Beth, who has battled anorexia, bulimia, and excessive exercising for 25 years, is not one of those women. In a therapy group for pregnant women with eating disorders, Beth explains what's going through her head: "This baby's going to come and you're going to be big and fat. Who are you going to be if you're big and fat? That's just not acceptable, sorry."

Luckily, Beth's baby is born at a healthy weight and she plans to continue treatment. However, her husband Mike worries about the effect her eating disorder may have on their three children. He breaks down as he says, "Kids pick up on everything. its something we are extremely aware of and I will be extremely sad, especially if my daughter... if they would ever have to go through that."

Pregnant With An Eating Disorder: "I Want To Get Well" [ABC News]

Earlier: New Standard For Obese Women: Zero Weight Gain During Pregnancy

Though anorexia and bulimia are already in the APA's diagnostic manual, with proper descriptions, diagnostic criteria, and potential treatment options, binge eating, the process of consuming large amounts of food in a compulsive manner without purging, is often lumped under the vague "ED-NOS" or "eating disorder not otherwise specified," a diagnosis given to those who display symptoms of disordered eating but don't fit the standard eating disorder diagnostic criteria.

As Melissa Healy of the Times writes, "In light of new research and a seemingly growing population of patients who fit the broad description of binge eaters, psychiatrists must decide whether "binge eating disorder" should stand alongside anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa as a separate psychiatric condition — identifiable by a distinct set of symptoms, a recognizable pattern of progression and a track record of response to certain treatments." Supporters of this inclusion feel it would help sufferers of binge eating disorder to get proper treatment, while critics, Healy notes, fear that the diagnosis would be overused and given to people who aren't necessarily suffering from compulsive overeating as much as a "lack of willpower."

"In short," Healy writes, "the specialists involved in the deliberations are picking their way through a minefield of controversies: the causes of a national obesity crisis, personal responsibility versus the medicalization of risky behavior, the nature of addiction and compulsion, even the respective roles of nature and nurture in shaping who we are and how we behave."

As someone who has been fortunate enough to receive proper treatment for an eating disorder, I find it somewhat troublesome that the concern over including binge eating disorder in the DSM comes back to worrying about doctors over prescribing medication or patients who rely on the diagnosis as some excuse to continue engaging in unhealthy behavior. As anyone who has been through a period of binge eating can tell you, binges are often terrifying and filled with a great deal of shame and sadness. This is not about just wanting to hang out and eat four boxes of cereal; the mental and emotional processes that go into overeating are much more complex than that.

I was able to get proper treatment because my eating disorder was clearly defined in the DSM, and the treatment plan for someone struggling with my symptoms was laid out and continues to be perfected by researchers dedicating to studying the disorder. Will binge eating disorder be overdiagnosed if it is included? Perhaps. But that's a phenomenon that occurs on every end of the mental illness spectrum, and it rings a bit false to blame those who are struggling for the psychiatric community's tendency (and big pharma's push) to write a prescription for those who might not need it. As they always told us in the hospital: it's never about the food, and it's never about the weight. It's the behaviors that need exploring, the behaviors that need to be treated. If including binge eating disorder in the DSM ensures that proper research, treatment, and understanding is given to those struggling with the behaviors, it might make all the difference in the world.

Is Binge Eating A Psychiatric Disorder? [LATimes]

"I think an eating disorder is way more than a girl looking at a magazine and seeing a picture of a skinny model. I think maybe that's one tiny piece of the puzzle, but I think it's a lot more about self-esteem."

When asked if she considers herself a feminist, Crawford says, "I guess, in some ways. But I also feel like people in my generation, we didn't — I didn't grow up thinking I had to prove I was equal with boys, I just assumed I was. Because of feminists before me. I never felt like I had to do that. Do I feel like women should earn the same amount as men, for the same jobs? Absolutely."

Question Time: Cindy Crawford [Guardian]

Rubaum-Keller begins by recapping the recent Ralph Lauren PhotoShop scandal and noting Karl Lagerfeld's "No one wants to see curvy women," comment before posing an image of an extremely thin model, whom she deems "neither healthy nor attractive," and asserting, based on nothing at all, that the only people who would find said image to be attractive would have to be gay men.

I don't doubt that Rubaum-Keller's intentions were good, and that she was attempting to call out the fashion industry for continuing to push super-thin images on the runways and in magazines, but that one line really bothers me, as claiming that "only gay men" are drawn to such an aesthetic is both ridiculous and insulting. Her argument is baseless and overlooks the fact there are millions of men and women, both gay and straight, who work in the fashion industry and promote and celebrate these images, as well as millions of people outside of the industry who admire and attempt to emulate said images in an attempt to fit into a somewhat impossible mold. To assume that only gay men would find super skinny models to be attractive (or that all gay men would find super-skinny models to be attractive at all) is absurd and unfair and based on nothing but sweeping generalizations.

The notion that super-thin automatically equals beautiful is an issue that the fashion industry may propagate, but it's also an issue that has long since been absorbed by the general public, and to undo this type of thinking is going to take more than changes on the runway and in the magazines, though continuing to push for those things may prove to be quite helpful in the end. To blame gay men for all that is wrong with the fashion industry and the public's struggle with weight and beauty, however, certainly isn't helping anyone.

