Eating disorders are conditions which are defined by abnormal eating habits; these may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake both of which can have a detrimental effect on an individual’s physical and mental health. Bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa are the most common specific forms in the United Kingdom. NICE estimate that 1.6 million people in the UK (mainly women)have an eating disorder; 10% of that figure have anorexia, 40% bulimia and 50% is an unspecified disorder. Some believe that this figure is massively underestimated as eating disorders are, by their nature, very secretive. Many people have huge problems around food, mealtimes are a battleground, they are on a constant merry-go round of diets and breaking diets-but they never seek a diagnosis.In fact this state of affairs has almost become normal.
Eating disorders are often blamed on the social pressure to be thin, as young people in particular feel they should look a certain way.It is certainly true that it is rare to see a model in a magazine who is over a size 6 and nearly every woman I know aspires to be thin, or at least thinner than she is. Our modern obsession with body image has created an unhealthy relationship with food which is all-pervasive.I never remember my grandparents worrying about calories or ‘being good.’In the past two decades, the diet industry has become so powerful that up to 70 per cent of women report being on a diet at any given time, with many having an unhealthy preoccupation with food, regardless of their weight. This is a modern phenomenon which is making us unhappy with our appetites and giving us a sense of anxiety and guilt when we should simply be enjoying our food. Sufferers may deny themselves anything to eat, even when very hungry, or may eat constantly, or binge. The subject of food, or how much they weigh becomes an obsession. Food can become an addiction and being ‘addicted’ to food presents huge problems, because we need to eat to live; so if you have an eating disorder, you have no choice but to wrestle with this problem every day.Food in the Western culture where we have limitless options is about more than simply re-fuelling our bodies-if it was, there wouldn’t be an obesity crisis.I am as guilty as most mothers of rewarding my children’s good behaviour with a special treat which can often be a chocolate bar or sweets. As one psychologist wrote:” Getting ice cream as a reward puts a value on it that is much higher than that of frozen milk – it becomes acknowledgment, approval and even a pleasure and decadence that we should allow ourselves only on those rare occasions when we are being very good.”
Eating disorders can be more complex of course; they can be about feeling control over one part of a life which is perhaps chaotic, they can be about OCD, they can be a coping mechanism to help avoid any other problems, they can be about being fiercely competitive or a perfectionist.It makes one wonder what sort of society we live in when so few of us are comfortable with our appetites and struggle to be happy with the way we look.In an ideal world, our acceptance of who we are should be unconditional, not based on calorie intake or dress size.
Yes, it is true that eating disorders and the need to be thinner seems to be a more modern thing. Which surely means that it is the media that is to blame for drip-feeding us with a constant idea of what a proper woman looks like. I think the whole fashion merry-go-round plays it’s part too, with fashion fads that demand a certain body shape (think crop tops, mini-skirts, hipsters etc ), effectively leaving out the larger woman in a way that fashions in years gone by have not.
We bare more flesh than we did, say sixty years ago and we are expected to bare even more in clothes that were designed for a much, much thinner woman!! Is it any wonder we feel body conscious, even those of us who are considered to be normal BMI weight!
Celebrities (those wonderful people who do sod all and spend their lives complaining about how hard it all is), give us glimpses of their cellulite via the seedier gossip magazines, only to be followed up a week or so later with pictures of their six-packs and their ‘new me’ bodies, full of interviews about how disgusted they were with their stretch marks and their spare tyres, while the rest of us just get on with our lives. I do think it’s harmful to be drip-fed these very negative ideas of what is acceptable to look at and what is disgusting. If a woman (albeit a vacuous one) is repulsed by her post-baby body or her normally round tummy or her smattering of cellulite and goes on and on and on about how it ruined her (already empty) life, it does make us stand back and look at our own body and wonder if she’s right and if we too should be repelled by what we see in the mirror.
In the same way that the badger cull is a direct way of reducing BTB, I wonder if a mass celebrity magazine scrapping would give women a break and shut off one powerful avenue of destructive comparisons. Maybe it would finally allow women to consider for themselves whether they like their bodies or not, without some silicon Barbie making noise in the background!!