Nov
15
November 15, 2006
Did anyone else watch the documentary Thin on HBO last night? Man, I haven’t quite been able to get it out of my mind since.
The movie focuses on several woman in the Renfrew Center, an eating disorder clinic in Florida, and follows them through their recovery process. Some girls restrict food, some purge, one has a tube connected to her body that is supposed to force-feed her, which she uses to suck food directly from her stomach.
They all seem, at times, to be normal young women who sneak cigarettes and have screaming giggling fits while they throw themselves onto a bed; at other times they look like prisoners of war, their faces reflect an internal battle they are losing every day.
One girl, Brittany, was only 15 at the time this was filmed. Her eyes are ringed with dark makeup and her hair hangs in lank strings in front of her face. She looks incredibly young and lost, and we learn that her mother has an eating disorder too (when Mom shows up to pick at the cafeteria food in front of her daughter, we see exactly how pathological this is). Brittany says she and her mom used to “chew and spit” bags of candy together, and how it was such a good time.
Later, she sobs uncontrollably, “Why can’t everyone just let me die?”
I don’t know why these types of stories resonate with me so much – I’ve never had an eating disorder, nor have I ever been at an unhealthy weight. I guess because it’s such a pointless tragedy, this self-inflicted harm, and even though I’ve never gone down that particular path it’s all too easy to imagine the slippery fall from our society’s “normal” amount of body obsession to becoming one of those pitiful little girls with bird-bone shoulder blades and fragile, protruding spines who look into the mirror and see monsters, who want to physically peel the imaginary fat from their bodies until they disappear completely.
If the point of this movie is to reveal the chilling reality of people suffering with eating disorders, I think it does an amazing job. There certainly is no happy ending to the film, and I wonder about the filmmaker’s choice with that. It’s true that recovery is an elusive goal, but it is heartbreaking to leave those girls with so little hope for them.
I wish I knew how Brittany was doing now.
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I didn’t get to see the documentary but you’re right about how pathological it can be. I’ve never had an eating disorder, but I’ve seen how parents can impose unhealthy habits. A distant aunt of mine would tell her five-year-old daughter that she couldn’t play outside for fear that she would get another scar (she had already scraped her knee and of course, how could she be in the Little Miss Pageant with a fucking scar?). I hope those filmmaker’s do a follow-up, though.
woah, didn’t catch this… but setting up the TiVo now…
I will have to see that. It is so scary to me. I have always had a weight problem, manifested in being overweight for years, and while I always knew it was a problem that I fought with every day, now I have a beautiful little girl who just turned two and it terrifies me. I know that she will model after me and I don’t want her to think that I am the way that she is supposed to look, or see me dieting all the time. The issue haunts me. I make damn sure to reinforce self-esteem and be very positive infront of her but eventually she’s going to be old enough that I’m going to have to either shut up or finally solve the problem. While it might be okay to do this to myself, it’s not to do it to her. Ugh. It’s a hard issue. Can’t wait to see the film.
i didn’t see it, but i’ve seen other shows like it. part of me is horrified at what people do to themselves willingly, and another part of me wishes i had that much self-control but without the psychosis that let’s it get so far it kills them. i’ve had an “eating disorder” for years, but i’m not thin. i’m fat. fat fat fat. but when you’re fat, people don’t say, “oh honey! what’s wrong? why are you so unhappy?” they just say, “OMG, she’s such a fat pig! she’s obviously a failure!”
what’s wrong with our society?!?
also, i don’t think shows like that SHOULD have a happy ending. i think if people watch it, and are horrified, but then see in the end that it all works out ok and everyone goes home happy and healthy, then they don’t really get the point. a lot of those girls NEVER get better. they just fade away and die and no amount of therapy will depgrogram them. the problem is that we are trying to fix the individuals…not the CAUSE of the problem. that’s like treating people for food poisening, without taking away the rotten hamburger they’re eating. society needs to change. we need to stop glorifying hip bones and vilifying people who weigh *OMG* more than 115 lb. we need to stop using airbrushed photoshopped images of women as representations of what we should look like. no wonder girls are killing themselve to look like that. it’s impossible, because the images are not even real half the time.
sorry. didn’t mean to ramble on. i just hate the way society looks at physical beauty as a representation of a person’s true worth.