Would You Buy An Overweight Barbie [Huffington Post]

Previous studies have shown that gay men were at higher risk of eating disorders than straight ones, but this is one of the first studies to look at gay teens. Interestingly, the study divided its population into homosexual, bisexual, "mostly heterosexual," and heterosexual groups, showing a little more acceptance of orientation fluidity than one might expect from mainstream science. Lead researcher S. Bryn Austin and her colleagues found that lesbian, bisexual, and mostly heterosexual girls were about twice as likely as heterosexual ones to report binge-eating. Bisexual and mostly heterosexual girls (though apparently not lesbians) were also more likely to purge. Homosexual boys were seven times more likely to binge and 12 times more likely to purge (behaviors Frank Bruni, pictured, wrote about in his book Born Round) than straight boys, with bisexual and mostly heterosexual boys facing a lesser but still elevated risk.

Austin said, "We know that gay, lesbian, and other sexual-minority kids are often under a lot of pressure," and that they can be "treated like outsiders" at home and at school. She added,

This kind of isolation and victimization can take its toll on a young person, and one of ways it can play out is in vulnerability to eating-disorder symptoms and a host of other stress-related health problems.

Unfortunately, one of the ways eating-disordered teens may try to combat isolation is through pro-eating-disorder websites, which may seem to offer support and understanding that kids aren't getting elsewhere. Last year France tried to ban "inciting thinness," and now Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to more closely monitor the effect of pro-ana and pro-mia sites. Professor Ulrike Schmidt, chair of the College's Eating Disorders Section, says,

This is not a rare problem; it affects a significant number of schoolchildren. Studies have shown that girls who looked at these sites had low self-esteem, felt bad about their bodies and were miserable. Patients in eating disorders units spend up to 20 hours a week looking at [the websites]. There is a vulnerable group of women who are being sucked into this.

Schmidt's message is important, but it leaves out boys — it now seems that gay boys and men who suffer from eating disorders are marginalized both by a heteronormative society and by a culture of eating disorder treatment and prevention that focuses mainly on women. The Royal College of Psychiatrists doesn't advocate banning pro-eating disorder websites (Schmidt says, "These sites are probably set up by people who are themselves vulnerable. Criminalising the problem would not be helpful."), but rather asks the Council for Child Internet Safety to "specifically target pro-eating disorder websites in its monitoring and educational activities." Perhaps gay, bisexual, and, as Austin says, "other sexual-minority kids" could use specific outreach and education as well.

Gay, Bisexual Teens At Risk For Eating Disorders [Reuters]
Doctors Demand Action On Anorexia Websites [Independent]

Can I just say: I hate posting calories in any context. I hated it when they started posting them in New York's chain restaurants and I really hate that now colleges are apparently doing it. As someone without an eating disorder, seeing the calorie counts instantly makes eating into something clinical and strips it of some of its pleasure - so I can only imagine the effect it could have on someone whose attitude towards food was already disordered. I am evangelically of the opinion that in order to eat right, we need to take the morality out of food. It's not sinful, it's not wicked, and it's not bad. Food is a pleasure and we need to treat it as such - not as an enemy.

Rant over, I get why states - and now colleges - do it. People will make "smarter," more informed choices, goes the thinking. Those who didn't know that a doughnut was bad for you - or that (as we're always told) said doughnut has fewer calories than an enormous bagel with cream cheese - might take note. But I suspect, going by my own experiences, that a lot of people will still buy that bagel - and just feel worse about it.

College students, as we know, are already vulnerable. Young women are particularly suceptible to the pressures that lead to disordered eating, and young men fall prey to the same forces. As Newsweek tells us, the issues may not be as clear-cut as in the past, but they're still very serious.

Dr. Richard Kreipe, a specialist in adolescent medicine whose research centers on eating disorders, says that while he has seen fewer cases of classic eating disorders like restrictive anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa in the past several years, the number of patients with eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS) has "almost doubled" nationally in the midst of America's obesity epidemic...Since 2000, the number of college students dieting, vomiting, or taking laxatives to lose weight has jumped from about 28 to 38 percent, according to the American College Health Association's annual surveys. Well-balanced caloric intake, with regular meals and physical activity-not dieting-is the best way to avoid obesity, says Kreipe, a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center. That's why, in his view, calorie information doesn't benefit students. "Nutrition is not a simple thing that can be distilled down into a label," he says. "There's a tendency for people to overinterpret what a specific number means."

The problem, as ever, is that the focus still seems to be on "weight," rather than "health." Take the Freshman 15, which has always been treated as a hackneyed bad-uncle joke, but when weight is the scariest thing in the world, it becomes sinister. It arises, the article claims, from the "loss of structure" that college students experience; junk food, beer, anxiety, beer, dining hall portions and beer can also contribute. Living with other people can make young people self-conscious and, in some cases, fear of the fabled freshman weight gain may push vulnerable students to the other extreme.

The piece makes a very important point: this weight gain and disordered eating are by no means mutually exclusive - indeed, they're increasingly common partners.

"People are concerned about the fat kids being fat and the thin kids having anorexia...But people aren't concerned about the disordered eating among the overweight kids." For under- and overweight people alike, eating disorders can lead to a host of health issues, including electrolyte imbalances, fertility problems, impaired brain development, bone loss, and, in severe cases, death. The study also showed that disordered eating behavior leads to further weight gain over time.

