Last week happened to be my 5-year recovery day. On September 9, 2003, I checked in to an intensive inpatient ED unit, in a wheelchair, with barely anything left of my body or my brain and a heart rate of 43 beats per minute. Four months later, I walked out happier, healthier, and scared to death.

Getting well in the safety of the hospital is one thing; staying in recovery once you leave is another. I had seen women leave and come back to the hospital during the course of my stay; the world was too hard for them to deal with and their ED came raging back. I threw away everything in my life that reminded me of being sick: my old clothes, sick pictures, and the scale that I stood on every morning. The one thing I kept was my journal from the time, which had scrawls from the hospital all over it. On one page I had written something that still scares and stays with me:

Do Not Forget This: you saw your friends plugged into walls, you heard about their melting intestines, you saw her without her teeth on a Tuesday morning, you began to remember your own life as soon as you picked up a spoon.

It is easy, I think, for those of us with eating disorders to fall back into old patterns. The ED voice is a total bitch, hellbent on destroying everything that you are, were, or want to be. In any given moment of weakness — a sudden change, an illness, a breakup, etc — the ED voice swoops right in, as if to say, "Don't worry about the world, Fatty. You still have me." However, the further along I have come in recovery, the weaker that ED voice gets. It also helps that I picture the ED voice looking like Joan and Melissa Rivers on the red carpet, so whenever I get a case of the "you're fats" I just think, "Help! My daughter's not talented!" and that seems to work things out.

Also, I have a kickass treatment team in place that I still see once a month, to keep me on track.

It took a very long time, but once I went into recovery, I never looked back. When you lose that part of yourself, you begin to remember who you were before you were just bones and numbers and calories. You start to see things differently, to appreciate small, quiet things that your ED never let you notice before. You eat a fucking Snickers bar for breakfast and you feel like Michael Phelps should mail you a gold medal, because you are such a champion.

I know that people like to portray anorexia as an illness of vanity, but that's about as far from the truth as you can get. Anorexia is never about the weight. The weight is a symptom, a distraction. The need to starve one's self, to concentrate on numbers and sizes and measurements, is merely a means of coping, of drawing the brain away from whatever is hurting it so badly that the only way of dealing is to numb it out completely. It's a very quiet form of suicide. It is a way of telling the world that all you want to do is disappear. For me, it was also a way to say, "I need somebody to help me," as I come from a family that has both a history of mental illness and a history of ignoring mental illness in the hopes that it will just go away.

I realize how lucky I am to have received treatment; the insurance companies make it impossible for most women to complete their programs, leaving them in a state of flux as far as their recovery is concerned. I think that's why I work so hard to stay in recovery; I was given a chance to recover, a chance that many women with eating disorders won't get, and I don't intend to waste it. I remember the women who would come in and talk during my time in the hospital, the ones who would say, "I got better, and you can, too." At the time I thought they were full of shit. But now I know better, and I now I AM one of those women: I know there are many of you who read this site who are dealing with your own ED issues, and that at times recovery seems not only impossible, but unfathomable. Doves, this is not the case. Yes, recovery is hard, and it hurts, and it's a lot of work, but it is beautiful and worth it, and if I can do it, then trust me, so can you.

Earlier: Shun Your Friends & Learn A Cool New Eating Disorder In Teen Vogue!

"I can't help but look down on my friends when they give in to temptations like pizza or ice cream."

Uh, beg your pardon?

And! Across the page, another quote:

"I refuse to put anything poisonous—like processed foods—in my body. I'll stay this way forever."

Pretty extreme for a teen magazine, no?

If you flip back a page, you'll discover that these are not diet tips, per se, but quotes from real girls in a story about orthorexia. Orthorexia is a fixation on healthy eating, which Tara Gidus, National Spokesperson For the American Dietetic Association tells Teen Vogue: "It's not quite an eating disorder, but it is a form of disordered eating." Phew! As long as it's not an actual eating disorder, then we can promote it, right? Wait! Gidus goes on to say: "It could easily lead to bulimia if you binge on unhealthy food and feel like you need to get rid of it. And the rigid nature of the disease could also lead to anorexia."