I had a co-worker whose step daughter was anorexic. He spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to help her. They were worried at times that her heart would stop because of the chemical imbalance (potassium) that the disorder caused. I learned a great deal from his ordeal and now have more sympathy for both the anorexic and the family of the anorexic.
justmouse is right, if a story like that had a happy ending, it wouldn’t be representing reality at all. Eating disorders are the most deadly psychiatric illness by far.
I suffered with anorexia for a year before I got help… and I actually got better. I am so thankful every single day that I am OK now… because I know I was the lucky one.
I often hear people saying that they wish they had that kind of self control, but when you’re in the depths of an eating disorder, you don’t feel like you have any control at all. Every waking moment is spent worrying about what and when you’re going to eat, how you can manage to eat as little as possible without letting anyone notice, and when you’re going to exercise off all those calories. The disease dictates every moment of your life, and it controls you and everything you do.
Seeing other people’s stories now makes me so, so sad because it reminds me of how horrible living like that is. But it’s a good thing to be reminded of how lucky you are. I’ll have to look to see when they’re re-running it.
You know, we hear about this all the time. About these women who put themselves through this and what always bothers me the most is how women don’t seem to want to talk about it or acknowledge all the shit that we still have to shoulder. Most women want to be strong and not “whine” about how hard we still have it and I hate that. How are we supposed to get past these issues without addressing them? It’s been said before but I’ll say it again, for all the progress we’ve made, we’ve encountered a whole new wave of issues. Now I know that men suffer from eating disorders as well and the fact that they’re also feeling the pressure to be perfect is a very serious topic as well. But this is really going too far for the women out there.
Women should be proud of their bodies. Imagine what an amazing place this world would be if all women just felt good about themselves and loved how they looked (men too, for that matter!). I know it’s unfeasible but just imagine how good it would feel to never beat yourself up over your hair or your freckles or your boobs or the pants that no longer fit you. I know that it would save me a lot of stress and I’m 5’6″ 130 lbs which is average!
I didn’ see the movie; we don’t have that network here in Indiana. I’m not so sure that it’s right to leave a documentary like that with an unhappy ending. At least, leave it with some hope! I mean, if I was a person with an eating disorder trying to change his/her life, I’m not sure watchign this movie would be an encouragement to me. I’m overweight, not obese, but I have struggled with it for a while. Being blind doesn’t make one immune to the scrutiny of society; inf act, it tends to add to the stereotype of a fat, blind woman being a couch potato and collect the check. I don’t know. I wish there was an easy answer, but to me, it takes courage, a good network of support and more courage to overcome life obstacles.
I don’t know, I know that the documentary was real and those were the real stories of real women, and so if the ending wasn’t cheery, I guess that was real too. And I understand it’s important to convey the seriousness of the disease and the fact that not everyone recovers. It was just hard, I wanted at least one of them to conquer it, and I imagine for anyone watching who has a loved one affected by this disease it would feel so hopeless.
I would like to see a follow up on how everyone’s doing, but maybe it would just be too sad.
I watched it last night. I thought it was the most “real” look at eating disorders I’ve seen, although the people they showed, shockingly enough, were relatively healthy, compared to patients who are on constant force-feeding or hospitalized.
I actually used to want to be a counselor for ED patients, so I have read kind of extensively on the subject, and even after all that, and having body image issues when I was younger as well, it’s hard to get your head around the whole thing. What I think gets underemphasized all around, not just in the film but everywhere, is that these are real diseases, just like depression and other mental imbalances/disorders. There are biological reasons for them — although experts are still researching the chicken and the egg problem, i.e., whether the starvation itself produces the chemical imbalance or the imbalance causes the desire to starve — so the behavior you see is a manifestation of that. These patients are literally out of control; the disorder has them by the throat (so to speak). So when they seem overly dramatic and incredibly stubborn to the objective observer — which ED patients often are — it’s easy for some people to dismiss them as being these sort of spoiled brat types who refuse to grow up; but that’s not how they are or even how they want to be (although of course there’s all kinds of psychology behind EDs, and a desire to delay adulthood/responsibility is a part of it). It’s something else entirely.
And, by the way, this is also why EDs are SO hard to treat and SO hard to keep from recurring. There’s a really great book of a journal of a girl who died after years and years of treatment (the title escapes me); you can tell she WANTS to get better and knows she will die if she doesn’t, but she is absolutely helpless in the face of the disorder. It is unutterably tragic.