Experts in the article suggest alternatives, like nutrient density scores, that would "distinguish between items like a Coke, which is high in calories but low in nutrients, and avocado, which is rich in both calories and nutrients." My question is: why do they have the Coke at all? I'm not suggesting that cafeterias need to be macrobiotic, but it's not a college's responsibility to provide junk food for students - especially when it's invariably available at vending machines and bookstores elsewhere on campus. Penn State has "healthy dining halls" and one of Yale's colleges, (her daughter's) has been taken on by Alice Waters as a bastion of mass-slow-food. But shouldn't this be the rule, rather than the exception? Not to play the ugly American card, but it's absolutely true that European dining halls don't carry the same variety of junk - and certainly don't provide calorie counts. I understand that colleges walk a constantly-shifting line between guidance and hands-off supervision, and that calorie counting probably seems like a small, harmless way to make a difference. But I'm guessing, especially in this population, the negative effects will outweigh the poisitives - and it's a trigger that can easily be avoided. And, at the end of the day, at least in my experience, anyone who loves food is going to do everything she can to avoid eating cafeteria food anyway - and that's something they should be able to fix.

Rethinking The Freshman 15 [Newsweek]

The mother says three boys began calling her daughter (identified in the suit by the initials B.G.) "fat" in sixth grade, and that two more boys joined in the daily bullying the next year. Her lawyer Edward A. Olds elaborates:

The offensive comments explicitly and implicitly conveyed the message that B.G. was unattractive and overweight.The comments were sexual in nature or conveyed sexual stereotyping.

B.G.'s mom says a guidance counselor did nothing when told about the bullying, and that school officials began harassing her when she tried to homeschool her daughter. She also says that the boys' actions triggered the anorexia that landed her daughter in an inpatient program in February 2008, at a "dangerously low" weight.

However, Lynn Grefe, CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association, says it's too simplistic to say bullying causes an eating disorder. Rather, she says, "With eating disorders, we say you're born with a gun and life pulls the trigger." Carrie Arnold of ED Bites adds,

[T]he bullying didn't cause this poor girl's anorexia. It might have triggered it, yes, in the sense that the bullying caused her to throw her lunch away, which led to the energy imbalance, which led to anorexia. But it didn't cause her anorexia. Science shows us that genetics form the biggest risk factor for eating disorders, although many environmental factors can play a role in triggering the disorder. This type of bullying is sadly common, and if every case resulted in anorexia, we would have many more cases of eating disorders than we presently do.

The causes of eating disorders are extremely complex, and not fully understood — the question of whether skinny models actually "incite thinness," for instance, is still being debated. But the cause-trigger paradigm that Grefe and Arnold cite seems to be the most common one, and if we accept it, we need to ask how severe a trigger has to be in order to merit a lawsuit. Could an anorexia sufferer sue a magazine? Her parents? Since weight loss itself can be a trigger for anorexia, could someone sue the restaurant where she got food poisoning?

Of course, non-anorexic people sue restaurants for giving them food poisoning, and this brings up an important point: many triggers for eating disorders are bad things anyway. Bullying is a good example. Even if it didn't "cause" B.G.'s anorexia, the school should have put a stop to it. Law professor Bruce Ledewitz says the real issue is that bullying "deprives the victim of an educational opportunity." And Arnold writes, "Schools should refuse to tolerate bullying because it's harmful and wrong, not just because someone developed an eating disorder." So while the lawsuit brought by B.G.'s mom may encourage a simplistic understanding of eating disorders, it might also encourage schools to prevent their students from making each other miserable.

Image from the Highmark Foundation, via The Inspiration Room.

Mom Sues Over Daughter's Anorexia [UPI.com]
Mom: My Daughter Was Bullied Into Anorexia [AP, via CBS]
Cause Vs. Trigger [ED Bites]

In a piece titled "Thin, Healthy, and Weary Of Unfeeling Busybodies," O'Neill Hill describes the emotional trauma she is subjected to by nosy friends and strangers who believe they have the right to comment on her body. O'Neill Hill is very thin, a result of her anti-seizure medication, which she has had to take since a blood vessel burst in her brain. She notes that her family is quite understanding and knows that she struggles to maintain a healthy weight, but that strangers feel they have the right to insult her to her face, noting that she must be anorexic or bulimic to have the body she currently has.

"I resent having to divulge my medical history to answer these prying questions — my eating habits and my weight are really nobody's business — yet I feel compelled to provide an explanation for why my body is the way it is," O'Neill Hill writes, "But the questions are one thing. The insults are another. People often, and quite unthinkingly, describe me as "bony" and "emaciated" when speaking to me." O'Neill makes the point that she is healthy, though strangers may not think so, based on their own prejudices, something that women on the other end of the spectrum, I'm sure, may relate to as well.

In many ways I sympathize with O'Neill Hill; I am also on anti-seizure medication, and I also tend to be on the thinner side, which is a combination of meds (necessary prescription ones, mind you) and genetics. And while I am quite sensitive to the "eat a sandwich" brigade, mostly due to my struggles with an eating disorder and my belief that yelling at a woman to "eat something" is both insulting and laughable in terms of a. trying to even come close to understanding why someone weighs what they weigh and b. acting as if "eat a sandwich" is a reasonable cure for anorexia.

However, as much as I understand where O'Neill Hill is coming from, and while I do understand when commenters say, "It hurts when someone criticizes me for being too thin," in the comments, I have to agree with Volcanista, a blogger who has posted at Kate Harding's Shapely Prose blog, who notes that "there's a fundamental question of degree here. In social discourse there may be pretty frequent complaints about those women who are too skinny, but it simply does not compare to the scale of fat stigma."

We live in a country where thin=good and fat=bad and lazy, almost on an automatic level. When Lucy Danziger of Self Magazine justified her photoshopping of Kelly Clarkson as showing Clarkson at her "personal best" what she was really saying was "her thinnest," as if being one's thinnest is equivalent to being the best human being one can be. God forbid Kelly Clarkson be her personal best and not be a size 2. What would the world come to!? Clearly being the best is only for the thin. And Beth Ditto, who gets a pass from the fashion world. Everyone else need not apply.

