Eating Disorder [TW]
The patriarchal perpetuation of eating disorders
(A letter to my future daughter)
There once were days when I would have a full-blown panic attack over a single piece of toast. Something so banal, so biologically vital, can make you mentally insane.
As our modern society has gradually commodified the necessities needed for human survival– food and water– food has become something more meticulous; something to micro-manage. Not only is the image of food plastered everywhere, but the image of the female body. Ironically, our society tells us to consume and consume… Yet, women are expected to maintain a thin, fit body. A body fit for mans’ pleasure.
Born into a world of patriarchy, the female body is to be gawked at, to be glared at, to be poked, and prodded. The propagation of diet culture and body image has produced a narrative of thinness equating to health and weight-loss equating to celebration, which we all must swallow. Diet culture has prompted us to metabolize the female body as an object; something to be looked at, instead of an organism; something to be full of purpose.
The magic that happens inside a woman’s womb – holding new human life – makes the female body the most powerful living thing on Earth. Without the female body, human evolution ceases to exist… yet we continue to treat it with such a lack of respect.
Alongside the revolution of the consumer industry and the sophistication of the mass media, came the evolution of the human consciousness. With this, came the perpetuation of eating disorders. Anorexia as the world’s deadliest mental illness, it turns the mundane into a murderer. Eating – something so simple – becomes the hardest, most excruciating thing imaginable. There is a quote from Alexander Pope that echoes within the chamber of eating disorders and articulates the dangers of diet culture. It goes as so: “What some people call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.”
There comes a tipping point in which “healthiness” becomes a disease; a parasite lodged into the heart of the brain. Eating disorders latch onto the self-sabotaging aspect of the brain. Losing weight becomes attached to the brain’s reward system, and before you know it, starving yourself becomes euphoric.
Most of the time, you are not aware of the damage you are causing your own body. But in a society so driven towards the celebration of weight-loss, it is so hard to navigate the conflicting messages swimming around your mind.
“There comes a tipping point in which “healthiness” becomes a disease; a parasite lodged into the heart of the brain. Eating disorders latch onto the self-sabotaging aspect of the brain. Losing weight becomes attached to the brain’s reward system, and before you know it, starving yourself becomes euphoric. ”
One could wonder: is self-sabotage one of the biggest mistakes in the evolution of the human consciousness? Myself, as a victim of a severe, self-sabotaging eating disorder, I tend to agree.
I was fourteen, still learning how to swim in the great ocean that was life. It was a day in which I felt like the water was up to my neck. I felt my eating disorder had consumed me. But somewhere in that deep sea was a woman who would not let go of me, a woman who would never let me drown. My Nana. I so clearly remember the way she looked at me and said, “There are people out there who are so sick, but they are not given the option to get better. But love, you can get better. You have that option. This is all up to you.”
I thought about the people in hospital, those with diseases, cancer, paralyzed limbs. They didn’t have the autonomy to get better – but I did. I suddenly realized that I was choosing to kill myself when others didn’t even have the choice. That day I chose to live a life of abundance over a life of restriction and control. It was my way of saying “fuck you!” to the patriarchy, to the pressure of feminine conformity; I was going to live a life messy, unchiseled, belly rolls and all.
I have spent a lifetime reimbursing myself for all the crimes I committed against my own body. As I became an arsonist in my own home – my forever home – and have spent years long after picking up the debris.
Revisiting the intellect of my fourteen-year-old psyche; I wish so deeply to offer her my words of wisdom. I wish I could go back and give her internal guidance in a world so sickly obsessed with the external.
Dwelling on the past shapes a multitude of wishful thinking. However, there comes a point in time in which wishful thinking becomes redundant. Time offers only mere reflection, not amendment. Retrospect reminds us that we cannot change the past, we can only change the prospect of our future. And so, this is my effort to help change the future.
This is a letter to my future daughter, containing all the things I want her to know about her body.