Anyway, I want to write a post about this, too, but I need to absorb the film a bit first. Incidentally, I think they focused on certain people/personalities/friendships to create a narrative and a dramatic story; I’m not sure we really got the whole picture on what the treatment process is like and how it succeeds or fails for different people.
Go to http://www.laurengreenfield.com/ and go to press and then the People magazine article. I can’t seem to link directly. There are updates on the girls there. They’re all still alive, though.
As you know, I live in pretty close proximity to a relative with a severe eating disorder, and I actually can’t watch those documentaries, no matter how much I want to. I have a little bit of a jaded perspective on the whole thing, in part because of the heaping character flaws inherent in my one dark daily example that go far, far beyond an eating disorder.
What I find so interesting, if I may sound so cold in relation to my particular relative, is that the eating disorder does not now, or ever, have anything to do with body image. Nothing, not one stitch whatsoever. I can’t make any sort of sweeping generalizations on anorexia as a whole, and what precipitates it, but I can say that it is a fallacy to think that our body image ideals are the sole drivers of this disease. In this specific case, it is simply the manifestation of extreme OCD (actual, not hyperbolical), borderline personality disorder and severe mental illness. I am firmly in the camp that the amoebic nature of the disease is what makes it so difficult to treat: it’s really not about eating at all, nor is it really about body image after a certain point, and the driver is likely different for everyone.
And as much sympathy as I have for the victim of the eating disorder (and despite how I fear I am coming across here, it is a ton, please believe me), I think Pete is absolutely correct in that families of the victims suffer immeasurably. It is a very, very frustrating thing to watch, and never before I have I felt so completely helpless and frustrated, because superficially, the solution seems so SIMPLE: eat a pizza and get on with it! What’s the issue? But we all know that’s impossible, and to even think something like that is to display the most base form of ignorance. And yet, in dark moments of frustration, it is so hard not to wish, hope and pray that goddammit, that could just be the fucking solution.
I have had anorexia since I was 15, I am now 30. It has been a constant, everyday struggle for as long as I can remember. There is no magical “cure”… in my case, I have to tell myself at every meal that I need this to be healthy. My lowest weight was 89lbs. There are many different reasons why people develop an eating disorder, not all of which have to do with thinking you are fat. I developed mine after I was put into a cult at a young age by my parents where I was force-fed food I did not like. As soon as I left the people who were abusing me, I had a burning need to control EVERYTHING in my life, including my food.
I did see the film last night and I thought it portrayed a day in the life accurately
Jonniker, i have an eating disorder and just so you know, you didn’t sound harsh at all. To me it’s no different then watching someone you love die from smoking related issues (etc.) … hard on you. I didn’t see the show, but as someone who has a tendancy to binge & purge, I can say in my fucked up mind that I wish I could have the not eat problem vs. the oh my god i ate get rid of it problem. I’m working on it, but it’s so very hard. I’m obese and it’s not about being thin, it’s truly about being good enough and worthy as a person … a therapist helped me find a lot of answers, but until your mind is willing to accept them as true, they ring hollow. It totally sucks to have an ed … totally.
Ah, Sara, thanks for the link. I actually read that damn magazine, so you’d think I would remember the article. Now I do, though. Sigh. At least everyone’s still alive.
Did you watch the deleted scenes on the website?
Mel – lots of people have HBO in Indiana, it just doesn’t come with basic cable, you have to request it.
Long time reader, first time commenter. (…which my girlfriend, who introduced me to your blog, informs me I’m supposed to say…)
I didn’t watch the documentary last night, though a huuuge part of me wanted to. Probably I’ll see it eventually but I suppose the saner part of my head prevailed last night. The main reason I wanted to watch was to be triggered by the material and do mental body checks comparing my body to the girls’ in the film.
I’m not one of the girls in the film and (as far as I know) don’t know any of them personally but I’m sure I’m intimately familiar with their stories. And I’m happy to say that while mine isn’t one of being cured and doesn’t yet have an ending happy OR tragic it’s at least still going! I’m not healthy by a long shot but I’m not in a forced hospital stay on IV and weight checks either, and haven’t been for…actually, exactly a year now: November 12th, 2005 is when I got out last time.
