An interesting comment was left here yesterday... It was anonymous, no e-mail, no name, so in order to reply to it I'm going to do so here. Readers, should you feel I'm out of line or agree with the commenter or have something to say about this whole business, please chime in. Feedback rules.
I've been following your blog for a while now, and here's a thought: instead of trying to find someone or something (modern society, religion, Hollywood, etc.) to take the blame for those entrapped in an ED, why not invest your energy into helping others like you did when you started your t-shirt project?
...Maybe I'm not making myself clear or perhaps you're misunderstanding me, but I don't think I EVER said society, religion, media, or any other entity was responsible for the eating disorder epidemic. In fact, if I've misstated myself in such a gruesomely inaccurate way I owe everyone who may ever have read this blog an enormous apology.
Eating disorders are in NO WAY the fault of an outside source. Eating disorders are a mental illness. That means that something at some point in time went wrong inside my (for instance) brain, causing me to distort the way I perceive myself mentally and physically. Additionally, that switch made it so that the standards I hold for beauty, health, perfection, and self-worth are warped into a nasty misrepresentation of reality. Normal people don't look at a drastically underweight model and think, wow! she's gorgeous! I should starve myself so I can look like her! No. There has to already be something wrong with that person's thinking to cause looking at someone emaciated to seem desirable.
Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing someone underweight, tired, but otherwise still acceptable and beautiful in the eyes of god and others, my mind takes all those features and twists them around into something disgusting. Either I see someone emaciated and sallow like a holocaust caricature, hair stringy and face a mask of dark hollows and ugliness, or I see someone puffy and jiggly and gluttonous whom I loathe for what I perceive to be greed and a total lack of self-control. For the first person, I hate her for abusing her body and being a hypocrite.
I cannot look in the mirror and see myself as others see me. I cannot think about myself and be proud of my achievements or my strides toward health without being overwhelmed by the thousand little things for which I hate myself.
That is what an eating disorder is. It's why it's called a disorder - the natural order of my thinking about my self and my body somehow got thrown out of whack. There is no logic driving an eating disorder. I'm not driven by a desire to look like a media image or modern societal pressures or a religious motivation for punishment. The reason I do discuss those things so frequently is that they DO have a part to play in EDs. Plus, I keep this blog as much for informative purposes as helping others. In fact, it helps and comforts me to see advances being made culturally and hear others comment on media and religion in a way that challenges ideals I might hold toward them.
While those things in NO WAY cause EDs, they undeniably contribute.
--> TV, magazines, etc, provide an abundance of visual triggers as they put underweight women forth as a positive examples of beauty and achievement.
--> Society embraces those images and translates the messages into something that, to an eating disordered mind, sounds like, "Unless you are emaciated, you are a failure and everyone hates you."
--> Religion - specifically the Christian religion - messes with our heads because there is so much emphasis on human failings and the need to put to death pride and sin. For someone who already hates him/herself and feels they are the completely worthless scum, this can literally cause suicidality. It can lead to forms of self-injury as a way to punish the self for any minor transgression. Eating disorders became the most rampant in any era and culture but our current one in the middle ages when Christianity took over Europe, because to starve oneself showed such great self-discipline and commitment to the faith. Oh! To love god so much that one didn't need to eat! Do you have ANY idea how many saints got their sainthood by starving to death??
...Breathe. Breathing. Okay. Point being. Religion is a HUGE contributing factor in many, many cases. It's why you hear of so many girls coming down with these disorders who are daughters of pastors and religious families, good, stable family, middle-class Americans. Religion.
Also, one more thing on that. Crystal pointed out that I need to balance this, because Christianity is not all bad. My experiences may have been, which is why I am so ranty about it, but many women also are helped by religion, even rescued by it. Many religious communities embrace women suffering from EDs and help them, encourage them, comfort them. They are understanding and nurturing and the wonderful safety that sufferers need.
The reason I tend to be so strongly negative toward Christianity is that I come from a background which was catalyst and even direct encouragement for many of my issues. I suffered too many years of being told panic disorder was my fault, depression was my fault, and anorexia was my vanity. Except not that nicely. I experienced nothing but pain at the hands of Christians who thought they were helping and, as such, am really bitter toward the religion. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this subject. I just speak from personal experience.
Returning to main point: Being able to live and function healthfully as a member of society as it stands means that I, and others with EDs, have to learn to reallign our thinking toward these pressures so we can cope with them despite our messed up brains.
You are undeniably correct when you say our society is screwed up it's perspective on beauty (thin is in), but please don't throw the baby out of the bath water.
...I love the misstatement of that colloquialism. Otherwise, I think I covered this above.
A few screwed up people shouldn't be considered representative of the majority.
Agreed. Most assuredly agreed. But I still don't see what that has to do with any of the points I've been trying to make... I haven't made any attacks on celebrities or Christians (yes, I attack many dogmatic standards. That is DIFFERENT.) or teachers or whomever. I'm attacking what is already spoken of in a general, amorphous sense: beliefs and standards. It has little or nothing to do with "a few screwed up people".
I'm sure there are probably one or two whacko's at your place of business (Cheesecake Factory?), but it would be quite unjust to label you and your co-workers as whacko's based on the character of just a few.
Not to go into this much, but... You could probably label us all crazy, actually.
That's MY rant and I'm sticking to it. Now, go forth and do something good for yourself and for someone else today!
Well, you may not like it, but I feel that I just did something good for myself and others here. Sorry.
As a final note, I'd like to point out that this blog was not started with any mission statement saying it was going to be just encouragement for fellow sufferers. My goal has been as much to educate as to help - the t'shirts are information, not just personal statement.
And aside from that? It's also my journal in many ways. I write about what I'm thinking about. When I'm going through rough spells, it's not as cheery. When I'm pissed off it reflects that.
Yes, I want to help other girls. They are on my heart twenty-four hours a day. I start crying multiple times throughout the day when I see some girl walk by with a scar from an NG tube or dark hollows under her cheekbones or sores around her mouth. It tears me apart. I want more than anything to just take all that pain away from them, even onto myself if I could.
Speaking honestly about eating disorders, how they feel, what they do, and why they're happening, seems to me like a help for those girls. EDs are extraordinarily shameful and surrounded by stigma and misperceptions. Few people know any more about EDs than what they see on the news or the skinny girls they run into now and then. Education is helpful because if you actually know facts about what this is and what causes it you know better how to help and encourage.
Empowerment is help. Putting to death misperceptions is help. Education is help.
There are more ways for me to help girls with eating disorders than just a little note of encouragement every day. I'm trying to do all that I can, however I can, and will keep on doing so as long as I'm able.
