suicidal person stops thinking about wanting to kill themselves, they’re PART of the way to NOT being suicidal (though they need to change any suicide-encouraging behaviours in addition to this). In addition, they need to explore the root cause of why they are suicidal; social, environmental, emotional factors. CBT is a one such treatment which actually relies on the patient identifying negative and unhelpful thought patterns are trying to replace them with better ones.
SW’s point, I think, was that the kind of talk that treats it as just being “as SIMPLE as changing one’s thoughts” is wrong. Treatment for mental illness is as varied in it’s success as the kinds of mental illness one can have. If you read Someone’s comment back, nowhere does it say it’s as Easy as changing one’s thoughts, just that changing one’s thoughts needs to happen.
Here’s the thing – you should not feel at liberty to tell anyone what they do or do not know about mental illness from a one-line comment, on the internet. Given that Someone used “our”, I’ll take it they’re suicidal themselves. So I guess they probably do understand the subject to some degree. And given that, read your comment back to yourself and perhaps ask: was that an appropriate response?
July 15th, 2010 at 9:24 am
I can relate to Red Paeony, misery makes you fat. I shed a relationship and a stressful job and 30 pounds also fell off without much effort too. I love food, I couldn’t imagine being anorexic. But I am a healthy eater too. I don’t love junk food at all. Sugar yes, but no fast food. I think it’s sad that we are so obsessed with the fat on our asses that we make ourselves sick. Instead of worrying about health, it’s skinny, skinny, skinny.
I don’t consider myself thin or fat but I sometimes still find myself berating my own body for not being thin enough. Like comparing it to 18 year old models. Being around gilrs who are size zero or two and thinking they think I am a cow because I wear a size 6 or 8. Or why are my thighs more jiggly today, or my belly is poking out. It’s ridiculous, like is it ever enough ?
July 15th, 2010 at 9:27 am
Also I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around these anorexice blogger gilrs. I thought Anorexia was self hating, like you wouldn’t want to be seen. Why are they showing off ? It seems more like “look how thin I am !! “
July 15th, 2010 at 9:34 am
I’m surprised by the amount of stories, but without offending the majority, there is a difference between an extreme diet and an eating disorder. If you were able to overcome your illness through an ephiphany, not therapists, not in/out-patient treatment, not pharmaceuticals, etc. you probably didn’t have anorexia. If I was upset about something for a spell, does that mean I’ve dabbled in depression? No.
It’s actually very scary to me that regular people can have these fucked up eating habits without the condition. Yo-yo dieting is a great example of people whose preoccupation with food and weight leads to unhealthy patterns that don’t warrant a diagnosis. But I feel like it’s a badge of honor for some to claim they recovered from anorexia – because it implies that you were thinner and disciplined at one time. In high school you’d hear girls say, “I wish I could be anorexic, just for a week.” Pro-ana sites were rarely from the disordered, but girls who thought if they had a bit more dedication to self-destruction they could be sick, crazy, and slender.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:03 am
E: That is true, I used to think thinness= protection from pervs.
Even the knowledge that eating disorders caused period stoppage seemed like a good thing to me at the time, I found menstruation excruciatingly painful and having no period seemed like it would be a good thing. It’s been a long. rocky road to being ok with my body, but I’m grateful to even be where I am.
Braindance: I think family members sometimes just don’t realise just what they’re doing when they tell kids they’re fat. My mother would be horrified if she ever knew what I thought of myself back then. And I didn’t hate my body at 8, when she first told me I was fat- my self-hatred really began when the rest of the world (it felt like) joined in. But yeah, with some families a little consideration for the child (something I feel is missing in many families, where the kid’s feelings count for very little) is in order.
RIOTS NOT DIETS: Disordered eating doesn’t always lead to a full-blown eating disorder. Loads of people dabble in the former without having the latter, for whatever reason. And yeah, I hear you on the ‘badge of honour’ status given to anorexia- it is twisted, indeed. As for girls who think that “they had a bit more dedication to self-destruction they could be sick, crazy, and slender.”, it often seems to me that that’s the starting point for many anorexics, the beginning of their disorder.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:22 am
@ellio
Wow, your story is really similar to mine. My sister is 4 years younger than me. She has always been taller and thinner. I mean, she has always had a natural lankiness to her, but now with the eating disorder she’s gotten unnaturally thin. We first discovered she was throwing up a few years ago and confronted her. She was actually doing better and looking quite healthy for a while, but we are starting to think she has since relapsed.