Anyway, je ramble, but my point is that even in the cases that start at age ten and keep running on into college there’s still hope. I keep a blog now and am working on setting up a website that will help bring a more positive, recovery-oriented approach to others suffering from this disease. One of my projects actually got some local, then national and even international coverage through an article in my county newspaper which then got linked to by the Postsecret site then several major eating disorder sites, and, yeah. Shameless self promotion, but: http://www.gazette.net/stories/061406/germnew185053_31939.shtml
…I’m on too many painkillers at the moment to think of a lame and witty inspirational conclusion, but Linda thank you SO MUCH for this blog. I’ve been reading long enough that sometimes Riley’s pictures and your snarky entries have been the only things able to make me laugh and keep going despite everything. Not to be morbid, but when I was in the hospital for a week last year after a suicide attempt your entries were one of the only things with the power to make me smile.
You fucking RULE.
Wow, I didn’t catch it, but it sounds really powerful. That is incredibly sad. It is hard to think of how very many women do not like their bodies and suffer from the, as you said, “normal” amount of body obsession. It’s sad that there even is a normal amount, but there definitely is an accepted level of self criticism when it comes to our weight and figure. I was reading someone else’s blog today and it made me really mad – it was a girl who is my age and my height, and is at the weight I used to be, and would love to get back to. She wrote how excited she was to be exercising, to lose the horrible ten pounds she had gained, and was glad she was going to stop being such a huge fat slob. She couldn’t wait to be happy when she looked at herself naked in the mirror. And jesus christ, that is depressing coming from someone who is 135 pounds. I’m sad for her that she can’t see herself as beautiful and is thinking that losing twenty pounds will make her feel amazing and gorgeous. It took gaining weight for me to realize how important self acceptance is. I do like the way I look in the mirror, naked or otherwise! It took time to get there, but I’m glad I did, and while I do hope to lose weight, I am glad I can appreciate myself in the process. It’s just that my heart breaks for the many many women out there who can’t, who see themselves as hideous, at whatever size they are, and it’s especially tragic when it takes the form of eating disorders. I really wish there was a way our society could calm down on the whole “aim to look perfect at all times” messages we all send each other and ourselves.
Kaire: You are very kind, and have an immense amount of sympathy for what you must be going through.
I wish I could say that I wasn’t harsh, and while I may not be here, as some even here will tell you, the truth is, I am at times, and I’m not proud of it. I just get so frustrated at the toxicity of what’s in front of us that I lose perspective almost daily. It’s a situation of which the eating disorder is actually the smallest portion, the least toxic, the most worthy of sympathy, and yet it is the only visible symptom of a much, much larger familial crisis of epic proportions, backed by a misogynistic male influence who is wholly supportive of the status quo, which includes a child-like dependence as a result of the disease(s).
Which is to repeat the underrepresented point that it is often the hardest disease to treat, because the underlying issues may be so far-reaching that often the treatment is misplaced on the symptoms, and not the whole person.
P.S. — Jonniker —
AMEN.
First, it drives me nuts the way people in the pop psych world just crow body image! body image! down with Barbie and super models and, um, body image!! While I agree that cultural standards can often act as a catalyst, the people severe anorectics see as “perfect” are the women whose deathly thinness disgusts the cultural norms.
Still, especially the way the fashion industry welcomes emaciation into its standards provides us with easy access to triggers. For me that’s been the biggest problem: because extreme thinness is so rampant in the fashion community, those with an already bizarrely warped perception of beauty have abundant examples, seeming confirmation, and triggering images to try to emulate. Does that make sense?
As far as families go, I honestly believe you may have it harder. When we’re immersed in the disease it’s all-consuming and feels perfectly normal and right… You, our families, can only helplessly watch the destruction. I don’t know how I can ever make it up to my family. I’ve not only made them suffer but I’ve treated them like shit in the process. >.
I don’t have HBO, so I didn’t see this. But I think justmouse hit the nail on the head. As women gain more and more power in our society (holding good jobs, being elected to public office, etc.) it seems as though the pressures put on the average woman just get bigger. I think it is a very rare woman who can meet the expectation of having a high-powered, fulfilling career, being an excellent and involved mother and wife, keeping a spotless house and looking like a model while she’s doing it all. Our daughters and younger sisters are being sexualized at incredibly early ages. So it’s not a real shock to me that eating disorders seem to be on the rise. The more equity we achieve, the more pressure society brings to bear in order to keep the status quo. Sometimes I wonder whether the average woman even knows what a truly healthy body looks like anymore–I’m pretty sure I don’t.
