Community Magazine June 2003

N o one ever knew there was anything wrong with me,” says Stephanie*, “but I was taking laxatives morn- ing and night. If I was hungry during the day, I’d just get a cup of cof- fee to kill my appetite. At night, I’d never eat if there was anyone else in the kitchen. I’d wait until it was late at night and I would- n’t swallow.” Young girls from all societal backgrounds, bombarded by social pressures and pictures of an ideal, face an overriding burden to be model- thin. Many girls undertake drastic meas- ures to ensure this, endangering their health and mental well-being — to the grave extent that many think that without being thin, “it’s just not worth it,” to be healthy. Most girls keep their disorders a secret, to all except their best friends, who often play the same game along with them. On the common nature of this problem, one girl commented, “There’s not one of my close friends who didn’t experience this before getting smart... whether it was anorexia, bulimia, or a minor forms of either.” When it comes to body image, imperfection in anyway becomes unacceptable. Even girls that have always had a healthy self-image can fall prey to a disorder. For Rachel, becoming thin slowly became an obsession, “My situation started when I began losing weight naturally—simply by being more active during the summer months. People actually would tell me I got thinner, but it was definitely nowhere near a sick stage yet. At that time it was ingrained in my mind that no matter how thin I already was, I needed to lose more weight. There were always girls thinner than me; I thought and I wanted to be just as thin. So I started exercising twice as much as I used to. I would eat but then feel the need to work off whatever I ate, so I was burning many more calories than I was bringing in. I would exercise twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. In the beginning I felt fine, but then I started feeling weary and non-energetic because I was not taking in enough food to keep up with myself...Eventually, instead of people telling me how great I looked, people would tell me I looked sick and scary. I did not care or want to listen to anyone, because in the back of my mind, I felt like people were jealous.” Eating disorders do often stem from a feeling of jealousy. For many girls, the prob- lems can start, not when they feel inade- quate in themselves, but when they compare themselves to another person. Stephanie said that her disorder became a competition between her and a friend, where the better person made do with l ess. “During our sen- ior year in high school, we went on vaca- tion. On that trip, we did everything togeth- er—including not eat. I even felt guilty when I’d buy a couple of apples from a fruit stand—because she wouldn’t even stop for that. Going through the same thing, though, made us feel that we were both “normal”— more normal than our third naturally-skinny friend, who’d eat danishes for breakfast and have a big lunch and dinner.” Since it’s common for girls of marriage- able age to be interested in taking care of themselves by exercising daily and eating healthy, it can often go unnoticed when a girl becomes overzealous by over-exercis- ing and under-eating. The overuse of laxa- tives however, is a classic sign of eating disorder and should trigger a red flag. People with eating disorders abuse laxa- tives because they believe that the little pills make them thinner. In actuality, they do 28 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE s ” xc *Names have been changed to preserve anonymity “ “I thought my life would be perfect if I just had my friend’s body. One time, a month before vacation, I decided I wasn’t going to eat anything except for gum, lettuce, and celery...”