Good to know! True, the magazine isn't outright suggesting readers try orthorexia, but here's the picture that appears in the photo shoot immediately preceding the orthorexia story:

[Teen Vogue]

The International Journal of Eating Disorders study was conducted with 274 female students at a large southeastern university and compared the eating-related behaviors and attitudes of varsity athletes, club athletes, independent exercisers, and non-exercisers. Researchers are recommending that university coaches and athletic departments consider prevention and monitoring programs for female athletes and exercisers at universities. "As women's participation in athletics increases, so too does the need for awareness of the link between eating disorders and sports participation among women," says Jill Holm-Denoma of the University of Denver, lead author of the study.

Eating Disorder Symptoms More Common Among Female Athletes And Exercisers [EurekAlert]

Remember that eating disorders are inherently an existential struggle over the very notion of free will.
You can worsen them, and you can encourage them, but you cannot singlehandedly instill them in your kids, nor can you prevent them. The coolest thing about my mom is that she kind of got this. Her reaction to my adolescent 800-calorie-a-day diet was one of concern but also, exasperation; she had specifically taken such great care to rear me on healthy food and ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION OF MY WEIGHT; I was not even at all overweight, and now, as my big display of free will and rebellion I'd chosen anorexia? She made it clear she thought it was fundamentally shallow, and intellectually, I agreed, but by that point I had almost given up on free will when it came to eating; food issues were just my DESTINY, my curse and fate and blah blah blah. Anyway, that was probably mostly depression. I didn't medicate it, but eventually I suppose it subsided, and my intellect took the wheel again, which was lucky.

With that in mind, ask yourself, are you shallow?
What do you most want for your kid? Happiness and some sort of fulfillment, right? People of all sizes achieve that! The negative correlation between happiness and excess pounds, such that it exists, is totally all in your head, as the field of duh studies has recently confirmed. So if your kids think they're fat, you need to chew on this question: does that have anything to do with you? (Chewing on said question, btw, is a good way to stop yourself from nagging your poor kid!) Like I said, are you shallow? If so, is that the trait you'd most like to pass onto our progeny? (Please, for the good of the country, answer "No.") Conversely, are you so dogmatically un-shallow that they think you just don't have any idea what sort of world world they're living in? That was sort of my problem. In the end it was a good one to have. It was like, hey, the one genetic advantage I have here is that my parents are bright people with strong moral values who don't give a shit how fat I get, except inasmuch as they know I don't exactly have health insurance.

Be honest and remember it's not a big deal.
Acting like a kid's chubbing out is a grave issue that must be discussed in hushed tones is probably not the best idea, especially if they have the sort of grandfather (mine) who will go up to them and play the "Pinch an inch" game. While the Pinch an Inch game is annoying, I never really doubted that my grandfather loved me. I think he just thought kids today spent too much time watching the idiot box and not enough playing elaborate war games in the woods. And he had a point! I asked my friend Don, a former fat kid, whether his mom (a personal idol of mine) had ever said anything to him about his weight, and he recalled a time one summer at the age of 13 when he was eating a piece of pizza while wearing a swimsuit and somehow the topic of his blubber came up. Laughing, she agreed, "Yeah, you really have to do something about that." A few years later, when he stopped eating meat, she worried she'd scarred him; but seriously, Don was picked on his entire childhood for being a fat kid, and she basically played it perfectly, choosing to encourage his positive traits (such as he is fucking hilarious) and accept that he was never going to be as physically attractive as she is. (She is, to be fair here, really pretty.)

Don recommends this movie.
It is, he says, his "Exile in Guyville."

Earlier: Sometimes A Parent's Words Can Bear The Weight Of The World

Image via Skip To My Lou

• Whitney was the first "plus sized" contestant to win America's Next Top Model!
  