My friends are always giving me grief when I talk about the “rape culture” I feel we live in, and to me, this is just an extension of that. It’s like anything society can do to make women feel uncomfortable in our lives and in our own skin is fair fucking game.
Or I could just be talking out my ass. Sorry for the hijacking, Sundy.
Also (and then, oh holy God, I am going to a meeting, so you are finally rid of me), I don’t think I properly expressed how brave, determined and admirable the women are here and everywhere for admitting this and taking steps to get better. It is by far the most consuming thing I’ve ever seen anyone live through, and to dig your way out of that, counteracting your own instincts, is not to be taken lightly, for even the tiniest steps are a huge, tremendous accomplishment. My proverbial hats off to all of you, truly.
I saw just a few minutes of it. It was the part where a girl and her dad were in a counseling session. The dad asked the counselor if he had kids, the counselor said no, and the dad replied, “then you don’t know how I feel.”
I’ve been on the opposite end of the eating/weight spectrum — I’ve battled obesity and overeating my entire life. So, in a weird way, I understand what those girls go through. But, still, it’s just so sad.
sundry, i just wanted to thank you for writing about this today. i find myself on the other end of the ED spectrum – the overating end – and just this past weekend i had a little discussion with myself about getting it under control. i’ve kidded myself for years that i could control this. that i just like food too much, and that every blessed social function i ever attend – even and especially family get-togethers – are focused on food and that i can’t escape it if i try. but, it’s not just about food. it’s in my BRAIN. i can’t control it. and so i called my insurance company and got the pre-auth to see a therapist. and i hope to god i can finally get my shit together. because i turned 30 this year, and i’m still overweight, and i haven’t had kids, and i’m going to be a high-risk first time mother, but dammit, i don’t want to be a high-risk first time mother because i’m old AND overweight. i want to be a good model for my kids, and most importantly, i would really just like to be healthy. healthy in both the physical and mental sense.
i totally agree that EDs are just like any other addiction. it’s not about what we’re addicted to, it’s about why we’re addicted to it. yet, i would like to throw out that maybe an addiction to food is more complex than most, because it’s not like you can just quit food, cold turkey. (no pun intended, but that was kinda funny.) if i want to quit meth, i don’t do meth anymore. but if i want to quit being an overeater, i can’t just not eat anymore. it’s so hard.
long story longer – thanks for all your writing. and hats off to your readers. these are some really tough issues you’ve been prompting us to discuss lately, and i’m awed by how civil and gracious the comments have been.
I just finished watching it this morning. I was also left with a feeling of sadness. It wasn’t that I wanted a Hollywood ending, I guess I just wanted to see a sliver of hope for these girls. The one girl with children, when she went home and threw up . . . I was so sad. When they panned to the dog watching her from his cage my heart caught–I wish it were different for them.
There was a time that I got obsessed with eating disorder websites: pro-ana and pro-mia they are called. I was like reading them all the time and thinking about how I could do it too. This was on the heels of having hated my body for years, then taking a break, then being back in a palce where I felt so controlled by other people and life that the only thing I could control was my own body. The websites, they were something else. I felt at once like these people were my friends, myself, and at the same time like an alien watching from the outside. It was so strange. It’s amazing to me the number of ways we find in life to be f-ed up.
YES! Totally, saw this at Sundance in January and then again last night. After the premiere screening they had a couple of the girls there for some Q&A and it was incredibly moving to see them up there in person after experiencing the whole movie along with them. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to watch an entire audiences reaction to your own enormous struggle. AND THEN to take questions about it. I remember Shelly & Polly were both there, don’t remember if anyone else was. The only update that I remember was Shelly’s she had a boyfriend (or was even engaged maybe) and was doing better. In person they were both still very thin, and talked about how it was a constant battle and that they still had good days and bad days.
I don’t know one female who has a totally normal relationship with food or their weight… and this movie is what made me realize that. A real big bummer when you really sit still and think on it for a moment.
First, I just want to express to everyone here dealing with some kind of body issue or eating disorder – or knows someone who is – that I’m really sorry about it and hope you are able to find ways to recognize your own inherent beauty, whether you feel too fat/thin/out of control, or what. I’ve had 2 anorexic friends, and for one it was a control issue, and for the other, it’s body image.
And I the only one who kept reading Lawyerish’s ED abbreviation as “erectile dysfunction”? No? Just me, then. Stupid ED commercials.