It has been difficult for me because in high school I had serious body image issues (I have always been a normal size — healthy BMI and people have told me I am tiny). I never had an eating disorder, but I was always trying to lose weight and during my senior year I lost a lot. Anyway, it is hard for me to deal with her eating disorder because I used to have such problems with my body. Sometimes I get jealous because I think that if I was as disciplined as her I could also be as skinny — we are sisters after all. …but I constantly have to remind myself that that way of life is not healthy. Eating disorders are not a choice, but unhealthy thoughts can lead to them.
Like you also mentioned, it has been really hard watching my parents. It has also been hard being in the middle of all of this. I don’t want to sound selfish, but this is how I feel:for the past four years, everything has revolved around my sister’s problems. It has been hard on my parents’ marriage. I now have anxiety issues. I don’t blame them entirely on what happened with my sister, but I do think it is partially because of what happened/is happening.
I love my sister so much. I get really angry with her sometimes — but I don’t know what I would do without her. The thought that she could die if she doesn’t choose to get better is terrifying to me. Sometimes it completely consumes me. It is often hard to balance my own body image issues with being supportive and loving. People always tell me how thin my sister is, and it makes me feel ugly most of the time. It’s really hard for me.
Thank you so much for posting your story. It has been so helpful to hear about someone in a very similar situation. I think that siblings often get overlooked when this sort of thing happens (I have also read that siblings often develop eating disorders themselves), but I think siblings can also be important factors in the recovery of the person with the eating disorder if they remain endlessly loving. I think I need to talk to my sister more about what worries me. Judging from the above comments, it seems like it might help her.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Though I don’t know whether “dabble in” is the right choice of words- one doesn’t really “try out” this stuff for a lark, I didn’t intend it to sound trivial.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:54 am
So sad. It really sucks that there is such a fine line between model thin and too thin. It’s all so confusing. Especially for young girls trying to figure it all out.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Riots not diets – Why are you so militant on this subject?? It seems like you are angry about girls who are just wannabe-anorexics…a breed I was not aware of.
People can have full-blown anorexia and recover without hospital, drugs, or therapy. Meet me! I just got lucky. Maybe I was too exhausted to continue starving myself. Who knows. I weighed 96 pounds at 5′ 6″. Maybe changes in my life somehow triggered some mechanism in my brain that made me want to start eating.
Let us not start accusing girls with severe eating disorders of not being the “Real Thing.”
July 15th, 2010 at 11:03 am
@Siobhan – Fair point. Mine was a knee jerk (and oversimplified) reaction to Someone’s oversimplified statement.
@Dru – “Disordered eating doesn’t always lead to a full-blown eating disorder” Well put. Thank you! Most of the women that I know (myself included) participate in disorder eating, are aware of it, but have never developed an eating disorder.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Actually, I think it’s important, not shaming, to make the distinction.
Mainstream dieting is so out of control that we can’t even tell the difference between our behaviour and a disorder.
Pro-ana sites got really popular when I was 15 and a group of wannabes took over a message board I used to love. Everyone there self-diagnosed as EDNOS, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. It was ridiculous. Tips and tricks to learn how to be anorexic because they weren’t. Bad eating patterns+desperation don’t equal anorexia all the time. But we can’t get the help we need if we think it’s normal to be this way, that every woman acts like this around food. So we want to be disordered to have someone tell us to stop, tell us it’s okay to like our bodies. We might be able to change society (ever so slowly) once we acknowledge the difference. “The media” is blamed for eating disorders because these images and messages tell regular people they can’t be larger than a size 4 and happy. Of course the media doesn’t cause eating disorders. Neurological imbalances and triggering life events does that. But the media promotes insecurity as security, as relatable, as goal-oriented, as treatable. That’s what I see is wrong.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:39 am
In an out of control world and with so much coming at us we try to control what we can and our bodies and what we put in them are sometimes the only thing we can master.