• Alexandra Michaels — a teen model who was sent home from Paris because she gained five pounds — spoke out against eating disorders in the modeling industry.
  
• Speaking of dressing up: Jezebel correspondent Emily Gould crashed a Stevie Nicks festival. There were wigs! And gays! And glitter!
  
• More good news for gays: it is now legal for them to get married in California.
  
• In other California legal news, Lori Drew got indicted.
  
• Even California girls should not wear this tacky crap from Urban Outfitters.
  
• Brats from My Super Sweet Sixteen get deported!

The biggest problem with adult anorexics is that they are much harder to cure. In Pope's case, she lived alone, and while most of her colleagues noticed that she was very thin and frail, she was so competent they never expected that she wasn't eating. According to Susan Ringwood, the CEO of Beat, an eating disorders charity, "Adults with anorexia can, like Rosemary Pope, be emaciated for years, but still function, and other people get used to them being like tha. Add to this their heightened energy, a very driven personality and the fact that the general public still associates anorexia with adolescents and you can see how it can get missed by others. Even if people do suspect it, they often fear saying the wrong thing, or think that it might actually be cancer."

But back to the young women with eating disorders. On Nerve yesterday, Rachel Shukert posted an essay called "The Anorexic's Cookbook" which deals with the author's former eating disorder in a way that's darkly humorous. Shukert's not the first to meld anorexia and comedy — Jennifer Traig wrote amusingly about her anorexia (alongside a host of other psychological maladies including OCD) in the book The Devil In The Details.

Though these essays and books do make you laugh, the reality of anorexia, as Rosemary Pope shows, is terrifyingly grim. Eating disorder expert Dr. Ira Sacker told CBS, "The fatality rate of anorexia alone is upwards of 20 percent — that's one-in-five who) die. We're talking about the highest mortality rate of any emotional disease known."

A Lifetime Of Denial [Guardian]
The Anorexic's Cookbook [Nerve]

Related: Some Moms In Troubled Marriages Are Starving Themselves To Death
Dangerous Extremes [CBS]

The thing is, Sey, and the majority of her fellow trainees were children ages 10-14. Girls (and boys, too) at that age usually want to please their superiors, whether they be parents, teachers, or coaches. Sey writes about a "coach who hurled a folding chair at a girl who couldn't perform a difficult maneuver on the uneven bars, and the one who used the gym's loudspeaker to humiliate a 10-year-old for gaining one pound." Who among us wouldn't be susceptible to eating disorders and competing with injuries with coaching techniques like the kind Sey endured?

Chalked Up isn't the first book to explore the seamier side of women's gymnastics. The 1995 expose Little Girls In Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters by Joan Ryan covered much of the same ground that Sey treads on. In a chapter called "If It Isn't Bleeding, Don't Worry About It: Injuries," Ryan talks about Julissa Gomez, a girl who looked "ten years old even at fifteen. She stood 4 feet 10 inches and weighed 72 pounds." Gomez is a gymnastics cautionary tale: at a competition in Japan in 1988, she did a dangerous vault called the Yurchenko. According to one of Julissa's teammates, Chelle Stack, said, "You could tell it was not a safe vault for her to be doing. Someone along the way should have stopped her." But no one did, because the Yurchenko meant higher scores. Gomez hit her head on the vaulting horse during warmups at such a speed that she became paralyzed. She died of an infection three years later.

Some gymnasts, like former Olympian Betty Okino, were extremely offended by Ryan's dim view of the gymnastics world. Okino wrote a response to Ryan in 2001, "When the goal is extraordinary, so is the work and sacrifice that has to go along with it. How dare anyone call gymnastics 'celebrated child abuse.' Victims of child abuse aren't given a choice. We as athletes are. We should not blame the USAG, coaches, and the sport of gymnastics for turning out bitter, broken down athletes. Instead we should search for the answers a little closer to home. Those of us who came out of the sport unscarred weren't living our parent's dreams, we were living our own."