I do not doubt that O'Neill Hill struggles with the insults tossed at her, nor do I want to dismiss the pain she feels when people pick apart her body: that is real, and it hurts. But in our country, this kind of judgment goes on at a much greater scale, on a daily basis, to anyone who doesn't into the "thin" image we are all seemingly so desperate to attain. You see it on magazines, on television, in films, in the tabloids, in clothing stores, on runways, etc. I am a thin woman who has been picked on for her weight before (it was especially fun when I was dying of anorexia!) but I am telling you: thin privilege exists, and the judgment women who don't fit the ridiculous standards of beauty face is much worse.

In the end, however, I am reminded of my days in the hospital, where I spent time with women of all ages and sizes, who were all struggling with their body image, their weight, and the judgments tossed at them by others. We are so quick to sum someone up by looking at their bodies before we even give them a chance to speak: we are programmed to assign character flaws and personality traits and even psychiatric illnesses to a pant size or a number on a scale. Perhaps in recognizing that everyone is fighting their own battle, and trying to be comfortable in their own bodies, regardless of what the world is screaming at them to do, we can all be a little nicer to one another. Or at least mind our own damn business.

Guest Poster Volcanista: On Thin Privilege [Shapely Prose]
Thin, Healthy, And Weary Of Unfeeling Busybodies [LATimes]

[Image via Natalie Dee.]

From an early age, Frank Bruni says, he was an over-eater. Although he was naturally big-boned and had legendarily hearty appetite from early childhood, his relationship to food was always more about excess than satisfaction, and he routinely continued to eat after he was full. What is distressing about his account is that he was clearly someone who naturally loved and appreciated the tastes and experiences of food, but this natural love was tainted by his feelings about his weight and the connection that developed in his mind. The fact that he and his mom started going on diets as a child can't have helped. It's clear that Bruni and his family accepted being a "fat kid" as a bad thing, to be cured - and while clearly he was developing an unhealthy relationship to eating, the two things were conflated in a depressing and all-too-common way. (Indeed, this still seems to be the author's POV.)

The extra weight was the confirmation: once a fat kid, always a fat kid, never moving through the world in the carefree fashion of people unaccustomed to worrying about their weight, never as inconspicuous. It was the stubborn thing I seemed least able to control, and I often felt that all my shortcomings flowed from it - were somehow wrapped into and perpetuated by it. If only I could fit into pants with a waist size of 31 or 32 instead of my 33s and 34s, I could walk briskly and buoyantly into a crowded school party instead of hovering tentatively at the door, unable to decide whom to approach and questioning whether my approach would be welcome.

As a young man, Bruni becomes bulimic. While he thought of his habitual vomiting as mere weight management rather than an ED, his description tells a different story.

To be a successful bulimic, you need to have a firm handle on the bathrooms in your life: their proximity to where you're eating; the amount of privacy they offer; whether - if they're public bathrooms with more than one stall - you can hear the door swing open and the footfall of a visitor with enough advance notice to stop what you're doing and keep from being found out...You need to be conscious of time. There's no such thing as bulimia on the fly; a span of at least 10 minutes in the bathroom is optimal, because you may need 5 of them to linger at the sink, splash cold water on your face and let the redness in it die down. You should always carry a toothbrush and toothpaste, integral to eliminating telltale signs of your transgression and to rejoining polite society without any offense to it. Bulimia is a logistical and tactical challenge as much as anything else. It demands planning.

He stops, finally, when his friends hold an intervention of sorts. He says, "I succeeded, I think, because so many other extreme or warped weight-management regimens - including more Atkins and more fasting - took the place of bulimia as I struggled for decades to figure out how to answer my appetite without being undone by it and as I traced an unlikely route to the most implausible of destinations: professional eating."

These are accounts we normally hear coming from women, and it's always good to be reminded that EDs target men and boys, too - and a part of me wonders if a man who wasn't openly gay would feel as comfortable, even today, talking frankly about a disease which is still perniciously linked in the public mind only with young women. I'm also glad to read about someone who not only managed to recover, but seemingly managed to recover a love of food - enough that he can take pleasure in it in his career. (So one hopes, anyway - and this is certainly the impression anyone reading his food writing has always received - and I look forward to reading this memoir in full.) What is distressing, though, is that at no point does the adult Bruni seem to find much acceptance for his heavier self - just relief that the pain and loss of control is over. On the one hand, in his case, there seems to have been a clear relationship between his chronic overeating and his weight - and his resultant self-loathing. But even so, and perhaps this is unfair to ask in a personal memoir, I wish he were able to distinguish between the two - if only for the sake of changing things a little for a new generation of young boys, and girls, who feel that same self-loathing.

I Was A Baby Bulimic [NY Times]

The Movieline crew disagrees as well, going so far as to offer Gwyneth an intervention against her own detoxification and exercise obsession. However, I think the best way to counteract Ms. Paltrow's pile o'GOOP is to create our own pile of JOOP, don't you? Below, your JOOP Guide To Not Feeling Bad About Relaxing And Enjoying Life. Excelsior!!!