And to justmouse, I want to let you know that skinny people get ragged on, too. I’m 5’7 and weighed 98 pounds up until sophomore year of high school (I was 5.6″ then), when I finally managed to get up to 113, and people thought absolutely NOTHING about coming up to me and getting in my face to accuse me of being anorexic or bulimic, despite the fact I was constantly hungry, ate like a horse every single meal, and snacked so much between meals that I almost always had some kind of food in my hand. Literally. People are jackasses whether you’re fat or thin. Frankly, I always thought it was the height of hypocrisy that I live in a society that reveres waify women but castigated me, a healthy slender girl for being too thin. The fuck? Going to the gym was always fun, because some bitch would always either snipe at me for being “anorexic” and being fucked up for being in a gym (coz I couldn’t possibly have been there because I wanted to be *healthy*, right?), and I’d get dirty looks from every woman in the place who was unhappy with her own body. Men told me all the time that I’d be pretty if only I gained some weight and wore more makeup. So trust me, you are not alone in your body issues.
6.5 years ago, I suddenly put on weight, jumping from 117 pounds to 135 in the space of 2 months, 10 of it in the first 2 weeks. I don’t know where it came from, and now I’m up to 150, and I fucking hate it. Unfortunately, I have never developed healthy eating habits, in part because I never had to (I know, I hear the hate, believe me), so it’s a constant battle, and because I can’t stand the way my body feels, the way parts of it touch itself in ways they never did before and I don’t think they should on a person who isn’t overweight, I feel miserable. I wish I’d understood the realities of the body I had when I had it, that I hadn’t let people make me feel like there was something wrong with the way I looked. Frankly, I see young girls now who look just like I did, and I want to find every person who ever bitched at me and told me I was too skinny/bony/ugly, etc., and kick the shit out of them, because when I weighed 113-115, I looked damn good, and there is nothing wrong with being a size 5. It’s NOW that I have an unhealthy view of my body and am miserable in it, but it’s also now that no one ever bitches at me about how “unhealthy” I look. I can only imagine it’s because I don’t make them worry about the size of their own asses now, because I catch myself being the one who wants to shoot dirty looks at the adorable slender girls now. :( I agree with the people here who have said we need to change society’s perceptions of what beautiful is, because I know 50% of how I feel about myself is the constant barrage of how younger and thinner are better and beautiful, while being 42 and at what most people would consider a normal weight isn’t. :(
I am going to TiVo this, Sundry. Thanks for writing about it. I don’t know sqaut about eating disorders, but I also find the topic compelling, probably because it seems like another form of addiction.
The mother of a good friend of mine died from a heart attack at age 54, brought on, they think by decades of binging and purging. My friend is a doctor, and that might be why she did not follow in her mother’s footsteps. Also, she did not discover that her mom was bulemic until she was in her late twenties, about 6 years before her mother died. Nothing my friend tried was successful in getting her mother to stop, and that was incredibly painful.
The only way I can get my mind wrapped around these diseases is to think of them like addictions, because the effect on the family and the strength of the compulsion seem similar.
Thin airs again on HBO tomorrow night at 11 pm.
I don’t have HBO, but a close friend of mine who has spent time in centers like Renfrew for her anorexia is buying a DVD copy of it to watch. I saw the extra portions on Greenfield’s website, and I think it’s great that a) she made this, and b) she didn’t bullshit around with a happy ending. EDs, mental illness, addiction – they don’t have happy endings. They don’t have endings. You can work on them until they are no longer significantly interfering with your life, but it will always be a part of you. You can’t cut out that part of yourself. It’s heartbreaking, but I’ve stayed in enough hospitals with enough girls like Brittany to know that sometimes they get better, sometimes they don’t, and it’s naive to pretend otherwise.
I’m glad you watched it and were touched by it. I hope to see it soon.
I have to say I’m loving reading the comments here as much the post today – I, too, struggle with overeating and am very overweight, but I always feel so alone with it. You hear so much more about the other sorts of eating disorders, the thin ones – though I don’t wish ill on all of you with problems who have commented, it’s just so nice not to feel alone with this.
