I am SO fucking sick of the glamourisation of eating disorders, from that stupid bitch Geri Halliwell whining about her bulimia in all the papers and then appearing on the cover of her second autobiography wearing only a measuring tape, to the magazines which feature ‘The skinniest celebs!’ on one page and ‘How to get a celebrity body!’ on the next. I am sick of people who don’t understand eating disorders, and don’t TRY to understand, feeling they have the right to publicly judge and ridicule anyone who has an eating disorder. I am sick of people using the word anorexic when they mean thin – not every thin person in the world is anorexic! I am sick of the pressure that the media puts on women to be perfect, but more sick of the pressure women put on each other and themselves to be perfect.

I’m not going to get into medical diagnoses here, or start recommending a bunch of wonderful helpful websites (there are lots out there, run a search if you want to find some). I’m not going to tell you how to spot if someone has an eating disorder, or how to eat healthily and have great body image. There are plenty of websites out there for that too, and if you’re concerned about yourself or someone you know, then you should definitely look them up.

This is part rant, part education, my opinions on things that I’ve seen in the media relating to eating disorders and body image. Hopefully I can help people to understand eating disorders a little better with these opinions, and help those who feel the need to judge harshly to think before they speak. And hopefully I can help people who have an eating disorder, or are recovering from one, to feel a little less alone.

Eating disorders aren’t a real illness
Yes, they are. Of course they are. They are an illness as much as depression or panic disorder are illnesses. An eating disorder is a mental illness with physical symptoms.

People who have eating disorders just need to eat something and stop being stupid.
Again, what a pile of crap! Eating disorders are not about food. They are about self-esteem and about control and a whole bunch of other things. A person with an eating disorder does not see their body the same as other people do. They look in the mirror and see fat where other people don’t. They believe that their body is fat when it isn’t (or don’t see it as fat, but also don’t see it as being as thin as it is). This is a deep-seated belief that goes beyond “I don’t like my tummy”. If ‘just eating something’ could cure this, then the world would be a much nicer place. The typical anorectic is a perfectionist, someone who has had high expectations pushed upon them throughout their life, someone who needs to control SOMETHING when they can’t control everything. NOT someone who is ‘on a diet’. Not eating is just a symptom of deeper issues.

People with eating disorders are just teenage girls who have taken a diet too far.
Nope. There are eating disorder sufferers of all ages, male and female. The perception that sufferers are only teenage girls makes it even harder for older sufferers or male sufferers to come forward for help.

People with eating disorders are always really thin.
Not so. People often aren’t noticeably thinner until the eating disorder is in full swing. Not everyone loses weight quickly, so people can eat very little, or make themselves vomit after meals, for quite a while before anyone will notice that there’s something physically different. Also, many people with bulimia don’t ever lose a lot of weight because they vomit after a binge, but continue to eat enough food in normal situations not to lose a lot of weight. And it’s important not to forget that some eating disorders have nothing to do with losing weight at all – Compulsive Eating Disorder is the exact opposite of that!

Once you’re back up to a healthy weight, you’re cured.
Maybe your body is cured, but that doesn’t mean that your mind is cured. Many people who have suffered from eating disorders never manage to have a completely healthy attitude towards food and weight, and will often resort to eating disordered behaviour during stressful times. Once you’ve gotten back up to a healthy weight and have finished a treatment program, you’ve basically just given up what was a huge part of your mind and your life and it’s not easy to suddenly just ‘be ok’ and never slide back into the disordered behaviour again.

What about pro-anorexia websites?
Hmmm…this is a can of worms. I believe in free speech. I believe that anyone who has a healthy attitude to body image will not suddenly develop an eating disorder from looking at a pro-anorexia website. I do however believe that someone who has an unhealthy attitude to body image and food but who does not have a fully blown eating disorder COULD be swayed towards more extreme behaviour from looking at a lot of these websites. However, I believe that such websites can provide valuable support for people who have eating disorders, especially when it feels like no-one else in the world ‘gets’ it and everyone is telling you to get better, which means getting fat in your mind. So I don’t know…I certainly wouldn’t ever encourage people to visit these websites, especially if you’re in recovery from an eating disorder. But I don’t know that I think all these sites should be taken down. More often than not, they are an outlet for people with eating disorders, visited only by other people with eating disorders who know where to look for them.

Eating disorders are just a trend.
Yes, more people than ever are being diagnosed with eating disorders. But this does not make them a trend. Neither does it make a stupid crash diet an eating disorder. I do not know one woman who has a completely healthy and positive attitude to body image and food all of the time. Everyone goes on crash diets sometimes, or feels fat when they aren’t really. It’s normal. It’s not good, but it’s normal. It does not mean that you have an eating disorder. Obviously it can be the start of a slippery slope, but just because you stick your fingers down your throat with your girlfriends in the toilets after lunch one day so you can fit into your prom dress that night does not mean that you have an eating disorder. You shouldn’t do it again, and you should question WHY you did it in the first place. Eating disorders are not cool, not something you can ‘learn’ and not a great way to lose weight quickly. People who actually think eating disorders are cool and ‘want to learn to be anorexic’ do nothing but trivialise the experiences of people who actually HAVE an eating disorder.

“Oh my god, she’s like SO anorexic!”
Not all thin people are anorexic. Some people are JUST THIN. Naturally. This does not mean that they’re ill. If people can accept that it’s not polite to point at someone in the street and say “Oh my god, she is SO FAT!” then they should also realise that it’s not polite to point at someone and say “Oh my god, she’s SO SKINNY!”.

And here’s the sentimental crap/pep talk/logic…
You do not need to fit into a size 8 or 4 or 2 (or 0 or 00 or -26 or whatever the latest ridiculously unrealistic size we’re all told to aspire to being is) to be beautiful. You do not need to lose just ten more pounds to be beautiful. More importantly, you should not need to buy clothes in a certain size or be a certain weight to be happy.

Don’t just bitch about the skinny models in fashion magazines or the skinny actresses on tv and how it’s so unfair that normal people just can’t be that skinny – stop NEEDING to be that skinny! If you are that skinny naturally, be happy. If you aren’t, be happy! Fucking deal with it and start accepting yourself for who and what you are! And more importantly, accept OTHER PEOPLE for who and what they are!

If you want to lose a little bit of weight so that you feel more comfortable in certain clothes or be healthier and fitter, then do it. But for god’s sake, do it for YOU, not to be able to buy the smallest size in the shop or to look ‘better’ than your friends or to prove how strong and self-controlled you are.

Do not let words like “You bitch, you’ve lost SO much weight!” or “I’m so fat, I don’t deserve (whatever)” or “She’s so skinny…she’s so lucky, it’s not fair” ever EVER fall out of your mouth. Fight against the bullshit in the media that encourages insecurity. Don’t just bitch about it or talk about it, actually fight against it actively by changing YOUR attitude and truly believe it when you say “I’m happy the way I am. I don’t need to be a size 2/have bigger boobs/be more curvy/have longer legs etc to be beautiful and FEEL beautiful”.

(Yes, I know that last bit is more than slightly hypocritical coming from me…I’m trying to be the healthy well-balanced person I know I should be. It’s just not that easy all the time, but at least I’m taking steps in the right direction)