• DO: Not listen to this bullshit, please. If you have to spend a month of your life "detoxing" from a period of relaxation and enjoyment, then you might want to start reconsidering your priorities. Life is short. Going through a constant cycle of being "relaxed" and being "disciplined" is a set up for unhealthy attitudes towards everything from food to exercise to body image to self-esteem. Happiness is not something that you need to wash away, and you're not "cleaner" after dropping a few pounds of water weight from your colon. As Kyle at Movieline notes:"You've got millions in Coldplay money and A View from the Top residuals, you act a few weeks a year on an Iron Man movie, and you WORK OUT THREE HOURS A DAY. If you need to assign yourself a "relax and enjoy life" phase, then you are messing up life things." If there's one thing we all need to detox from, it's the idea that losing a few pounds is the key to "fixing" our "bad" spells of, you know, living happily.
• 
  
  
  
• MAKE: Cake. Or pie, if you must. But preferably cake. And then eat it. And then stop worrying about it. Cake is a part of a balanced diet, man. I'm not saying you should eat cake three meals a day, but the sooner people stop assigning "bad" and "good" to foods and start incorporating a variety of treats into a healthy, balanced meal plan, the better we'll all be. And the less likely we'll be to fall for stupid "this is my naughty phase, this is my detox phase" advice from the likes of Paltrow.
• 
  
  
  
• GET: A unicorn. I like to buy my unicorns from an exclusive unicorn dealer on Saturn, but you can probably find one at your local unicorn dealership. A unicorn, if you didn't know, eats bullshit for breakfast and shits out rainbows, which is really handy if you have a stack of printed GOOP newsletters in the corner of your room and you need a little color in your day.
• 
  
  
  
• BE: Happy. Really. Life is too short, you guys. I say this as someone who spent 7 years that I can't get back trapped in eating disorder hell, buying into similar crap notions that I could "fix" myself by going through a cycle of "relaxing" and fasting and so on. What works for a millionaire actress with a bevy of personal trainers and elite doctors and nutritionists may just be a disaster for you. And if you ever have to feel bad about enjoying life, then ur doin' it wrong.
• 
  
  
  
• SEE: A registered dietician, if you really want to change your eating habits. Fasts and detoxes are temporary fixes that don't encourage a healthy way of eating or a healthy attitude towards food. A good dietician will help you incorporate REAL foods into your meal plan (one can not life on juice fasts and frozen diet dinners alone) to create a realistic way of staying healthy and happy.
• 
  
  
  
• GO:Relax and enjoy life. Nobody should ever have to apologize or compensate for having fun and being happy. GOOP may want you to "nourish the inner aspect," but what kind of "nourishment" springs from trying to wash your "fun" times away? Perhaps if we really concentrated on the "inner aspect," we'd see that we're worth a whole lot more than a few lousy pounds. I know I'd rather walk around with a body filled with cake and happy memories than a body filled with a steaming pile of GOOP.

Gwyneth Paltrow: The Movieline Intervention [Movieline]

In an article that might be triggering for some, Kirk describes her three year battle with an eating disorder, noting that "a lack of control over various aspects of my life manifested itself in what I ate." As she fell deeper into her disorder, Kirk began noticing that other skaters were struggling as well: "Although I tried to ask for help in passive ways–hinting about what I was doing to my body to my friends and family–I soon realized that many of my friends in the sport were facing the exact same struggles themselves."

Kirk, who retired from the sport in 2005 and now claims that her "decision to quit skating was largely due to my desire to crush my eating disorder and regain a healthy, positive attitude towards food and my body," says she is speaking out about the unhealthy behaviors and disordered eating she observed in her peers because, well, nobody else will. While gymnasts, dancers, and wrestlers are often brought up as examples of athletes who develop eating disorders while under extreme pressure to maintain a certain body type, it's rare to hear such stories from skaters, something Kirk says is the result of the sport's lack of openness and willingness to confront the issue. "It makes me angry that there is no one speaking out against what is so common in figure skating," she writes, "Some coaches promote what these skaters are doing to their bodies, and others don't try to stop them."

Whether or not Kirk's willingness to share her story will make a difference in terms of the backstage behaviors of figure skaters is yet to be seen, but her story is certainly a powerful one and raises many questions about how we can encourage our elite athletes to maintain a sense of health and wellness, even in the face of extreme pressures and competition.

Skating's Not-So-Secret Shame [TrueSlant]

Being fraternal twins, Julia is three inches taller than Sonia. Growing up, Julia weighed more than her sister, which helped contribute to eating disordered behavior. When Julia dropped to 86 pounds, Sonia felt like "the fat twin," and became competitive with her sister on how little the two could eat. As a way to control the competition, the girls decided to come up with their rules, and began mapping out what they would eat each day, so that it would remain equal. Their obsession caused them to drop out of college, and move in with their parents, where they sleep in the same bed and live their lives around their shared disorder.

At the intervention, the girls agreed to get help at a clinic, and seemed to be improving by the end of the episode.

Yes, it's the Daily Mail. And Liz Jones has been party to a goodly amount of asshattery in her time. But she's a also writer who's actually bucked her publication's trend and written smart pieces in which, as she puts it, she's "vocal in campaigning for more diverse women on the catwalk, on the covers of magazines, and in adverts - encouraging women to love themselves as they are, not to conform to some outrageous, one-tiny-size-fits-all ideal of beauty." But, as she frankly admits, in her case that's theoretical.

I certainly don't practise what I preach and am in fact secretly proud that I'm still a size 8 [4 US -ed], a sample size. I love my concave stomach and I can't help, despite my beliefs, but regard women who are fat, who don't exercise, who gorge on things like Galaxy, as somehow lazy. They just don't try hard enough....That's the thing about being a borderline anorexic: it makes you feel superior, clean, morally unimpeachable.