I’ll have to see if this is OnDemand…really curious now. I was very close with a co-worker who had been stuggling with an ED for years. I met her after she finally got it under control and she was able to talk about it and dissect exactly what she was feeling and why she was going through this. Hers was a control issue. She decided that since nothing else in her life, not her family, her new husband, work, was under her control, she would be able to control her food. She told me that she would plan out her day around eating (or not eating), that she would be able to go all day without eating until dinner time when she would have to eat in front of her husband. She could make it through that by telling him that she ate a late lunch or was snacking all day, whatever, and not have to eat a full meal. Eventually she was hospitalized for a month or so and got herself back together. But she never really got better. Occasionally, she would tell me that she was starting to feel like she used to and was worried about herself – luckily she was in a stable relationship at the time and had friends to support her through it. I haven’t seen her for about 4 years as she has moved to another state, but i often wonder how she is. Just looking through a series of about 6 or 7 employee badge photos of hers tells her story while she was working at my company, and i hope that she looks as healthy now, as she did in the last picture that i have of her.
I didn’t see it, but if you like that type of stuff (if ‘like’ can even be the appropriate word), then you may find the book “Smashed” by Koren Zalickas interesting. I read it and saw a lot of my old self in it… scary, but also made me grateful that I was able to, for the most part, leave the booze behind and grow up, (as much as I have, anyway).
Anorexics tend to be extremely narcissistic.
Christen – you know, I read that book a while back and couldn’t get into it. I could identify with some aspects of it but not the whole thing; and the fact that she repeatedly denies having a drinking problem was just hard to (forgive me) swallow.
And Lesley, what do you mean? I mean, I guess I get what you mean, but..wait, what do you mean?
Christen —
…Okay, I hesitate recommending ED memoirs as many sufferers (myself included, for quite some time) often use them almost like “guidebooks” in a sick way, but I will say that Wasted by Marya Hornbacher is incredible. It’s almost like the ‘classic’ anorexia memoir… my friends and I used to joke that it was the Anorexic Bible. Yes, we were morbid… Another great memoir (though about bipolar disorder, not EDs) is An Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison. :)
Lesley —
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I’m not sure if I even want to risk saying ANYTHING to you because it would be so completely incendiary it wouldn’t be worth it. All I’ll say is please, before you go off making judgmental blanket statements like that, actually do some legitimate research and truly, deeply know what you’re talking about. Okay? Thank you.
Wow, I’m getting horribly sucked into this entry’s comment section. Tina – I have actually had the pleasure of “penpalling” for a bit with Marya Hornbacher, and while she still seems to be having some trouble getting her life on track, she is a remarkable woman. And her writing – wow. Wasted gave me a lot of the motivation and inspiration I needed to achieve some of the things I’m most proud of now in life – like getting a writing scholarship to Interlochen, and finding happiness in a DC-area college. Not everyone just got triggery stuff out of it. ;-)
Lesley, I don’t know about all anorexic women, but narcissism?? I think more than anything, I want to help others and make sure that ALL others around me are happy…even to my own detriment.
I’d like to point out that narcissism doesn’t always mean that you care about yourself more than other people, or that you are self-obsessed to the point of being an ego-maniac. Simply put, and in the clinical sense, it can mean/be an unusual preoccupation with yourself caused by extreme deficiencies in self-esteem. Many disorders – eating, anxiety, depressive, mental – are characterized by narcissism, and it’s not as evil/selfish/obnoxious as it seems. I’m not saying that’s what Lesley meant here, since most people don’t really think about it that sense, but I will say that it’s not an entirely inaccurate statement. It simply means that you focus a lot of things – problems in the world, concerns of control, world events and concerns – on yourself, and how they can impact you, and it often manifests itself in self-destructive behavior.
I have/had an anxiety/depressive disorder, and I was extremely narcissistic, in the psychology sense of the word. Not that I was preoccupied with myself and how *awesome* I was, and how the world should revolve around me me ME! OMG!, but I was preoccupied in the sense that I was convinced bad things – all these horrible, outside things that were beyond my control – were somehow going to happen to *me*, or that if I just worried about them enough, then they wouldn’t happen, again, to the point of self-destruction. I would see something bad happen to someone, for example, and be immediately convinced/afraid it would happen to me, to the point of destructive panic. That is an odd form of narcissism that isn’t entirely selfish and/or obnoxious, just bizarrely self-centered. It had very little to do with how I treated or thought of others, and despite all of it, as Aneice says, I did help others to my own detriment. Yet, in the anxiety sense, I was still narcissistic.
