that I would be loved
even when I numb myself
that I would be good
even when I am overwhelmed
from ‘That I Would Be Good’
by Alanis Morissette
I’m sitting here watching The Truth About Online Anorexia (ITV1, 2009) presented by Fearne Cotton who I’ve never really had an opinion about before. I’m starting to like her. This is the most genuine investigation of the subject of pro-ana/pro-ed websites I have seen yet.
When it comes to the rise in eating disorders in children and teenagers, I don’t believe that the media is ‘to blame’. I don’t believe that any one thing or one factor is completely at fault.
But when I haven’t been in a newsagents or supermarket for a while and I walk in past the floor-to-ceiling magazine racks, I genuinely shocked every time because I find myself faced with literally a wall of publications informing me that 120 pound celebrities have ‘piled on the pounds’, telling me how to eat like so-and-so who slimmed down from a size 6 to a size 4.
This is very fucked up.
I rarely go into town to shop. I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes or anything else and I certainly have no desire to make it a day-long experience. A few months back, I had time to kill while waiting for my car to be repaired so I wandered down Princes Street.
After a while, I started to feel uneasy. I realised that every muscle in my body had tightened. I was holding my tummy in, holding my back straighter. And I felt FAT. I had spent the last half hour seeing (without really noticing) window after window filled with mannequins with 18 inch waists.
This is also very fucked up.
Back to the magazines. Have you ever noticed how after a certain point, once a famous young woman has passed through the stages of being enviably thin, through being inspirational (although we don’t like to admit that) to the point where the nation is worried.
The nation and the friends and family of the young woman in question frown in concern sliced through with bitter envy. She’s so THIN. How did this happen!? So off she goes to rehab and gets fixed and comes back looking slightly less emaciated talking about how supportive everyone has been and how much that has helped her to feel better about herself and her body and her life.
And the magazines drape their covers in gauzy fragile beauty once again…now she’s ok. She’s cured. She has recovered. She now weighs 100 pounds instead of 80. What message does that reaction send, even subconsciously?
Fall apart. Fall apart publicly. First they will envy your strength and self-control. Then they will become worried. Then they will pick you up and love you and fix you and everything will be ok here have a pair of over-sized Gucci sunglasses to hide your hollow eyes behind while you float delicately from cover to cover of all the magazines and people will stare and you will be perfect and you will be LOVED.
This is very fucked up indeed.
I want to make something clear. No matter how deeply I submerged myself in the murky waters of eating disorders, no matter how skewed my perception of my body was (and I am truly thankful to finally be saying that in the past tense) I NEVER looked at a famous person and thought “I want to look like her”. I sure as hell never looked at a mannequin in a shop window and thought “I want to be that size”.
I always just wanted to be a smaller, thinner, prettier version of myself. For every time I read “starving yourself won’t make you lose weight” there was a moment of joy when measuring my waist-chest-hips-thighs-calves-ankles-arms-wrists-neck and discovering that actually starving myself HAD worked thankyouverymuch.
It never crossed my mind that what “starving yourself won’t make you lose weight” means is that starving yourself won’t make you lose weight in a healthy and desirable manner. People with a realistic and sensible view of health and weight do not need to have this explained to them. People who fear fat more than death do need to have it explained to them.
There is a certain invincibility that can go along with being young and a definite sense of being indestructible which comes as a delicious gift from the eating disorder that you have invited into your life and your head and your body.
Combine this with the sheer amount of uber-thin imagery we are bombarded with every day. And the massive and ridiculous mainstream diet culture which is actually frighteningly similar to the pro-ed movement. And our mothers and aunts and sisters and friends who are all trying to lose just another 5 pounds, to drop just another dress size (even though they’ve been doing that for your WHOLE LIFE and you’ve never known them to be any different).
It becomes glaringly obvious why so many people have such a fucked up view of how they look, how other people look, how we ’should’ look. It is not down to an actress, a model, a fashion label, a website, a shop, a film, a music video, a magazine, a tv show, a mother, a sister, a best friend.
It is down to the entirety of the immensely visible and intensely emotionally damaging culture of making sure that nobody ever feels good enough just the way they are. It is down to how much we willingly submerge ourselves in the culture and perpetuate it’s myths of beauty and acceptability.
This is the most fucked up of all.
Why aren’t we doing more to fix it?