Use your Instagram wisely. Despite my hopes of being a cell phone free, “5g causes brain cancer” kind of mum, I am not a total denialist to the new world of communication. However, I am overly cautious of Instagram. Instagram as a double-edged sword, it has the power to protect or attack. Although we women understand the detriments of its use, Instagram has a way of warping a woman’s mind so that the urge to post pictures of her body online in an attempt to validate herself becomes almost irresistible. Seeking this kind of bodily validation leads only to dead ends. As true, ever-lasting, self-love does not come from external validation. Loving your body should never involve anyone else but yourself. Posting pictures of your body online not only feeds your own ego in a distorted and unhealthy way, but it feeds the psyche of the fourteen-year-old girl scrolling self-consciously through her Instagram feed. So, before you go to post something on Instagram; imagine that fourteen-year-old girl behind her screen. Think about how she would digest that. How would the fourteen-year-old version of you digest that?
Repeat this to yourself daily: I use Instagram to make me feel good. I follow accounts that uplift me. I want to use my Instagram to make others feel good too. I am careful with what I post.
Your body is not something to be looked at. Up until last year (the year I turned twenty-two) I cannot remember a day where I would not wake up and look at my stomach in the mirror –checking to see if it had somehow drastically changed overnight. I had this deluded idea that my reflection reflected my value. I thought that having abbs was the world’s greatest achievement. I soon realized that the way my body looked was completely irrelevant to my experience on this earth. Only loving your body when you love the way it looks does not equate to “self-love.” Your body has so many other purposes other than to be looked at. Your body allows you to inquire, to wonder, to create; to experience the world around you. You are merely a speck in this expansive universe; the way your body looks is inconsequentially minuscule.
Repeat this to yourself daily: I go about my day, my body carrying me the whole way. My body is not something to be looked at, my body is something to be loved.
Your value comes from within. Surrounded by a supportive, loving, and extremely attractive group of female friends my whole life has meant an endless showering of compliments. But what I have come to notice about these compliments, is that they almost always tended to be about our appearance. Too many women attach their worth to their physical assets. We uplift each other by saying, “Wow you have such a nice stomach, you have such nice legs,” – which of course is wonderful –but there needs to be a more soul-charging way of sending and receiving compliments. And so, let us compliment each other on things that are not physical– remembering that peoples’ value comes from their kindness, their thoughtfulness, their knowledge, and their strength. You can say things like: “You have a beautiful soul,” or “you are such a nice energy to be around.” One day, your body will be buried in the ground, or scattered in a wide, encompassing ocean; left to decompose and melt back into the Earth. Although your body– either tall, short, thick, slim, or curvy– will be gone; your laugh, your humour, your loyalty, and your love, will last forever.
Repeat this to yourself daily: I am so much more than just a body.
Words are powerful. For someone who, growing up, always had an affixation with words and an uncomfortable relationship with silence, I struggled with never knowing when to just shut up. As I have come to respect silence as a virtue, I now review my dialect well before it reaches the tip of my tongue. This is because words stick. They stick to the inner walls of the hippocampus. To the glass of a mirror. To the food on your plate. Although words flow fluently through thin air, they can flow into the depths of someone’s mind. So, next time you go to comment on someone’s weight, appearance, or eating habits– stop yourself and have a conversation with silence instead. This doesn’t just go for commenting on other people’s weight. It can be comments like: “Oh, I haven’t eaten anything today, just a coffee and an apple,” or “She is looking so good now that she is skinny.” These words have lasting effects on a person’s relationship with food. Be aware that some other girl in the room could be having a mental battle in her head over what she eats next.
Repeat this to yourself daily: The best weight to lose is the weight of other people’s opinions about my body and the opinions I have about other people’s bodies.
Your body will not change overnight. In the summer of 2021, I broke my hand. As my hand and forearm were in full plaster, it meant I could not exercise, which triggered a deep level of anxiety and a lack of control (the thing I feared most). Although at this point my eating disorder was gone, I still feared the inability to not exercise. I still feared my body changing. That summer I had an epiphany. I realized my body would not drastically change once I stopped exercising. I realized that my body, even though stagnant, would still need just as much food as when it was in constant motion. The magnificence of the human body requires an abundance of food, even at its resting point. Your body will not change overnight. Your body will not change over the course of a week. Your body will change over the course of your life – and that is okay. Your body is meant to fluctuate, plateau, and grow.
