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!
🙁
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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???
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How about this blogger?
http://mypreciousconfessions.blogspot.com/
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.
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
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.
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. :-/
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 . . .
What is the blog address? How can I find it?
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.
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.
When I say ‘its name’, I mean the blog.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
SCARY, you are right. A year ago she was thin but looked fine. The contrast to the current pictures is very sad.
Dust – Thank you so much for your advice. It’s really good. I know the discussion is going to be really tough, though.
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.
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!
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.
Just found her blog. It’s so sad.
@redheadfashionista would you let me know what it is? i do not wish to malign or ridicule her, i am just interested.