When Eating Disorders ARE The Beauty Ideal

TW: EDs, mention of death

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. 

Starvation is not morally superior

Danbwr Photography

Between my bipolar and hypothyroidism my appetite has some pretty funky days. In the past week or so it's manifested as a lot of nausea when eating so I've eaten maybe half a meal a day or so. Yesterday, for instance, I ate half my dinner then pushed it away, unable to even look at it without feeling sick. Today I woke up late, had a therapy appointment, then came home around noon, dealt with some activism business, did some scrapbooking and around 3 or so started realizing that I was finally hungry in a non nauseous way. Yay for me! Right....?

The fact is that part of me didn't want to eat because I just knew if I could keep up this habit of not eating I'd.... I'd what? I've long past given up goals of weight loss. So what did I think not eating would accomplish? I'll tell you what- superiority. Not over anyone else per se, but over myself. My eating self. As sanctimonious as it is, I felt morally superior to the me who ate regular meals. I felt like I was accomplishing something.

Anyone with an eating disorder probably is shaking their head right about now. It's a pretty common feeling- that feeling of accomplishment when you don't eat or purge or exercise until you're ready to drop. But we all know this is complete bullshit right? Because, as much as society wants you to believe this, starvation doesn't make you morally superior to anyone. Not even yourself.

It's easy to feel this way when everyone is telling you that starving yourself is the right way to go. Men, the medical establishment, psudofeminists who preach against diets only if you're thin enough, the diet companies, your family, your friends, the plethora of diet books even on the shelves of whole foods as if they weren't already everywhere else on the fucking planet and.. *takes a deep breath*. Okay, you get the idea. It's a whole lot of ignorance and capitalism coming from a long line of hate. But you've gotta remember that that's what it is... first and foremost it's capitalism. It's about driving profits up up up and this year the diet industry is going to reach 66 billion dollars. That's right, I said BILLION. That's a whole friggin lot spent on trying to make ourselves perfect and presentable and yes, skinny.

We all remember when Kate Moss said, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Maybe I feel a bit of that when I haven't eaten for a few days. It starts out innocently enough with being too tired to eat or too sick to eat and then it spirals into disordered eating thoughts. Thoughts we've probably all experienced. Thing is that it's completely and utterly false. There are lots of skinny people who absolutely deplore their bodies and lots of fat people who are comfortable in the skin they're in. In other words, skinny doesn't necessarily feel any certain way, especially good, when you're surrounded by body hate and maybe especially if you got skinny through body hate.

Okay, I recognize that at this point I'm rambling but the point is that I ate a damned tomato sandwich and I enjoyed the hell out of it. And I'm far enough in my journey (I originally wrote that as fat enough in my journey.. lolz) that I don't let it bother me much.. even if I'm still struggling with the desire to eat nothing  (which I find feels a lot like other self harm thoughts. Hummm.). I know not everyone out there is as far along and that's fine.. we're all making our journeys one step at a time.

But, just to reiterate my original point (which I've meandered far from), starvation is not morally superior. It doesn't make anyone a better person. So to all the diet preachers and hateful bigots out there, you're not better than we are. Hell, if starvation did indeed make you morally superior then most fat people would be superior to most thin people anyway. have you seen how much we diet? But luckily for you and for us, eating is a positive activity in most cases. It keeps us alive and sustains us, gives us energy throughout the day and provides comfort and damn it tastes great and gives us so much pleasure. Our culture has created an atmosphere in which people are literally so afraid to eat they'd rather hide it or die. Can we please say no more?

So go on! Go have a fucking sandwich- it's delicious and it won't make you worth less.