There's nothing "borderline" about it. Perhaps because she's not currently hospitalized (she has been in the past) she thinks her life is not in the grip of illness but merely joyless and controlled. "I have never pigged out. I have never eaten a whole bar of chocolate, a whole banana, or even a whole avocado," she says with the strange mixture of self-awareness and defiant pride that characterizes the piece. But as the article continues, it becomes abundantly clear that the author is very ill - and that what she needs is not to be force-fed a bunch of heavy food, but to see a psychiatrist, and quickly.

Jones is perfectly ready to admit that her illness has impacted her life, but conflates neurosis and illness, veganism and ED, looking good in a bikini and being unable to menstruate, "being thin" with "being sick" with an ease that's alarming.

Being this way made me not just socially awkward, but unlovable: I've always hated being touched, hugged, naked, half-dressed on holiday, in case I'm found wanting, in case someone felt or saw an extra ounce of flesh. Being this thin meant I never got pregnant; I have menstruated perhaps half-a-dozen times in my life...In fact, I was always fearful of getting pregnant because the thought of my stomach growing fat, of stretch marks and a big bum, was not a price I was willing to pay for a child. The whole process seemed messy, dirty, greedy.

We are used to reading about people struggling with ED, perhaps, but not from the eye of the storm: usually these accounts come from the tentative safety of recovery, or from someone receiving some kind of treatment. This is different: Jones may be smart and self-aware, but she's so in the grip of her illness's distortions that she doesn't seem able to see what's appallingly clear to any reader. And why, in the name of heaven, does she then decide to "address" her illness by allowing her visiting sister to stuff her with scones and cream and cake for three weeks on end? "To learn pleasure in food" presumably - and to help offset her doctor's concerns about osteoporosis - but does anyone really think this kind of unbalanced 0-60 is going to do anything but produce more anxiety and self-loathing? Even Jones doesn't: as she begins the "experiment," she says, "And so, for the first time in 40 years, I'm going to try, for three weeks, to eat normally. To see if my world falls apart and I become fat, and bloated, and lazy." She adds, "Oh, and by the way, at the start of this odyssey I weigh 8st 2lb, which is slight for my 5ft 8in frame. What a silly, empty half-century achievement that is." She may know the second part is true, but that's hardly the same as believing it.

And what happens? Well, her sister puts her on some kind of grandmother's weight-lifting diet, heavy on the carbs, cream, and sugar. Not shockingly, Jones feels "incredibly fat, and lazy, and tired." There are up-sides: she enjoys some of what she eats, begins to take things a bit easier and "when I stand up, I don't see stars and black clouds. A first." Of course, she ends up putting on a few pounds, and she's "horrified." Not shockingly, taking on her semi-acknowledged ED in an incredibly drastic and unhealthy fashion, without professional guidance, has not achieved any miracles on her psyche.

I'm afraid I find all the extra flesh disgusting. I start imagining myself thin again, savouring how much I will enjoy losing this weight...The thought gives me focus. All this eating has proved what I thought all along: food makes you soft, lazy, undisciplined. And I realise my not eating is an excuse not to take part, and that part of my personality has not changed.

What's the most terrifying part of this? The self-deception? The fact that one of the few fashion-writer advocates for runway diversity actually has contempt for anyone over a sample size? That her publishers would run such a naked cry for help? (Okay, that doesn't shock anyone.) That some young girl could read this and, like Jones, believe this isn't a serious problem? It's hard to know what Jones' intent writing this is (with the Mail, a certain amount of gratuitous humiliation is apparently contractually obligatory; that shot - cropped by me - is intended to show off her new "gut") but one thing is for sure: this successful, mature woman's confession that "I'd rather be thin than happy or healthy" is not unique, and is cautionary. And Liz? Despite your avowal that "it's too late" for you? It's not.

For 40 years I have battled anorexia - so what happened when I had to eat normally for three weeks? [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Daily Mail Writer Says Drive To Be Thin Holds Women Back

Columnist Liz Jones Buys £585 Silver Leggings, Encourages Children To Go Hungry

Daily Mail Columnist: American Women Are "Mindbogglingly Stupid"

Maggie Baumann [pictured, with her two daughters] writes,

[F]or me, pregnancy was a nine-month battle in which I lived in a dissociated state from my body — horrified by my expanding "self" that protested every ounce of weight I gained.

I did not experience the freedom to eat for two; rather, I experienced the restriction of starving for two.

Disgusted by her (normal) weight gain of 33 lbs. in her first pregnancy, Baumann overexercised and restricted her eating during her second. As a result she only gained 18 lbs., experienced uterine bleeding and nearly miscarried. when her daughter was born, she suffered seizures, and later developed ADD — a doctor said poor prenatal nutrition could have been one cause of these problems.

Baumann says her eating disorder was triggered not by "thin celebrities," but likely by guilt over a previous abortion. Still, her experience highlights the problem with focusing too much on maternal weight gain. Everyone wants mothers and babies to be healthy, but gaining too little weight can be just as big a problem as gaining too much. Doctors recommendations need to be balanced to avoid adding to the huge stack of things pregnant women are already supposed to worry about, and — this part has been said before, but it can't be said enough — those of us who aren't doctors need to refrain from judging women on how much weight they gain.

During Pregnancy, Starving for Two [New York Times]
Pregorexia: Starving for Two [momlogic]
Less Weight Gain for Pregnant Women [New York Times]

Kirstie Alley famously shilled for Jenny Craig. Jenny McCarthy has credited Weight Watchers with helping her lose her baby weight. Marie Osmond has taken time out of her "making creepy dolls for QVC" schedule to push Nutrisystem, and celebrities from Valerie Bertinelli to Oprah Winfrey are currently discussing their weight loss goals on the small screen; all under the guise of "helping other women" who may be struggling with the same weight/body image issues.