I bet if you took a poll disabled people would rather have an extra 20lbs and their limbs and mobility.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:49 am
You don’t want to hurt this girl’s feelings, but you have no problem hurting other people’s feelings on your blog with your name-calling and general nastiness. I’m truly sorry that you hate yourself and your life so much.
July 15th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Riots not diets – it is true that we are conditioned to pick Mars bar over Brussels sprouts, it is also possible that someone who makes the right choice is called anorectic. We are conditioned to be unhappy, right? Now what? How do we riot? Or listen to our bodies? Love our bodies, do what’s best for them?
I find mainstream dieting and bulimia more dangerous than a die-hard one, cos’ it’s stupider thing to do(not trying to be rude just simplify) and wide spread. I don’t feel like waiting for moment to hear that we are looking into ways to compost the discharge for environmental reasons.
Just asking, it’s all wrong and I wouldn’t mind rioting, I just don’t know how… if it’s a part of our current official culture, we’re fucked. How long it takes a person to eat shit to realize that it’s not edible?
And what is edible?
July 15th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I googled the girl’s name and blog, and she left comments like this on other blog posts about skinny models… it’s SO scary.
“Role models do really count… Skinny does attract more skinny wannabes.”
“I find it positive that all shapes and sizes are out there. We should have the right to be what we want to… skinny or not!”
July 15th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Everything we do, feel, and say creates or perpetuates a thought pattern, however unconscious that may be. The “change thinking=change behavior” formula is the basic premise of all cognitive therapy. BUT, I never said that it was either that simple or that easy. It’s not. It’s fucking hard. Hence the enormous attraction of comfort zones, even the most horrid ones.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Sorry to burst your bubble SW but you still have anorexia and obviously still starve yourself otherwise you would be fatter for your age and not look so gaunt with dried out hair.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
SW, I really love your blog, and I’m glad you’ve given people a room to discuss this issue on your blog. I feel the same way you do about Sea and JS, but I think calling them fat is just hitting below the belt. …especially in juxtaposition with this post.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
What I’m trying to say I guess, is that I hope you won’t call people like Sea and JS fat in future posts, now that you have made this post.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
@ Dust Good questions…you have a real way with metaphor. From personal experience I’ve been treated like a crazy person for being relatively satisfied with my body. I’m 24 and a size 5/6. Maybe it’s because I’m short enough for a complex about height, not weight, or that I love to cook and eat healthy (but don’t exercise…) Women bond through their complaints about their stomachs or those last ten pounds, how bad diet food tastes, how dessert is naughty, blah blah blah. Women are conditioned to be demure and complimentary, and never say anything interpreted as arrogant so we’re constantly self-depracating but not in a humorous way. Like I said, I’m short, I’m ugly, and like so many men in the public eye it doesn’t stop me from being myself. Sometimes I feel like I’ve given up. That can’t be the right way, but I stopped fighting my body, at least.
Do you think we need to get closer to food again? Maybe this organic movement/Food Network obsession will lead to positive body image. We can celebrate taste, encouraged by nutrition, and stop fearing food because we’re packed with hormones, antibiotics, steroids, artificial flavors, sweetners, HFCS, hydrogenated oils, etc. Cooking is control too.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
http://www.makinen.fr/susa/wordpress/page/2/
July 15th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Psssssss Melissa and Laura . . . lean in really close . . . I’m going to tell you something super important: SHUT UP. Okay, that’s all.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Riots not diets – I’m forced to diet and eat piles of vegetables, I cook every day cos it takes me 20minutes to fix my healthy dinner. I’m type 1 diabetic, but got it in my mid 20’s which means that I had plenty of time and chance to taste the life. I look better now that 10 years ago, but it almost feels like I had to develop disordered eating to be able to survive.
I can’t help thinking that if any of anorectics or bulimics would be forced to become that way, would they have the same passion?
But, my daily pile of veggies doesn’t taste like heaven every time, I eat it any way. I guess that’s the point.
We are not supposed to be happy 24 hours a day, it is our culture that put that impossible goal of happiness in front of us that feed us frustration cos we’ll never reach it.
