Eating Habits In The News

Q & A time.

Are we actually making body image issues that everybody and their mother seem to be suffering from these days, WORSE by talking about them so often? It’s almost like we throw a really bright spotlight on body image issues and on achieving body peace, in the hopes that people will be encouraged by the support to love themselves more and resolve some of their personal body image issues. It’s a grave issue, which I understand. Body image issues lead to incredible tragedies that run the entire gamut of issues from various eating disorders to death. However, is repeatedly highlighting the gravity of the body-issues culture actually having an adverse effect by prompting people to continue having body image issues, seeing that they receive attention from the public for them? I’m mostly referring to the rich and famous here, of course, though friends and family that spotlight eating disorders on a smaller scale by talking about the issue without offering any real help often cause sufferers to better hide their disorders and worsen the problem, at the end of the day.

The most recent media speculation is that Kate Middleton is severely underweight, reportedly weighing anything between 100 and 130 pounds at a height of 5’10″, depending on the media source. Middleton apparently dropped several sizes and went from an 8 to a 2, all for her royal wedding ceremony, and continued watching her caloric intake over her honeymoon, during which Prince William had expected to “eat, drink and be merry.” Personally I think Kate’s looking a little on the thin side but not too much so (yet). It might just be the royal stress kicking in – the girl does plan her own outfits and works without a stylist, all amidst touring the nation with her husband! Whether she really has some sort of “eating disorder”, or whether it’s just the stress of the royal life and general wedding-oriented weight loss remains to be seen in upcoming months, but…

I wonder if Kate’s weight loss isn’t getting worse BECAUSE there’s such a bright spotlight shining on the subject? She might be focusing too much on the idea that she’s too thin because the tabloids, British and American and International all alike, have been quick to repeatedly point it out, and Kate herself might not even have noticed her weight as a “problem”, initially! Maybe if we, as a nation, took the spotlight off of what Kate Middleton was or wasn’t eating, she would feel more comfortable eating some pizza without fear of being scrutinized for “pigging out” (because the media is awfully quick to find the worst in every situation to turn into a story!). Maybe if their size on either end of the thinness spectrum wasn’t being criticized upon every public, and even attempted private, appearance, other famous celebrities (Nicole Richie, Mischa Barton, and perhaps most famously, Demi Lovato) wouldn’t feel the need to go to extremes to satiate the paparazzi and they wouldn’t develop eating disorders, or worse, exacerbate existing conditions due to the pressure of maintaining a perfect figure or living up to the hype or continuing to get the press. Paps focus on celebrity eating disorders, not with concern, but with the gaze of vultures ready to rip apart the celebrity for “failing” by developing an eating disorder, or “failing” by being too fat. Celebs just can’t win either way. So if the paparazzi pressure is taken off celebrities, maybe they’ll breathe and just eat what they want without fear of being judged. If the pressure is taken off of “achieving body peace and resolving body image issues”, maybe people will learn to love themselves at their own pace, instead of feeling victimized by society because they themselves are still a victim of self-hate. Maybe if eating disorders weren’t in the news so much as glorified diseases, they wouldn’t look so attractive to young girls. Maybe if the concept of overeating and food wasn’t in the news so much, young girls wouldn’t worry about restricting their diets OR overeating – they would eat as much as they wanted, and their parents would do the job of monitoring their intake, as it should be. Eating disorders should be talked about in an educational way – let the horrifying stats speak for themselves. There’s no need to glorify the experience by featuring novels and stories about girls who “initially felt so good about the weight loss” (think Marya Hornbacher or Laurie Halse Andersen’s Wintergirls). This glorification just begs for people to try it and then “think they can stop before they become one of the death statistics”.

I think it’s great that some people choose to chronicle their own eating disorder survival and fight stories – Demi Lovato and Marya Hornbacher being prime examples. But Demi Lovato talks very candidly about her struggles, failure and successes with her eating disorder. She chooses what to say about it, and she knows how it affects her. The trouble starts when third party sources feel qualified to comment on somebody else’s eating disorder or eating habits – the paparazzi have no idea whether their intense scrutiny of Demi Lovato’s weight actually contributed to her personal, internal self-image issues or not (because eating disorders are never about losing weight. There’s always some internal motivator.). The media has no idea whether they were the catalyst to Demi Lovato’s impending breakdown or not, but clearly they played some part in the whole debacle. Third party sources should stop focusing so unnervingly intensely on other people’s eating habits, creating a pressure and having an eventual hand in celebrity meltdowns. If we stop talking about it as unqualified third party sources, maybe celebs would stop feeling the heat so much and stop feeling an extra pressure of having their weight scrutinized (even if the scrutiny is positive, they’re still being watched!) in addition to the immense pressures they already face.

Eating disorders exist. Most eating disorder cases end as death statistics. Young lives are lost before their time. This is all fact. But there’s no need to use any of this in “stories”, fact or fiction. Writing about an ED candidly in a biography or autiobiography is fine, but glamorizing an eating disorder as borderline fiction is wrong, no matter what “the right to free speech” says. Let’s all take the pressure and focus off of eating disorders and food and people with eating disorders and body image issues – the message that is publicized should just be: Learn to love yourselves at your own pace. Love yourself enough to eat what you want, when you want.” Let’s stop glorifying a very real disease by making it tabloid fodder or a plot device.