The Anorexia Myth?

An interesting article:

The Haunting Myth of American Anorexia
A couple of choice excerpts:

More Americans die from obesity-related illness in two hours than die from anorexia in a year.

This is ironic, considering that anorexia is considered a mental illness, and obesity is not. It's ridiculous, actually--I've been obese myself for a number of years, and I can tell you with full honesty that my problem is in the brain. My life is shit, and food is my only comfort. Obesity starts in the brain, and, at some point, a person can mess their body up so severely that they've passed the point of no return, and need medical intervention to avoid literally eating themselves to death. This is a far more serious cultural problem than anorexia, and yet, wherever I go, I run into people making absolutist (and insulting) statements like "real women have curves" or implying that thin women are somehow "fake", "bony", "ugly" or even anorexic, just because their ribs and hipbones happen to be visible (I sometimes have to wonder if these people have ever seen a real anorexia nervosa sufferer). Worst of all are those who hint that men who are attracted to skinny women are closeted pedophiles. The implication, over and over, is that it's the fat women who are normal and who should therefore be considered the new standard of feminine beauty [see footnote].

Continuing on to the second excerpt:

So, please, ladies - the girl who has the body the rest of you wish you had is not anorexic. The girl who delicately refuses the eighteen-ounce wedge of deep-fried cheesecake the rest of you dive into after dinner is not anorexic. The girl who is obsessed with fitting back into those size 1 jeans is not anorexic. She’s just thinner than you, knows how to say no to herself, and it makes you jealous. [emphasis in original]

I might add that the rate of obesity in this country has reached the point where obese women are a significant enough segment of the population that they now have enough influence to begin a cultural shift towards bias against thin women, and against the people who are attracted to them. It's not a conspiracy, it's just tens of millions of fat women saying, in chorus, "Hey, I want to be beautiful too!" It's understandable, but does it give these women the right to dictate to me (or to anyone) what I'm supposed to find attractive? More importantly, why is it now the case that the only socially acceptable snide comments relating to body-type are those directed at skinny women? I'm sure a lot of people in my age group and older (I'm 39 at this posting) can recall school days where the fattest kids in the class were invariably ridiculed. None of us would consider this to be excusable behavior, and yet, as adults, people are now doing something pretty close to this towards thin women.

To put it succinctly, the problem is that, once again (see my comments a few days ago on male reproductive rights), one problem is being replaced with another. Intolerance and contempt for fat women is being replaced with intolerance and contempt for thin women. Why? To quote a favorite TV character of mine, "Why can't we all just be who we are?" That includes fat people, thin people, as well as the people who like people of either or both types? Would that be so damn difficult to achieve? Why does this have to remain a question of status and competition? (Oh, I forget: We're humans.) Beyond that, we need to continue to acknowledge the truth that obesity is typically dangerous to a person's long term health. How many fat 100-year-old people have there been in the world? Do we want to die before our 70th birthdays?

In conclusion, I need to emphasize a couple of things, just to ensure clarity: First, for those who actually do suffer from anorexia nervosa, it is not my intention to minimize or otherwise diminish the importance of this problem. Those who clicked on the link above can see how serious it is. Anyone who's ever seen a woman so thin that the bones of her pelvis can be seen in detail know how serious it is. I (and the author of the original article at the top) am merely pointing out that there are a lot more people suffering from the opposite type of eating disorder (which can be equally harmful or deadly in the long run), and this means that, strictly from the point of demographics, anorexia is a smaller problem. This fact is contrary to the conception (or, as the original author called it, the myth) that zillions of young women are starving themselves to death, and that something! must! be! done! immediately!

Secondly, if someone manages to read into what I've wrote here an implication that women should be thin, then I suggest you try reading the actual words that I wrote, rather than putting words into my mouth. Be fat, or thin, whatever you want, just don't judge other people based on their choice, and don't judge other people based on who they're attracted to. That is what I'm saying. If you feel that beauty is a construct of the patriarchy, fine, but what gives you or anyone the right to replace that construct with a different construct and then give people shit when they don't happen to fit into the new construct? Or to give people shit who still seem to prefer the old construct? (I will sidestep the question of whether beauty actually is a construct of the patriarchy, intended to oppress women, and simply acknowledge that the topic is itself quite interesting, and beyond the scope of this essay.)


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Footnote: Regarding normalcy and standards of feminine beauty, this raises another interesting question, specifically, "Since when has beauty been 'normal?'" Has beauty ever been the norm, or can we be honest with ourselves and admit that beauty has always been the exception? A favorite thing to do among body-type activists is to show a photograph of an ancient mother earth figurine. Literally thousands of years old, it depicts a feminine torso with large, full thighs, swollen belly and pendulous breasts, a shape which is actually pretty common today. But was it common 10,000 years ago? If we are to accept these figurines as an ancient standard of feminine beauty, we must first ask ourselves whether this interpretation is actually valid. What exactly did these figurines symbolize? Were they, in fact, symbols of feminine beauty? Or were they, perhaps, symbols of prosperity, held with pride by men who succeeded in providing such riches for their wives that they were able to achieve that shape? Were they held with aspiration by young husbands who hoped to be able to give their wives that level of prosperity? Perhaps they were simply toys to be played with by young girls, much as Barbie Dolls are today (and, ironically, depicting a similarly difficult-to-achieve feminine shape, for the time). Or maybe they were intended for young men on their first hunting expeditions, who missed their mothers terribly. Or perhaps they were figurines of the queen of the tribe. Or, in what seems to be a standard catch-all explanation for anthropologists, "perhaps they had some religious significance." Or maybe they were pure works of conceptual art. Hell, maybe they were sex toys! Or porn, from the year 10,000 BCE! Obviously, I'm engaging in some wild speculation here, but the point is, we really don't know what these things were for, so using them to demonstrate anything at all, much less holding them up as examples of a natural or unconstructed beauty standard, is pretty questionable.