When I was in high school, I had a casual friend, M. I liked her. I wanted to be like her. She was quirky, weird, popular, and once asked if she could have my soul. I said yes, wrote it on a piece of paper, and she put it in a decorated box in which she kept her other collected souls. She was me, but prettier, thinner, and way less awkward. She was also, as good 90's kids were, obsessed with Nirvana.
I recall a day in creative writing class, where she was waxing poetically about Kirt Cobain, slipping in that he had an eating disorder which lead to his suicide (which is likely not actually true 15 year old me caught the conversation.
"When I grow up.. I want to have an eating disorder" I sighed, half to myself, not at all aware that I already had a full blown eating disorder in the form of anorexia ("atypical" because that's what they call it when you're an anorexic who's fat). I wanted a "better" eating disorder. Where I could go months on end eating nothing at all. Part of me wanted to waste away and die. Most of me just wanted to be thin and desirable and I thought an eating disorder would achieve that because nothing else had.
M started crying and her friend, J, swooped in to comfort her, angrily snapping at me "you can't just say things like that!". I stuttered an apology, saying I didn't know it would cause that kind of reaction.
The issue that I want to discuss here- is that the tears and the anger were not for a 15 year old girl who longed for anorexia, but because of a celebrity that no one in that class had known personally. Now, I'm not saying that you can't be upset or grieve when a treasured celebrity dies or struggles with something. But I do want to make it clear that no one showed one bit of concern, compassion, or pity, that a young girl would strive to have an eating disorder,would make it a goal.
Do you understand what I'm saying here? I wanted an eating disorder. On purpose. On purpose. And no one cared or tried to help me.
Often, when fat people have eating disorders, we're patted on the back, told to "keep doing what you're doing", and praised for trying to do the right thing- which is to be smaller. The experiences of thin people with eating disorders and those of fat people with eating disorders are very different. You may have guessed, but neither M nor J were fat. They were squarely in thin territory and probably had never considered that fat people, especially fat kids, almost constantly hurt, and are bullied and abused relentlessly. It's really no wonder that I was hoping for the "willpower" to restrict even more. Both needing to be thin and needing people to hear and see my pain.
Thin people are often so oblivious to the struggles and oppression of fat people, that such disturbing information is only disturbing coming from a thin person. Coming from me- the fat girl in class- it just highlighted and centered thin people. We can't even talk about our own hurt and trauma without it being about thin people.
I never received any kind of emotional support or medical care for my eating disorder, even though I'd go weeks without eating anything at all, often could not stand- getting dizzy just from getting out of my chair, was using and abusing ephedra (a diet product now banned in the US) to get through the day, exercising for hours every day, and made comments like the one above. A thin kid doing these things would have received treatment.
Given that young girls and femmes who are or perceive themselves to fat are the most at risk group for eating disorders, we are hugely failing these kids. Boys and masc kids are becoming more at risk in general too- again, specifically among those who are or perceive themselves to be fat.
We, as a society, have taken a disease that has the highest death rate of any mental illness, anorexia, and glorified it. We've made it something that little kids dream about being able to "accomplish" some day- like it's a shiny trophy with "first place skinny" marked on it.
People want to talk about glorifying "obesity"? At least fat people survive. Even if you believed the nonsense about fatness increasing risk for other illnesses, we're still living into our 60's, 70's, 80's, and beyond. We have children as young as 8 being treated for EDs.. we have children, children, dying. Being put in the ground because of eating disorders.
Why are we allowing this? Why is there no information or outrage over the epidemic of body hate? Why? Because you can't profit from people having self esteem.
You can't profit from people having self esteem.
It's time to take back our power and stop trying to kill ourselves for perceived beauty. They don't care if you die as long as they're raking in the dough at the end of the day. We have to understand that we are more important than capitalism. We are more important than some rich dude getting richer. We are just plain important.
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