But how can one know her dreams so deeply at the age of 10? And anyway, to absolve the coaches of any responsibility creates a dangerous situation where the girls without supportive homes are left to the proverbial wolves (like Romanian gold medalist Nadia Comăneci, who has talked about her eating disorder in recent years). Sey is not calling for an end to gymnastics, she says. But she adds, "All coaches have an obligation to realize that they're not just raising champions, they're raising young women. Hopefully they'll maybe think twice about some of the practices they might employ. I love the sport — I don't want the sport to go down. I just want people to think differently."

"Why Do These Men Want To Coach Little Girls?"[Salon]
Little Girls In Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters — excerpt [Amazon]
The Balanced View: Betty Okino [Sports Hollywood]

(The first rule of spotting a manorexic: he thinks people actually believe that metabolism shit, because he is a dude.

Fundamentally, compulsions surrounding the appetite are worse on men because they have bigger appetites. They also have bigger pants. Women, we eat half a box of cereal and maybe a few spoons of peanut butter mixed with Creamy Deluxe frosting and maybe half a can of Dinty Moore and we are like "oh my gosh I'm never eating again" and eventually that gets old but men can really make an achievement out of this shit:

WHAT PREZZA WAS EATING...
DAILY GUIDELINES FOR MEN
Calories 2000. Fat 70g, carbohydrate sugars 90g, salt 2.4g
CARNATION MILK - 397g TIN Calories 1290. Fat 31.8g, carbohydrate sugars 221.5g, salt 0.4g
M&S TRIFLE - 500g Calories 825. Fat 41.5g, carbohydrate sugars 71.5g, salt 0.55g.
LEMON CHICKEN Calories 1400. Fat 13g, salt 700mg
BEEF SATAY Calories 760, Fat 40g, salt: 650mg
SWEET AND SOUR PORK Calories 410.
Fat 30g, salt 350mg
CRISPY DUCK - 650MG Calories 800. Fat 40g, salt 650mg
CHOCOLATE - 230g BAR Calories 1207.5. Fat 68.54g, carbohydrate sugars 130.4g, salt 0.207g
DIGESTIVE BISCUITS - 500g Calories 2355. Fat 106.5g, carbohydrate sugars 83, salt 2.5g CRISPS - 34.5g
PACKET Calories 530. Fat 11.7g, carbohydrate sugars 0.2g, salt 0.5g

John Prescott's Secret Big Mac Binges [Mirror]
Huge Book Deal For Jon-Jon Goulian [Observer]

HAHAHAHA HOLES. FINGERS. DIKES. Sorry. Anyway, The president of the French Federation of Couture, Didier Grumbach, really hates the new bill. "Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny. That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France." Grumbach's attitude seems to be a common one in the fashion industry (see Lagerfeld, Karl), so perhaps it would be more effective to encourage the fashion industry itself to start policing excessive thinness as opposed to writing too-vague laws that, if passed, are ultimately subjective.

France May Make It Illegal To Promote Extreme Thinness [ABC News]

Related: La Merde Et La Mode
10 Things Karl Lagerfeld Could Do Without

Related: Parents In Denial About Children's Weight Problems [Science Daily]

Some men go so far to ask for the dress size of the mother of the prospective bride, says Abraham Twerski, author of a book about eating disorders called The Thin You Within You. (You know, so a future husband can rest assure his wife-to-be will be able to shed the baby weight - and there will be many babies: Orthodox Jews don't always believe in birth control). The arranged marriages may be causing eating disorders for another reason as well: Orthodox women are encouraged to wed at a very young age, and some teens who are seeking to avoid marriage develop anorexia to avoid menstruation. No menses = no babies = no marriage.

As many experts note, eating disorders are often about control, and eating disorder specialist Dr. Ira Sacker told the Forward that Orthodox girls and women often want to control their food intake because in such a regimented and ritualized society, what they eat is the only thing they have any power over.