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that i would be good even if i gained ten pounds
April 30, 2009 at 3:19 pm · Filed under health, issues, media, social commentary, web and tagged: anoretic, anorexia, anorexic, body image, diet, dieting, eating disorder, fearne cotton, internet, magazines, pro-ana, pro-anorexia, pro-ed, recovery, self-esteem, shopping, size, skinny, television, the truth about online anorexia, thin, thinspiration, thinspo, TV, website, weight, weight loss, weightloss
that I would be loved
even when I numb myself
that I would be good
even when I am overwhelmed
from ‘That I Would Be Good’
by Alanis Morissette
I’m sitting here watching The Truth About Online Anorexia (ITV1, 2009) presented by Fearne Cotton who I’ve never really had an opinion about before. I’m starting to like her. This is the most genuine investigation of the subject of pro-ana/pro-ed websites I have seen yet.
When it comes to the rise in eating disorders in children and teenagers, I don’t believe that the media is ‘to blame’. I don’t believe that any one thing or one factor is completely at fault.
But when I haven’t been in a newsagents or supermarket for a while and I walk in past the floor-to-ceiling magazine racks, I genuinely shocked every time because I find myself faced with literally a wall of publications informing me that 120 pound celebrities have ‘piled on the pounds’, telling me how to eat like so-and-so who slimmed down from a size 6 to a size 4.
This is very fucked up.
I rarely go into town to shop. I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes or anything else and I certainly have no desire to make it a day-long experience. A few months back, I had time to kill while waiting for my car to be repaired so I wandered down Princes Street.
After a while, I started to feel uneasy. I realised that every muscle in my body had tightened. I was holding my tummy in, holding my back straighter. And I felt FAT. I had spent the last half hour seeing (without really noticing) window after window filled with mannequins with 18 inch waists.
This is also very fucked up.
Back to the magazines. Have you ever noticed how after a certain point, once a famous young woman has passed through the stages of being enviably thin, through being inspirational (although we don’t like to admit that) to the point where the nation is worried.
The nation and the friends and family of the young woman in question frown in concern sliced through with bitter envy. She’s so THIN. How did this happen!? So off she goes to rehab and gets fixed and comes back looking slightly less emaciated talking about how supportive everyone has been and how much that has helped her to feel better about herself and her body and her life.
And the magazines drape their covers in gauzy fragile beauty once again…now she’s ok. She’s cured. She has recovered. She now weighs 100 pounds instead of 80. What message does that reaction send, even subconsciously?
Fall apart. Fall apart publicly. First they will envy your strength and self-control. Then they will become worried. Then they will pick you up and love you and fix you and everything will be ok here have a pair of over-sized Gucci sunglasses to hide your hollow eyes behind while you float delicately from cover to cover of all the magazines and people will stare and you will be perfect and you will be LOVED.
This is very fucked up indeed.
I want to make something clear. No matter how deeply I submerged myself in the murky waters of eating disorders, no matter how skewed my perception of my body was (and I am truly thankful to finally be saying that in the past tense) I NEVER looked at a famous person and thought “I want to look like her”. I sure as hell never looked at a mannequin in a shop window and thought “I want to be that size”.
I always just wanted to be a smaller, thinner, prettier version of myself. For every time I read “starving yourself won’t make you lose weight” there was a moment of joy when measuring my waist-chest-hips-thighs-calves-ankles-arms-wrists-neck and discovering that actually starving myself HAD worked thankyouverymuch.
It never crossed my mind that what “starving yourself won’t make you lose weight” means is that starving yourself won’t make you lose weight in a healthy and desirable manner. People with a realistic and sensible view of health and weight do not need to have this explained to them. People who fear fat more than death do need to have it explained to them.
There is a certain invincibility that can go along with being young and a definite sense of being indestructible which comes as a delicious gift from the eating disorder that you have invited into your life and your head and your body.
Combine this with the sheer amount of uber-thin imagery we are bombarded with every day. And the massive and ridiculous mainstream diet culture which is actually frighteningly similar to the pro-ed movement. And our mothers and aunts and sisters and friends who are all trying to lose just another 5 pounds, to drop just another dress size (even though they’ve been doing that for your WHOLE LIFE and you’ve never known them to be any different).
It becomes glaringly obvious why so many people have such a fucked up view of how they look, how other people look, how we ’should’ look. It is not down to an actress, a model, a fashion label, a website, a shop, a film, a music video, a magazine, a tv show, a mother, a sister, a best friend.
It is down to the entirety of the immensely visible and intensely emotionally damaging culture of making sure that nobody ever feels good enough just the way they are. It is down to how much we willingly submerge ourselves in the culture and perpetuate it’s myths of beauty and acceptability.
This is the most fucked up of all.
Why aren’t we doing more to fix it?
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