I hope that makes sense. And frankly, I’m only saying it because when my therapist first whipped out that word, lo those many moons ago, I flipped out and was all, “I AM NOT SELFISH. I LOVE PEOPLE.” And then I really considered what it can/does mean.
(God, really, I need to do some work.)
How did I miss this? I’ve been naturally thin all of my life and the 10 extra pounds on my 5′ 8″ frame that haunt me right now make me reconsider every bite of food I put into my mouth. I can’t really enjoy eating without actually being as thin as I’d like. That’s probably a bad thing. I think I’m going to watch this show.
I’m with Bianca. All women, in all shapes = all good. And I will personally bitchslap the anyone who blames the fashion industry. We makes clothes at all kinds of prices for all shapes of women. We do not fund E! or force vanity programming 24/7 on 900 US tv channels. Turn off the crap tv. Make fashion magazines focus on cut and clothes (like they did in the 50s &60s) and not celebrity gossip. And God bless these poor, sick girls.
I’ve never had an eating disorder, either, but I kind of understand where their images of themselves become distorted.
For me, it was my nose. It started out as a comment made by some drunk caricaturist in college (quite a career, huh?). He told me I looked like Barbara Streisand and drew my picture and it was just a small head with a huge nose. It’s a “family nose” and I had never really given it a second thought. After that point, I was obsessed and I could no longer see my face normally. To me, it may as well have been blinking red like rudolph’s… I thought my nose was all that others were noticing and that I was grotesque. Sad, really, but I went on a few years like this until I finally saved enough for plastic surgery. And you know what, the obsession is gone but I still don’t think it’s good enough.
Another great book about eating disorders – Appetites, by Caroline Knapp. It’s not guidebookish at all…it’s really insightful and intelligent. She also wrote a great book about alcoholism called Drinking a Love Story, and her book called Pack of Two about the relationship between people and their dogs, also great.
Love her.
(I too saw Thin, it made me writhe in that icky-looking-at-needles-way, but I couldn’t tear myself away)
Jonniker, THANK YOU for dispelling the myths about narcissism. Did my work for me, ya did! I haven’t gotten to see it yet (planning on doing so tonight) but I was very torn. I haven’t been severely underweight for about 5 years now, but anything regarding anorexia reeeeeeeally triggers me. I was also one of those who sought out “guides” and pro-ana websites, etc. It wasn’t until I found out yesterday that my therapist has seen it, so I can discuss it with her. That made it a little safer in my mind.
My older sister died 16 years ago from complications caused from being a longterm anorexic. She had a cardiac arrthmia that they could not turn around. Years of straving herself played a number on her heart and electrolytes. When it happened my parents had real difficulty facing the truth. The whole thing hastened my mother’s death (she died 2 1/2 years later). After she died my father finally was able to face up to some truths, but I think the hardest part is that he feels that he is responsible. He is a physician. She (my sister) start exhibiting symptoms when she was 16, they (my parents) tried to get her help but at that time they were not many professionals who specialized in eating disorders. In fact in the psychiatric community the term “eating disorder” was rarely heard. I want to feel that my sister’s death was not in vain and my little sister and I (who both have similar eating disorder issues) try to be as honest with others as possible about what happened. Thankfully my little sister knows some magazine editors who have since written about what happened in our family. My issue with most articles about the illness is that they rarely touch on the reality, that people die.
I sometimes see pillows with that pithy little saying embroidered in “you can never be too rich or too thin” and believe it is this mentality that kills women (mostly). I can’t really say much more on the subject today. I have to go to work.
What Jonniker said.
And also, Caroline Knapp’s “Appetites”, recommended above, is excellent. I read it and wanted to sleep with the book under my pillow forever, so I could kiss it and clutch it to my chest as needed. It is amazingly insightful and the writing is so beautiful you almost can’t stand it.
I watched it with my daughter who is 19 and has had an eating disorder in the past. She sat quietly and so did I. But, at least she watched. I was thankful she did even that much. She doesn’t like to talk about her problem. I’m just thankful she’s recovered.
I think there should be more documentries on this subject, a LOT more, and especially on main stream television.
Wow, I missed it, but what a tough topic. This entry and the resulting comments are extremely thought provoking on this subject. I could go on and on about my thoughts on this, but I’m at work and so I need to be brief. I wanted to post a link to a video I saw the other day that really exposes how the ideal of beauty is so manufactured. Every woman should see this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz5IRdFIpvA