My way of fighting it is : I don’t enjoy every single bite I take, mostly I simply feed my body, sometimes both body and soul (ice-cream deserves this special place) and sometimes I just indulge (croissants!). I long to be able to eat fruits more carelessly, but science will fix it in next decade, I hope.
As long as we are expecting food to please us and not feed us, we’re in trouble.
How do we get there? By trying and failing and lots of broccoli.
July 16th, 2010 at 1:18 am
And much as I think the issue deserves to be thought about, I also agree with Amy: calling people fat is hitting below the belt and it’s pointless too, since there are so many worse things JS is than just “fat” (try: clueless, entitled, completely lacking in talent, idiotic, total famewhore, etc, etc). I called her plump in the comments to that post, which in my head is a different thing from ‘fat’. From what I can make out, ‘fat’ to most people these days suggests really gross overweightness (unless you happen to work in the entertainment/fashion industry and just being a few pounds off a size 6 means you’re ‘fat’. Or of course, if we’re judging ourselves).
July 16th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Dr – you said it good, we’re judging. Too fast, too cruel, all in order to make US feel good about ourselves. Fatness and skinniness are subjective, healthy is more safe, but looks can deceive.
I’ve learned a lot from this debate and if I ever manage to normalize my control issues, I’m ready to do it just in spite, just not be product of general mainstream that supports this vicious circle. Fuck you media, fuck you sugar, fuck you fat tighs. I shall have some ice cream after I had Brussels sprouts, non of them can make me really happy anyway. I’m creative enough to find some other, completely original way of being pathetic and satisfied.
July 16th, 2010 at 2:14 am
I am the person in the pictures. This is my response, equally posted on my blog as of now.
“I had a very different post in mind. But this cannot wait. A certain blogger, whose name I do not care to mention here, has written a post about me and my looks. This has resulted in angry comments, that I have the right not to publish here, on my site.
Briefly, those of you who have followed my blog, or know me personally, must have noticed that I have lost quite a bit of weight recently. This has happened due to reasons I choose not to develop here, in a public space. This is my right. I am trying to battle the issue with the help of my loved ones, and any encouragement is welcome. On the contrary, any hurtful comment or angry burst only hurts yet more.
I am sorry that blogging has led me to this sad place where I am today – actually asking if I should go on… I have been open about my doings and life situation. Always trying to leave friendly and uplifting comments on others’ blogs. I do not wish to promote anorexia. I am just a person whose life is made of brighter and darker passages.
Today my eyes are filled with tears. Feel free to leave me a note of encouragement if ever your heart tells you so.”
July 16th, 2010 at 2:29 am
I was a gymnast, nothing fancy or olympic standard. It actually wasn’t that big a deal to me, just something I liked to do because I was sort of a little bit of a show off, and I liked the other girls at the gym.
One day we were going through our conditioning routines of sit ups, squats and all that other painful stuff when the coach said in front of the whole group ‘Sofia you look chubby’. (With hindsight I think this coach had a slightly warped idea of life goals anyway. When we were training she used to tell us to try harder, not because we could do better at gymnastics, but because if we were slim and toned boys would like us more.)
I was so embarrassed. It was the sort of thing that as a teenage girl you kind of thought about yourself anyway, but then to have it confirmed that other people though it to, and in front of all your friends. I was humiliated.
I felt like I couldn’t keep hanging around in a leotard with these people so I stopped eating. I was already exercising a few hours a day, 6 days a week, so reducing my calorie intake was really the only thing I could do.
At first I received praise for my new physique. And I do think that I looked better. But then it started to go to far. I got too skinny, and as a result my gymnastics suffered.
Perhaps ironically my standards slipped so far that I couldn’t do the skill level required for my team, the coach asked me to leave and questioned if my heart was really in gymnastics.
Since then I’ve improved a lot. I’m a healthy weight and I eat and exercise in moderation. However, if something goes wrong or I’m going through a period of stress, my initial reaction is always to jump on the scales.
July 16th, 2010 at 2:43 am
Susu – you are brave, I applaud! Look at those stories above and you’ll see that you are not alone, many others were brave to share their experience. Be sure that non of us judging you, we are merely looking for the same answer.
Be free to join the discussion and share your thoughts and troubles, we welcome you!