Anorexia remains a taboo subject in the Orthodox world, and as a result, according to Jewcy, "Married and middle-aged women are also susceptible to anorexia and bulimia, and are likely to pass their eating disorders on to their daughters." This is increasingly true everywhere, says the Independent. Apparently the pressure to "age beautifully" like Madonna or Sharon Stone has sent some older women into a shame spiral of disordered eating.

The Orthodox Union is trying to raise money to produce a documentary about eating disorders within the community, tentatively titled, "Dying To Be Thin." Jewcy points out that most mainstream eating disorder films focus on the media's influence on body image, but in TV-free Orthodox households, those messages don't resonate in the same way. Personally, I doubt many Orthodox Jews will be reading about up-and-coming model, willowy Ali Michael, who wasn't cast in almost any runway shows at Paris fashion week because the 17-year-old had gained a whopping five pounds from last year.

["Tefillin Barbie" Image via Jen Taylor Friedman's Official Website.]

Eating Disorders Plague the Orthodox World [Jewcy]
Film To Break Silence Around Anorexia [Jewish Daily Forward]

Related: Wasn't Skinny
Supposed To Be Out Of Fashion? [Wall Street Journal]
Pressure To Grow Old Beautifully Drives Over-50s To Anorexia [Independent]

However, the BBC interviews a recovering anorexic named Shannon Bonnette, who says reading web pages about anorexia actually helped her. "What I found through visiting those sites was that there was a common theme — everybody stays miserable," she says. Do social networking sites have a duty to protect members from "dangerous" eating disorder information? If you're looking for that kind of stuff, can't you just find it anywhere? Or is it important for sites to take a stand, make a point of shutting down eating disorder-related groups, out of principle? And who does the banning? Who decides what is "dangerous" and what is just a support group? In any case, it doesn't seem as though the big sites are interested: "Many Facebook groups relate to controversial topics; this alone is not a reason to disable a group," says a rep.

Pro-Anorexia Site Clampdown Urged [BBC News]
Pro-Anorexia Website Warning [ITN]

Related: It's National Eating Disorders Awareness Week [5 Resolutions]

That's right, it wasn't anorexia! Turns out she had a whole bunch of Entamoeba Histolytica , tropical parasitic protozoa she'd contracted in Belize, digesting her food for her! Ewwwww!

Anyway on a side note, she describes herself as someone who worked in "fashion magazines," but when you Google her it seems like she was also once on staff at the New York Review Of Books — which is sort of the annoying part: literati dudes actually dig waify anorexic types, in my experience, more than bankers. Because they are little and not very manly and it's not as brazen as digging girls with weaves and implants and also it's cool to hate on fat people. God I hate New York!

Letting Go Of An Eating Disorder In Midlife [ABC News]
Conquering An Eating Disorder [ABC News]
Anorexia Nearly Killed My Wife [Glamour]

Related: Anorexia: "I Hit Five Stone And Could Not Go On" [Telegraph]
Dangerous Extremes, Eating Disorders Killing Thousands Of Middle-Aged Women Each Year [CBS News]

A second study from the University of Minnesota suggests that girls who eat dinner with their families are less likely to develop eating disorders. A press release about the study says, "Among teen girls, those who ate five or more meals with their families each week in 1999 were significantly less likely to report using extreme measures (such as self-induced vomiting and diuretics) to control their weight in 2004, regardless of their sociodemographic characteristics, body mass index or family connectedness."

It goes to show that immediate social factors — your friends and family — are just as important in the developing body image as cultural factors like vaunted size-0 celebrities. So tell the teen in your life that you love them, and then go eat dinner.

Study: Girls' Self-Image May Affect Future Weight [AP via CNN]
Disordered Eating Less Common Among Teen Girls Who Regularly Eat Family Meals [EurekAlert]

I still remember overhearing the tearful phone calls. One girl in particular stood out because her parents said they would buy her a Beamer if she lost 20 pounds by Christmas. I'm pretty sure she didn't end up losing the weight, but her mother did succeed in fomenting her daughter's self-loathing and bulimia. Great job, mom! My own mother, who is extremely slender and pushing 60, is still getting over the fact that in second grade she had the biggest waist in class and had to buy her clothes in the "husky" section of the department store. Consider this a public service announcement for the current and future mothers of America: being a teenager is hard enough as it is without your mom implying that you're fat and lame. Unless you're willing to foot the bill for the decades of therapy you're going to inspire, perhaps you should lay off your kids, mkay?

