Anorexia is not a necessary part of growing up

 

AnyBody member Elise Slater's diary excerpt; written while stuck in a hotel room in Rome with only a copy of Marie-Claire as entertainment.  Please excuse the profanities; sometimes there aren’t words strong enough to describe the fashion industry.

...I put down the copy of Marie-Claire and find myself in utter dismay that while I have grown up women’s magazines haven’t. They are still regurgitating the same body fascist, mind numbing & even more worrying; mind-fucking garbage that provided me with enough fuel to develop anorexia in my teens.  So horrifying, the possibility of a girl being able to grow up in modern days into a well-adjusted confident woman seems a slim impossibility.

And that Marie-Claire is supposed to be a thinking woman’s magazine!!! It makes it all the more distressing. Is weight all the thinking woman thinks about these days? I hate to imagine what is in the trashier women’s magazines; my imagination cannot stretch that far.

All three feature articles in the magazine, one on Sandra Dee, one on Terry Schiavo, and one on a girl who went to re-hab in Thailand called Milly, all three have one thing in common – they either suffered from sever anorexia or bulimia at some point in their life. It scares me that it has become a normal rite of growing up to have an eating disorder.  The glamorization of anorexia and self-harming has a lot to answer for. Where are the positive role models? I mean it’s surely not the interview with Elizabeth Hurley, who states: ‘I have to be a little hungry all the time (or) I’d be two dress sizes bigger.’ Get real Liz.

I definitely think like other industries the magazine industry should take responsibility for this crap they are pumping out. I mean who are these people writing these articles and publishing pictures of celebrity cellulite? Do they have any idea of the ramifications they are having on young (and scarily even older) minds?

Cigarette advertising is monitored and has to meet strict guidelines. Why can people write what they like and make insane claims about firming creams and diets and breast enlarging jackets? To the extent of selling diet pills, that were originally developed to treat asthma in horses – Insane! Aren’t these things just as poisonous to our minds as cigarettes to our lungs? And yet we have to ingest this crap involuntarily. We can’t avoid these ads.  These skinny models in overpriced clothing.  Even as strong minded individuals; after the 600^th ad telling you that a size  14 girl couldn’t possibly be happy you start to believe it. You can find non-smoking areas, but an ad-free zone in our consumer society = completely unprofitable.

These magazines and the individuals behind putting underweight models on catwalks need to be taken to court.  They need to be made responsible and there needs to be official regulations monitoring the content of magazines and monitoring the catwalks. Prior to anorexia I had a scrapbook of these images, skinny models I wanted to emmulate and articles on anorexia that I got tips from.  And if one girl is doing that you can be sure there are many more doing exactly the same.  These images have an impact. And it is time that was recognised. Having anorexia should not be a standard passage of growing up.

Comments

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[Monika Mendezvon]

I absolutely love this site!

Your work towaads bringing to light the issue of body image disorders and the role of the fashion industry, are to be commended.

Great work!

It's shocking that the fashion industry continues to use super-skinny and size zero models.

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[elise a.]

Hi, i am overcoming an eating disorder, and have been asked to do modeling, this post is really inspirational to me, i am currently 5'10 and 105lbs, my i was young i kept limiting my diet, and now i say enough is enough, frig the world and its 'perfect body' i dropped down to 95 lbs, and could see every bone on my body. I wasn't 'pretty' or 'thin'... i was emaciated and dying, women doing this to there body is sickening, and i am glad to have someone in the world that see's this, if you are at a normal bmi, your doing your body a favor, and it will be beautiful, but killing your body because you think your look 'good' is sickening, thank you, so much for being another inspiration against there eating disorders.