But as Jan Hoffman points out in the New York Times, these celebrity weight battles may just be doing more harm than good, as they present the notion that women MUST be thin in order to be considered beautiful. Disparaging comments made by celebrities at their heavier weights often lead viewers to feel bad about their own bodies, as Sarah Morice tells the Times: "I can't believe this is still getting to me. I see what Kirstie Alley says about herself and how easy it is for that to become my script. It's easy to lapse into ‘Oh, my body's ugly,' and ‘What's the use?' She triggers all those messages for me."

Not only do these celebrities contribute to the notion that thin=healthy and successful, fat=disgusting and lazy, but they also present women with ridiculously unrealistic notions of what it means to be healthy and happy. Oprah has always gotten on my nerves for her approach to weight loss: for Oprah, it's always been about the numbers on the scale, instead of the actual health value. She obsesses so much about getting back to a former size or losing x amount of pounds that she loses the point completely: diets do not, and never have, worked. Oprah's insistence on attaching her value as a person to her weight destroys any messages she may want to give about "getting fit" or "getting healthy," as Oprah still doesn't seem to understand that one can be both without being 115 pounds.

Dodai previously expressed her frustrations with Oprah's weight-loss obsession: "Of course, there's another issue here: Fat-shaming. With those two words, "I'm embarrassed," Oprah makes plus-sized people - and yes, that includes me - feel like they should be embarrassed, too. Because Oprah is amazing, and Oprah knows all. So if Oprah weighs 200 lbs. and is embarrassed then you'd better be ashamed of yourself if you're anywhere near or over that weight, right?"

When celebrities engage in this "I'm so hideous, I need to lose weight" behavior, it only reinforces the notion that everyone who may not fit the twisted societal ideal of "health" or "beauty" feel as if they've failed in some way, or that their bodies are "disgusting" as well. It's become so insane that when a celebrity does gain weight, and makes no apologies for it, as Kelly Clarkson has done recently, the media immediately begins to wonder "what's wrong" with the celebrity, and "why she let herself go." God forbid anyone consider that Kelly is comfortable with her body and perhaps the slimmer image she held a few years back was actually the result of being caught in a "thin or nothing" mindset.

Adding to the madness is the fact that we only see these women through distorted lenses, through screens and photographs, and our perception of their bodies is based only on what the media presents to us. We hear their weights, their cup sizes, their waist sizes, etc, and feel as if it's something to strive for, when in reality we have no idea what their bodies really look like. We begin to believe that in order to be beautiful and loved, we need to ave 0% body fat and a "bikini bod." We put all of our trust in women who are clearly uncomfortable with themselves and their body image. We take tips from people who still haven't made peace with their own skin. It's never really about getting healthy or getting fit: it's always about a damn bikini or a smaller pant size or a need to shed a "disgusting" shell in order to fit the socially-acceptable view of "beauty."

We also begin to judge the bodies of others, based only on what we've seen on tv or in the magazines, as Lesley Kinzel of Fatshonista.com points out: "When you have famous people turning their weight tribulations into mass-media extravaganzas, they're contributing to a culture where passing comments on strangers' bodies is considered O.K." I've often seen this happen in the comments: "But isn't being that heavy just unhealthy?" "I'm sorry, but she's obese, and that's a health issue." "I'm sorry, but being lazy and fat isn't glamorous, it's unhealthy." We begin to believe that we have the right to pass judgment on the health, bodies, lifestyles, and motivations of others, simply because we've been so trained to believe that the only healthy body is a body worthy of a magazine cover.

Thanks to the efforts of the Kirstie Alleys and the Oprah Winfreys of the world, overweight women are expected to apologize for their bodies, as Kate Harding points out: "The culture rewards that self-disgust. Once you acknowledge that your body is not O.K., then people love you, because that's what expected of fat people all the time."

We often have battles break out in weight-related threads, namely over the concepts of thin privilege and the judgments passed by those who think that fat=unhealthy. The truth is that we're so screwed up as a society, in terms of how we view weight, that we can not let go of whatever messages have been drilled into us by popular culture. Everyone is busy judging everyone else's weight because so many of us are uncomfortable with our own, and when we see someone who is, we immediately become suspicious or declare that that person is "clearly unhealthy" in their approach to body image or weight. Here is where thin privilege comes into play: fat=always bad, thin=always good. People do not want to factor in genetics, the concept of being heart-healthy at a higher weight, or the notion that not all women are designed to weigh 110 pounds.

Perhaps instead of holding up celebrities for "battling" with their weight, we should begin celebrating celebrities who refuse to apologize for their bodies, and who embrace positive body image. It won't be easy, as most celebrities would rather be rewarded for being thin than celebrated for being comfortable in their own bodies, but one hopes that eventually, famous women will stop tearing themselves down, as all it does is make things that much harder for the rest of us.