As Cool as They Want to Be [New York Times]

While thinness is often associated with malnutrition, many thin (even anorexic) people are properly nourished—and even obese people can be malnourished. Not only is the health screening impractical, but in America, such measures might be illegal. An employer can't fire someone from a job or discriminate against that person because he or she has a disease.

Anorexia is a complex psychological disorder; young women can no more "catch" anorexia from seeing thin models than they can "catch" depression from watching an actress cry in a film. Furthermore, if thin models somehow caused anorexia, why is the disease so rare? Hundreds of millions of American girls and women see thin actresses and models every day in the media, yet fewer than one percent of them develop anorexia. Decades of research suggest that the disorder is primarily genetic, not environmental.

"I've hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance."

She looks great! At the naked picture where she grabs her leg you can see that there is practically no fat on her thighs and butt! I'M JEALOUS!!!

Because we couldn't get access to the official pro-ana Isabelle Caro thread (we're wayyyyy too fat for that!) we're going to assume they're different rexy 'Caro's, but that the reaction, in the ana community, would be about the same, because anorexia is not about being attractive but conveying superiority and control via outward appearances, which is why it gets along so well in the world of fashion.

Anorexic Actress Provokes Row With Naked Actors [Times of London]

• Pro-ana's take note — striving to be a size zero is not only crappy for your health, but also for your sex drive. New research indicates that super-skinny women have lower libidos, not to mention fear of breaking bones during the act itself. [Daily Mail]
  
• When does being shy about eating in public evolve into a full-blown eating disorder? Some girls suffering from anorexia say that their eating disorder initially started with a discomfort with eating in front of other people. Interesting. We're way more cruel and judgey towards women who have water with lemon for lunch. [USA Today]
  
• An increasing number of women are getting surgery and laser treatments post-pregnancy to get their bodies back, with 67% of women polled saying they're rather get back their pre-baby body than their pre-baby sex life. Well duh, that's because they know the pre-baby sex was what got them all stretch-marky in the first place! [MSNBC]

• An Aussie mom who got in-vitro and wound up with two babies instead of one is suing the doctor that implanted two embryos in her womb instead of the one she requested. She's suing for $332,000 — the cost of raising a child to age 21 — saying she and her husband even considered putting one child up for adoption because of the extra cost. We can see the fights now — "Mommy, I'm the one you wanted to give away aren't I? Aren't I?!" [MSNBC]
• At least 10% of girls in England have been infected with HPV by the age of 16. Government health advisors have recommended that the HPV vaccine be given to pre-pubescent girls in order to fight the infection which can lead to cervical cancer. [Daily Telegraph]
• School district officials in Toronto have got the same idea, wanting to administer the vaccine to all Grade 8 girls, but the Catholics are all up in arms, saying that doing so would encourage sexual activity amongst teens. Seriously, odds are even Mother Theresa had HPV — the Catholic Church needs to get their head out of their sanctimonious ass. [CTV.ca]
• Some outraged students are saying that Astria Suparak, Art Director for a gallery at Syracuse University, was fired from her position because of controversy surrounding the feminist installation "COME ON: Desire Under the Female Gaze". Apparently the original title included the word "feminist", which Suparak's superiors demanded she change. Since when is feminist a dirty word? [The Daily Orange]
• Did you know that it's a crime to not water and mow your lawn? Yeah neither did 70-year old Betty Perry who's being charged with resisting arrest and not maintaining her landscaping. In a scuffle with police, granny fell and bloodied her nose and by the way, all of this took place in Utah, where real criminals, like child raping polygamists, hang out. Ugh. [CNN]
• Remember when your ex-boyfriend insisted that he had to use Magnums because regular condoms "just don't fit right"? Well, turns out maybe he wasn't lying — condoms are not "one size fits all". [Science Daily]