July 16th, 2010 at 3:05 am
Before I forget (for the third time) a month ago we had a fashion show, it was a group show which means we didn’t choose our models. I was confident to make all outfits in mine and Birdeaters size, well, Birdeater has the fastest metabolism ever, she eats cheese and butter sandwiches on every hour, otherwise she faints, and me, well, you know me from above.
We come to fitting and guess what, ALL models were bigger than us, healthy, with tits, asses and tighs, we had troubles closing zippers and loose silhouettes weren’t as loose as we thought. In last 6 years I hardly had a model, professional or amateur, that was smaller than size 36, most of them are small 38.
I have no opinion about this, except making bigger samples.
July 16th, 2010 at 6:35 am
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July 16th, 2010 at 8:16 am
All this has been so challenging. I’ve not posted because (for reasons I cannot fathom!) I am, as a US 12, not too bothered about my body (indeed I enjoy it, and enjoy the responses it gets), so I have nothing useful or insightful to share.
However, this has made me wonder why I flinched at the blogger’s thinness, and yet when I read style blogs by those sassy plus-sized gals who rock scarlet one-pieces on their size 16 bodies, I think “Good for you, sister”. It’s a double standard. Neither is healthy, and yet I celebrate the courage of one, and not the other.
Susu’s response here is very dignified and rather touching.
July 16th, 2010 at 8:32 am
@ Susu I found these comments very encouraging (with the exception of known troll and fucktard Mutterhals who hates us all unless she’s desperate for someone to read her lonely blog). At the very least it should be obvious you’re not alone. I’m grateful to hear that you have support in real life. It must be startling to know your body has been discussed in a public internet forum, but there’s no anger, only empathy. Look at how many have been where you are.
@ Dust It would be different when eating becomes a chore. I like brussel sprouts roasted with lemon, olive oil, and salt and pepper, actually. I guess I’m fortunate to have the freedom to experiment with my intake, to replace items I just don’t like and won’t eat, like green beans. You can’t even walk on to my balcony because of the many pots and plants, but the homegrown tomatoes and strawberries are incredible. To my friends I probably sound like a fucking idiot when I talk about food, like getting excited after hearing raw vegans sweeten desserts and smoothies with medjool dates, but this embrace that probably fits in well with the cult of Rachel Ray has kept me from fearing food and consumption. Something will always taste better than a Ding-Dong. Vegetables can taste better than how your parent(s) boiled them beyond recognition at the dinner table. I think it’s overwhelming to look at the processed offerings at the market and bodies in the media and wondering how to reconcile availability.
July 16th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Riots not diets – vegetables and Sister Wolf keep me sane.
Good doesn’t equal happy, that’s a good conclusion to start with.
July 16th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I agree, and I read the response on her blog. I can tell she’s still very emotional and fragile about what she’s going through/ has went through.
I really hope a few of the people who comment on her blog pictures know, or have at least picked up on what she’s going through, and are just trying to encourage her with positive complements such as ‘cute’, not to say that her state is attractive or healthy looking, but to maybe just make her feel good.
While I have never had an eating disorder, I have a few close friends that did, and at times have been the person that shakes them and tells them that they are killing themselves. It’s pretty intense watcing someone go through that.
And while I agree with the majority here, I wouldn’t want to criticise her or discuss her body, because, while I don’t know her personally, and don’t know the current state of her situation, if I was her, that last thing I would want is people pointing out something Ive obviously battled with and/or still fighting. So it’s nice to see people sharing their stories and encouragement, instead of calling her ‘disgusting’ and ‘horrifying’.
I really hope this blogger is okay, and comes through.
July 17th, 2010 at 2:54 am
I was accused of being anorexic as a teen (which I wasn’t, I was just naturally thin + tall) but I was never as skinny as the girl in that blog. She has wrinkled skin at her armpits she is so skeletal! I worry for her.
I really hope she gets the help she needs because there is thin and “eating disorder thin”. She falls into the later.
July 17th, 2010 at 5:51 am
Funny you said that about Dad. Actually after our “meet”, i mentioned to him how most everyone looked alike. I look a little different. He says, you could look like them in 2 months if you wanted to….I said… what? He answered, lose weight!
No, I said, I meant long dark hair and no freckles….
sigh….
