Anorexia: Not just about models
There's an interesting first-person account in the Belfast Telegraph today by Naomi Hooke (not pictured), a woman who has suffered with anorexia since she was 11. Part of her message is that sufferers should be provided more psychological counseling and understanding. She doesn't want people to think eating disorders are all about wanting to be models or celebrities. She writes:
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. Many anorexics detest their bodies, refusing even to pose for family holiday snaps. 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.
Comments
I'm so glad someone's finally saying something. It is a belittling and dangerous stereotype to assume that most people suffering from anorexia are teenage girls lost in a world of fashion. I have suffered for years and I, like many other I have spoken to, want *nothing* to do with being attractive to men. Women who diet care about being attractive, not women with eating disorders. When will people learn the difference? Thousands of women are slipping under the radar of medical attention because they do follow eating-disordered tendencies as outlined by the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT). I was one of them. It took me years to find a psychologist who took my worries seriously without dismissing my problem as a "phase" or insisting that deep down--whether I knew it or not--I must *really* care about being attractive. It is appalling and unfortunate that I and others should have to sit through 10 sessions with a psychologist reiterating over and over again that the problem has nothing to do with what others think. Those are 10 sessions which could have been put to better use.
Posted by: Amanda | December 18, 2007 11:01 PM
i would like to hear from anyone with eating disorders as I am doing research into the benefits of using portrait photos as a self esteem raiser and would like to work with people with eating disorders.
Posted by: penny millar | April 19, 2008 03:00 PM