Repeat this to yourself daily: My body will not change overnight. My body needs food, even when it isn’t moving.
Food is fuel. Although we hear this time and time again, we seem to dismiss it. Society will tell you to prioritize being skinny over the foundational facts of science. We believe eating to be something of concern and calories to be something of criminality. Let me edit this incoherent narrative for you: Over-eating is not a crime! Your body will break down the nutrients and transport them around your bloodstream. It will use carbohydrates as energy for daily tasks like catching up with friends, taking the dog for a walk, cleaning the house. It will use the proteins to build new cells, repair old cells, and keep your immune system healthy. It will store the fat to help protect your organs against trauma. I sometimes feel judged by others when they see the portions I pile on my plate… but I don’t care, because I know that every time I fill up my plate, I am filling up the empty plate of that starving fourteen year old girl I used to me. When I eat, I am eating for my younger self. I know she would be so proud.
Repeat this to yourself daily: More food means more energy and better functioning. I eat to fuel my body and my mind.
There is no such thing as “clean eating.” I have spent so many years creating a dysfunctional dictionary, dictating the definition of certain foods, dividing them into “good,” “bad,” “clean,” and “dirty.” However, food does not need to be disinfected, scrubbed, or sanitized. Everything you eat gets broken down into three simple molecules: glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids. As long as you are eating three nutritiously balanced meals a day, eat whatever you are craving in between.
Repeat this to yourself daily: I eat without guilt. There is no such thing as “clean foods.”
Gaining weight is not a bad thing. I remember a night when I was in the depths of my eating disorder. My mother – who spent nine, patient, months loving and nourishing her baby inside her warm womb – was holding me, trying to hug what was left of me. I remember the way her sobs radiated through my body. That night I promised I would never again let her hug me without it being a hug filled with love and health. When there is more of you, there is more to love – and more to hug. You can give big, warm, oxytocin-filled hugs. Sometimes gaining weight is what you need to be healthy. Taking up space is okay.
Repeat this to yourself daily: It is okay to take up space. The space I take up is a place of health and happiness.
Do the things you love; time is precious. If you do not want to work out, do not do it. Sometimes a sweaty jacked-up, drum and bass spin class is not going to make you feel good. It may even make you feel worse. I used to experience such a deep level of guilt when I didn’t exercise. I have now come to understand the beauty of rest, the beauty of allowing my body stillness. The time I used to spend exercising, I now spent lying in bed with a good book, drinking coffee with my mother, painting, drawing, writing, cuddling my niece. Prioritizing the simple, yet truly precious joys of life has made my life blossom into something my eating disorder never would have let me do. Making amends with rest has allowed me time to love myself and time to love others. And in turn, love my life.
Repeat this to yourself daily: I do not need to feel guilty for not exercising. I am allowed to rest. Rest is vital for my creativity and happiness. Rest will help me be a better human.
It has taken me twenty-two years to learn how to become friends with my body. To learn she is my best friend through thick and thin. To learn that she will one day hold a baby inside her womb. That baby being you. I don’t want you to ever take as long as I did to make friends with your body. As Rupi Kaur puts into poetry: “We are all born so beautiful / the greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not.”
I hate the way the language of diet culture slips off the female tongue as smooth as hot honey. How the heavy conversation of weight-loss passes through time without a single flinch or rectification. I hate the mundanity of women hating their bodies. Let us uproot the way we talk about ourselves and in place, plant seeds of nurture.
I talk about women a lot in this piece – my nana, my mother, my hypothetical future daughter. This is because it took two generations of women to save me. And I want to help the future generations of women beyond me.
Without the body of a woman, we miscarry the future.
And so, we must nourish her.
“We are all born so beautiful / the greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not.”
*I want to note that although the hypothetical daughter I depict within this article may likely come to fruition one day, this hypothetical daughter could be a son, a he, a they/them. Eating disorders affect everyone, no matter what gender, race, age, or size. Eating disorders do not discriminate.
I want to offer an open hand to anyone that needs help.
Words - Rosa O'Reilly
Image - @heatherlawrence_ December 2020 via @rapideye.darkroom
