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!
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.
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.
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.
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???
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.
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 🙁
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!
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.
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.
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.
Cricket, when I was growing up, in Poland, anorexia was already a known issue.
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.
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.
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?
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..
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.
https://www.godammit.com/2010/03/11/jessica-simpson-not-just-fat/
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?
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.
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.
I think suicidal people DO need to change our thoughts.
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.
@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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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!
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.
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/)
“Somehow I can’t feel sorry for an anorexic, you know? Rich cunt, don’t wanna eat? Fuck her.” -George Carlin
@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!
@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.
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
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.
@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?
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 ?
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 !! “
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.”
@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.
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.
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.
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.