• Breast cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy find that their bones age prematurely as a result of the treatment. Sigh. Why couldn't today be a good news for people with breast cancer day? [Reuters]
  
• A Wisconsin bill which gives rape victims access to emergency contraception actually includes an amendment that would allow medical personnel to refuse to administer it if it "offends" their religious beliefs. What's next? Catholic doctors can refuse to treat Jewish gunshot patients because they don't believe Jesus was the messiah? [The Capital Times]
  
• A 70-year old Muslim woman is being sentenced today for her role in the "honor killing" of her son's wife — she and her son orchestrated her daughter-in-law's death after they discovered she was cheating on and planning to leave her husband. We love Sally Field, but this kind of refutes her theory. [Daily Mail]

Hooke claims she has suffered from anorexia since she was 11 years old. "The prospect of an adult life ahead terrified me. I was afraid of responsibility, of a time when I would have to face the world without my parents' hands to hold. But most of all I was scared of men and sex." Models and the fashion industry had nothing to do with her problems, she argues.

Anorexia has often been perceived as a quest for model-like beauty, as a teenage fad or as a diet gone wrong. It has even been described as a lifestyle choice. Seldom is anorexia acknowledged as the life-threatening medical condition that it is... I, like many of the eating disorder patients I have met, never sought beauty; instead, I spent years trying to make myself look as ill as possible in order to avoid male attention.

Surely you can respect that this is one girl's story. But while she may not feel pressure to be thin from the fashion industry, what about the rest of us? What about the models, the celebrities? Doesn't the desirable air of "glamour" held up by magazines, runway shows and red carpets seem reserved for the thin?

Understanding Anorexia: A Thin Excuse [The Independent]

From the inside it feels like London agencies are cracking down on this super-skinny idea and therefore the rest of the world is somehow listening...[Being told to gain weight was like a] psychological wall coming down. It helped me finally to realise that I was too thin. I was impressed that an agency was actually addressing my well-being.

Modeling agencies as social services? Fancy that! Wait a second, we need to think this one through. Could it be that if agencies won't book girls who are an inhuman weight, girls will have to gain weight to work, and perhaps some progress could be made in the annals of anorexia?! Kudos to our friends over in Cool Britannia for not being pussies and actually standing by their convictions and, uh, realizing that starving girls who look like aliens are neither pretty nor healthy. Unlike, say, Diane von Furstenberg, designer and CFDA president, who sent a memo to all of the CFDA members encouraging them to make healthy choices when it came to casting models for New York Fashion Week... which did so much good that all this week,we've been seeing in models whose chest bones we're able to count as they walk.

Model Told She Is "Too Thin" To Work [Telegraph]

Usually we shun all what-celebrities-eat stories, since they: a) are dumb b) have no apparent basis in reality and c) often feature diets so high in calories, and so popular, we suspect that they are part of some sinister plot to ensure that celebrities remain thinner than the rest of us.

But we're inclined to buy this one, because it reminds us of back when we were a wayward youth with a mild case of teenarexia and eschewed meals in favor of whatever weird food we picked that week. Like, carrots and peanut butter we did for a while. Another time it was white rice. Then, of course, we started smoking pot, and that put an end to that.
It's Stars In Their Pies [TheSun]

• Eating disorder charities are asking websites like MySpace and Facebook to have stronger rules about their content, after they found that some girls are using the sites to promote the pro-ana mentality. But where will Nicole Richie post her teeny tiny baby bump pictures? [Daily Mail]
  
• Feminist author Taslima Nasreen, who's been a critic of Islam's treatment of women, was attacked by Muslim lawmakers at a book signing in Hyderabad, India. Show your support the capitalist way, by buying her books on Amazon. [Reuters]
  