Even when he is weak, he can’t resist a comment!
July 17th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Wow, I have no words with all the brave comments the people left, people arent brave enough to speak about this theme in their blogs and you are, as always…Definitely anorexia is growing up very quickly nowadays (lets remember in the poor countries there is not anorexia, so its not a genetic ilness). I feel like you Sister, I´ve been always thin, and I eat that i want but im not the super skinny model that the society show on the catwalks and ads, and sometines I can feel a bit “fat” if I compare myself with the anorexic models and stuff (if I´m skinny and I feel like this I cant imagine how a normal girl with a bit of weight would feel…). I never had an eating disorder but I cant say i wouldnt have one some day, cause I hate the idea about being fat. I dont care about fat people, actually I have a lot of mates a bit fatty and I love them and i see them very beautiful, but I would get very depressed if some day I get fat. Its a strange thing, but I cant help it… For me this disorder is clearly a reaction to cultural pressure and stereotypes in the developed countries. For instance, when my granny was young, in Spain just few people had anorexia and now with all these fashion issue and ads, a lot of girls are suffering it.
July 17th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
It is so sad. And sadder still that she doesn’t know how sad it is. And we all play a role in the ever glamorizing of the rail thin female. I’m going to eat a donut now.
July 17th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
RIOTS NOT DIETS,
July 19th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Wow, the jealousy and hate radiates from my computer. I may have to call IT and have them make some repairs when I’m finished with this comment.
Do you even know this woman? Clearly you do not. She is vibrant and full of life. You think you have the right to call her anorexic because she doesn’t have a muffin top? Ever think that maybe she is just very selective about what she eats, perhaps she doesn’t eat preservatives or sugars?
I for one think she is beautiful inside and out. Not all of us out here want to be fat-asses. Some of us actually care about our bodies and refuse to buy into the processed food culture. Eating organic and healthy produces long, lean bodies, all the while providing excellent nutrition.
Your post disgusts me. The fact that you trash somone of whom you have no level of knowledge of whatsoever is appalling.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Shari- are we even reading the same post? No one here is trashing Susu, and there’s only one thing you got right in your comment- she is indeed vibrant and full of life, and she seems to enjoy herself in Paris. Oh, and healthy eating is good from a nutritional perspective. No one has problems with women who lack muffin tops and eat healthily- at least one commenter has spoken about growing her own vegetables, but we aren’t holier-than-thou about it.
July 21st, 2010 at 8:06 am
Red Paeony – that’s awful. With luck someday your mind will change.
Ooooh Mutterhals is back! They must be really really confident in themselves if the only constructive thing they can do on a sharing post like this is dump all over it. Well done Mutterhals.
July 21st, 2010 at 8:07 am
And Shari, what Nausicaa said. Even Sister isn’t bringing the hate on this one. So stop hating us.
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:24 am
She wrote a post in response to this, angry that you were apparently slagging her off. Dear dear.
September 19th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Wow man, when are you going to stop bashing people who does not deserve it? Don’t you have symphathy for others? apparently you lack of it. And let me tell you, keeping being a bully in your 40’s, so sad. damage
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:21 am
agnes, no one here read it as bashing and even Sister didn’t intend it that way- most of the comments apart from crazy mutterwhatever, are sympathetic and many people have shared their own stories of their problems with body image. If you want bullies, you can find them in other places on this blog- if you think Sister’s outspokenness is the same as bullying, I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree.
December 1st, 2010 at 9:52 pm
@Braindance
Bravo. I only wish my mother, actually most of the women in my family, were like you. My mother was obsessed with my weight, and I was 10 when it started. She made me go on diets, drink miracle powders, and ridicule me in front of people. It might be a cultural difference and I tell myself she was genuinely worried about me, about all it did was bring more damage than good. Sadly, I still get called on about my appearance every day, but my mother has learned after I had a nervous break down when I was in middle school. It still brings me to tears to think about it. I know when I have daughters or sons, I would NEVER EVER do what my mother use to do to me. And I guess it still hurts because I loved her so much and to have her say those things to me constantly just about killed me.
December 5th, 2010 at 5:52 am
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December 5th, 2010 at 5:52 am
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December 7th, 2010 at 8:47 am
lol i know right