Binging On Celebrity Weight Battles [NYTimes]
Kelly Clarkson: Weight Debate [Star]
Earlier: Oprah's "Embarrassed About Her Weight"; I'm Pissed Off

Much of the book could certainly trigger a vulnerable reader. It tells the story of Lia, who spirals into anorexia and cutting after the death of her best friend Cassie, who was bulimic. Like many anorexics, Lia knows how many calories are in everything she eats, and her descriptions of her meals ("I eat ten raisins (16) and five almonds (35) and a green-bellied pear (121) (= 172)") could certainly serve as instruction and motivation for disordered eating. So could her reports of her steadily dropping weight and ever-lower goal, the pro-ana websites she visits (though, thankfully, Anderson doesn't include actual web addresses), and the tricks she uses to make her family think she's eating. Most disturbing, though, is the way Lia thinks about her illness and her recovery. Anderson writes,

[The doctors] are morons. This body has a different metabolism. This body hates dragging around the chains they wrapped around it. Proof? At 099.00 I think clearer, look better, feel stronger. When I reach the next goal, it will be all that, and more.

Goal number two is 095.00, the perfect point of balance. At 095.00, I will be pure. Light enough to walk with my head up, meaty enough to fool everyone. And 095.00, I will have the strength to stay in control.

At 090.00, I will soar. That's Goal Number Three.

To the non-sufferer, this thinking is distorted and scary, but to anyone with a tendency toward anorexia, it may sound all too reasonable. Lia's thoughts about herself may be far more triggering than her calorie-counting or meal-avoiding strategies — they may convince girls that their own disordered thoughts are normal or even correct.

Some have argued that the book's triggering qualities are mitigated by how terrifying its portrayal of anorexia and bulimia is. Jack Martin of the New York Public Library told the Times, "It's so horrific I don't think anybody would pick this book up and consider it a manual." It's true that the manner of Cassie's death — a ruptured esophagus caused by her bulimia — is incredibly disturbing, and that the deeper Lia descends into anorexia and cutting the more she feels self-loathing rather than strength. But a Times commenter says, "it doesn't matter if you describe the 'horrors.' i'll read right past it and go for what i want," and this may be true for many sufferers.

The real reason Wintergirls is a worthwhile book isn't that it will scare people away from eating disorders — it might do the opposite. It's that Anderson offers insight into a difficult subject, one that is much-discussed but frequently misunderstood. Especially strong is her treatment of Lia's family. While at first it's tempting to think that Lia's parents' divorce "caused" her eating disorder, the book ultimately resists such easy conclusions. Lia's mother, father, stepmother, and stepsister all come across as complex characters who influence Lia for both good and bad, and whose relationships with Lia will all be important as she begins her recovery. Anderson renders anorexia as a complicated disease with many interrelated causes, but she also emphasizes the importance of family in Lia's treatment — both these messages are worth sharing.

Cynthia M. Bulik, director of an eating disorder program, may have the best take on the book. She told the Times, "Books such as these should be read with careful parental supervision. In the best of all possible worlds, this could be a conversation starter between parents and teens rather than a dark world that teens enter alone reading the book in isolation." Read without discussion or supervision, Wintergirls could indeed be triggering. But read as part of a conversation — or, perhaps, read by parents and other family members — the book could help make some teens' worlds a little less dark.

Wintergirls [Amazon]
The Troubling Allure of Eating-Disorder Books [New York Times]
Skin and Bone [New York Times]

Earlier: Are Teen Girls Really That Fragile?

December/January 2008: "New Year, New Body: We'll Have You Feeling Fabulous."


April/May 2008: "Get A Bikini Bod Just In Time For Summer!"


August/September 2008: "Get Fit Fast! Our Insta-Workout!"


December 2008/January 2009: "Get Your Best Body: The Plan That Will Get You Fit Fast!"


February/March 2009: "Get A Better Body Now!", "I Gained Weight And Lost Jobs: A Supermodel Speaks Out."


April/May 2009: "6 Easy Moves To A Bikini Body"

June/July 2009:: "Get Your Best Body: 6 Moves That Totally Work!

And please do not even get me started on the ridiculousness going on in the forums on the Girl's Life website, specifically in the "Healthy You Program" area, wherein girls ask a moderator a body related question, and the moderator responds. Here's an example:

MOD ok my body is outta proportion. I'm skinny on top but my butt thighs and hips r huge. how do I even it out (aka: make my butt thighs and hips smaller)? Thanks<3 MOD

Here we have a young woman who is upset that her body is "outta proportion." She wants to make her butt, thighs, and hips smaller. What would be an appropriate response? Perhaps starting by explaining that her body isn't "outta proportion" but that she has a skewed view of what a "proportionate" body is due to the bs she's been fed by the media? Perhaps telling her to consider her overall health, to embrace her body, to work out to feel good, not just for her hips or thighs? Here's what the moderator offered as advice:

Make sure to work out everyday to tone those areas. -lauren

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE, LAUREN. THIS IS NOT OKAY, GIRL'S LIFE MAGAZINE. How dare you give this girl such shitty information? "Work out more" is your only advice? Your only means of reaching this girl and providing healthy insight in to working out, being fit, and being comfortable in her own skin? This is supposed to be a magazine that encourages self-esteem?!

The bad advice in the forums is reflected on the covers: the common theme seems to be that girls don't just have to get a "better" body—they have to get it FAST. They have to get it NOW. It's one thing to run one pretty poorly thought out article, but to have 7 covers between January of 2008 and July of 2009 feature lines that promise to help girls get a "better" body fast is horrifying and really disappointing. It's hard enough being 12 years old. The world is already filled with misleading messages about body image and healthy eating and exercise habits. It's just sad that even 12 year old girls have to open their magazines (and, apparently, their computer screens) to see a bunch of unrealistic, unfair, unhealthy attitudes staring back at them.

Healthy You Program [Girl's Life Magazine]

Earlier: Girl's Life: Because It's Never Too Early To Hate Your Body