• Feministing took issue with Hillary Clinton referring to herself as a "girl" during the AFL-CIO's debate the other night. Which we agree with. I mean, what man, besides Flava Flav, refers to himself as a "Boyyyyyyy"? [Feministing]
• Speaking of Hil, the Post (who would seriously sell more papers if they could hate on the Presidential candidate during the entire 2008 election) cites a new poll that has Senator Clinton toppling our handsome boyfriend Barack Obama. Booo! [Ed: Okay, so this opinion doesn't represent all of the Jezebels— at least not yet.] [NY Post]
• Bloomberg's daughter Georgina is makin' it with an Irish equestrian. It seems kind dangerous to horseback ride after 15 pints of Guinness. [NY Post]
• The Department of Investigation reports that at least 10 kid deaths could have been prevented if the Administration for Children's Services wasn't so piss poor incompetent. Apparently, ACS would just clear parents of any abuse charges based solely on their denials. Next you're going to tell us that the "guilty" ones only had to write their kids an apology note. [NY Post]
• Trouble is a-brewin' behind the scenes of the Barney's sale. And we're not even referring to the chick we clocked in the face for trying to rip the 90%-off Marc Jacobs dress out of our hands at the Warehouse close-out. [NY Times]
• Well at least there's some justice in the world... Sort of. A homeless Queens man was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the rape of a woman last year. Enjoy that roof over your head and daily ham sandwich while it lasts — for the next 14,600 days, asshole. [NY Times]
• Peace activist and thorn-in-Bush's-side Cindy Sheehan is running as an Independent against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. No word yet on how she plans to pay for her campaign or woo the gays. [SF Gate]
• A lawsuit against San Francisco's O'Farrell Theatre says that the exotic nightclub acted illegally when it set impossible quotas for its dancers — causing some of them to have to pay out of pocket when they came up short. See the suffering that occurs when Ben Affleck gives up lapdances for marriage and kids? [SF Gate]
• SF Gate writer Violet Blue's guide to conservative sexual fetishes — Michelle Malkin, this one is for you! [SF Gate]
• If all husbands were judged by the ones who write in to Brian Alexander's "Sexploration" column, the chances of marriage would not look good for our boyfriend. [MSNBC]
• Maryland prudes are fighting Montgomery County's new sex ed program in court. They want topics like homosexuality, gender identity, and proper contraception use to only be discussed if a student asks about them. Maryland students, here's an example: "Teacher, if I were a gay and liked to wear my mom's high-heels while I had sex with my best friend Kyle, how would I roll on the rubber?" [Ms.]

According to a new study just released in the U.K., of 70,000 school-age children, 40% of 14-to-15-year old girls admitted they aren't eating breakfast and 25% of those girls are also not eating lunch because over 50% of them listed their appearance as their number one concern in life.

Dr David Regis, research manager at the SHEU, said in-depth interviews with participants suggested media images of superslim celebrities and models such as Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Nicole Richie fuelled the obsession with weight. "Dissatisfaction with their bodies often seems to originate from, or is certainly accentuated by, celebrity culture and the print media and magazines," he said.

Starvation diet of schoolgirls aiming for supermodel size [Daily Mail UK]
Related: Memo To Women's Magazine Editors: White Women Hate Themselves After Reading Your Magazines
That Faith Hill Photo Wasn't Actually A Photo, 'Redbook' Editor Explains

• Women who smoke are more likely to go through early menopause; like, before the age of 45. [DailyMail]
  
• Eating disorders are not just for the young: There's a rise in women in their 30s, 40s, even 50s seeking treatment for diseases such as anorexia and bulimia. [USAToday]
  
• Coming soon to an airliner near you: A breast-milk "free for all"! [Salon]
  
• Placentas: Good for depression, good for hair? [Salon]
  
• The body-parts of some 3 dozen infant girls and aborted female fetuses were found in a well in India. Which is pretty much what you can expect from a society that in large part, doesn't value an entire gender. [The Guardian]

• Speaking of societies that don't value women: In Iran, husbands and fathers will be allowed into birthing rooms for the first time. Ever. [