TW: Disordered eating described in detail, dieting
“Knowing that eating disorders don’t go away on their own has been hard for me to accept. I find myself frustrated that even though I had previously spent nine years in therapy, I was never once told that my history of anxiety and depression predisposed me to developing an eating disorder. No one warned me that dieting would be a slippery slope. Instead, I was left with a chronic disorder I’ll have to be conscious of the rest of my life.” (Herbers 2023)
This week was focused on looking at stories of eating disorders. I knew that it would be a difficult week but I was not prepared for quite how intensely I would feel the stories of these women, not just in my heart my also physically and painfully in my stomach. Eating disorders are one of the biggest unsung horror stories of being alive, rarely talked about, and often ignored, eating disorders are often overlooked as the disease no one really wants to touch.
I have had an eating disorder for as long as I can remember. I consider it a gift from my moms’ side of the family. Disordered eating comes in a variety of forms, it rarely looks like the T.V. image of a girl getting smaller and smaller as she eats three almonds a day as no one notices. But finding stories published by a mainstream news site that depicts an eating disorder otherwise is hard to find, and while these women’s stories are as accurate and valid as any other, we will never destigmatize eating disorders if we are unwilling to talk about them.
Both articles that I annotated this week do depict stories of young women with anorexia, or anorexic tendencies. The first was entitled “How a Pre-Wedding Diet Led to an Eating Disorder” by Kelsey Herbers and the second was “Female College Athletes Say Pressure to Cut Body Fat is Toxic” by Alanis Thames and Johnathan Abrams. Both were published by the New York Times.
The first story is a first-person account of a woman developing an eating disorder as her wedding approaches. With new compliments from friends and family and the added pressures of being home due to the pandemic, she finds herself on a slippery slope from dieting to anorexia. She highlights the way that she discovered and quickly mastered selective fasting, a fad dieting trend that has shown up in many “health” magazines and blogs in recent years. With input from Robyn L. Goldberg, an author specializing in eating disorder writings, Kelseys article warns of the dangers that come with the diet culture we find ourselves consumed with. She describes in detail the different forms her eating disorder took, and it was here that I found myself in physical pain in my stomach after her writing.
The second looks at several young girls on a college track team. This article does a very good job of describing the feeling of having someone monitor and critique your weight.
“The upperclassmen told her to stay away from the dessert table at team banquets. Coaches, they cautioned, would be watching. The cookies and other treats were not there to be eaten.”
The article goes into detail on the treatment these girls received from their coaches, the food monitoring, the weigh-ins and bodpods that measured body mass index, and having their private medical information shared without their consent. They share their feeling of being violated, and the struggles they’ve had after. I texted my track team friends to have lunch together after this, I hope they never go through this. A sports team is never a reason to treat another human being like this.
I’m not sure what I will pick for next week but I have a few options so you’ll just have to wait and see.