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Wintergirls: Possibly Triggering, Definitely Thought-Provoking |
Are Teen Girls Really That Fragile? |
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Jezebel 
05/20/09
I'm not sure we need thoughtful discussions of subjects our kids would not be aware of if we didn't have so many thoughtful discussions of them. In our attempt to reach the very small population of kids suffering from EDs or self-mutilation, we may be triggering more.
05/19/09
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05/19/09
At this point I don't think I should be reading this book. For me written stuff like that is much more triggering than pictures.
Still, I think it could be helpful for someone who wants to understand eating disordered thinking.
05/19/09
Pictures never are, but written things are.
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05/19/09
I remember getting "The Best Little Girl in the World" from the library, and my mother half-joking, but worried, wondered whether it would make me anorexic. I knew it wouldn't.
Sorry if I sound insensitive to anyone who has suffered from these horrible diseases. I feel like this books sounds like an interesting look into the mentality of the disease, maybe I'll pick it up if I remember.
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05/19/09
Maybe it's just the way that ED novels were written in the late '70s (which then made it into my grossly underfunded school library by the late '90s), but I distinctly remember a tone of... almost reverence for girls with that level of self-control and restraint, and the sense that eating disorders were a Real Problem, not like those minor little issues of school, guys, etc. As in: why can't you be like those girls? And why are you always bitching? Don't you know there are people with real problems?
In retrospect, they read eerily like some of the medieval saints' lives I read in college.
05/19/09
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05/19/09
Even now, I can't engage in self-destructive behavior, no matter how much I want to at times.
05/19/09
They're very interesting, and a bit scary. I remember reading Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa by Joan Jacobs Brumberg and trying to decide if I was horrified or impressed by them (I'm Catholic and have some ED issues to boot).
05/19/09
I suffer from depression, and one of my symptoms is eating too much. I feel like I have a psychological need for food to comfort me when the world gets too overwhelming.
Although I realize anorexia is dangrous and bad for me, and would only add another level of misery into my life, sometimes it seems like the quick and fast way to control my eating.
But like you said, Definer-not-defined, I can't engage in self-destructive behavior like that. And every day I'm thankful that I don't.
05/19/09
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05/20/09
wow. you summed up my teenage existence, and so true about the disciplined existence that was glorified. because Lord knows a girl with an e.d. is probably more popular in school than the fat kid, right?
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05/19/09
Then again, had MommaClash read Naked Lunch she would most certainly have had a heart attack when she found out I was reading it.
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05/19/09
If this is where your mind is going in the first place, you'll seek out. Why in the hell do you think I read The Best Little Girl in the World? Not because it was groundbreaking literature.
05/19/09
05/19/09
However, I think the book serves less as a manual (though if you are already sick/have an ED brain, you might see it that way) and more as an honest insight into the ED thought process. "The doctors are morons" can be seen on probably every page of my journal from my early stages of recovery. I think she's captured the ED voice quite well.
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The more information we put out there, the better.
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05/11/09
I remember reading something about the book Wasteland which went into detail about EDs and it was banned in eating disorder clinics. It was like their bible, even though it was supposed to be an anti-ED book.
05/11/09
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