(no subject)

[phosfate]

"Contrary to a commonly held belief among the dwindling number of Americans who have not been touched by the disease, young people who fall into the grip of anorexia (15 percent of anorexics die of the ailment) are not, for the most part, trying to look like some magazine icon; they're trying to assert some control over a life that they feel is not really theirs."

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/01/17/anorexic/index.html

Comments

[joethelionn.livejournal.com]

Does this mean I have to stop blaming Kate Moss for all of society's woes?

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Yes. Sorry. I don't think Kate invented the cell phone, for example.

[joethelionn.livejournal.com]

Well, then, am I wrong to think that Kate Moss is an evil robot designed by Bill Gates bent on destroying civilization as we know it?

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Very possibly, yes.

[joethelionn.livejournal.com]

Whew.

I knew evil robots figured into it somehow.

*picks up portable MIG welder. Strolls off whistling*

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

Wow. And I have someone here on live journal I talk to in England who is going into the hospital as we speak, because she's dropped below 90 lbs...she just can't eat...she tries, and she gets horribly sick to her stomach. It's not a physical problem, they ruled that out, I think it's just her nerves. She's had a lot of nasty blows lately in her life. I wish I had some other way to stay in touch with her and encourage her.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Well damn. I'm glad she's getting help, though.

I don't know much about eating disorders that isn't tv-movie vague, but I know from experience that extended stress of any kind can turn your stomach into a screaming hurty thing that wants nothing to do with the universe.

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately too true.

Re:

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

I've been through bouts of it it myself, where I was so stressed trying to eat would make me hurl, so I dranks those meal supplement things (those I could keep down) and hauled out the juicer we have and drank veggie juice so I at last had that in me until my tummy settled some.

[motheaten.livejournal.com]

humph. anyone who thinks that by dropping a load of weight, they can end up looking like a supermodel is just stupid. one can admire a pop icon and whine all they want about being fat, etc etc etc, but without forcing yourself to control your body's cravings for food, without exercise, without that self-discipline (sometimes perversely self-punishment), you're not going to get anywhere. as you see your body progressing and becoming thinner and thinner, it's only inspires you to push that regimen even harder, to become even stricter with yourself - and then it becomes an obsession. at that state, the knowledge that your self control can create such tangible effects that you can see right in the mirror is euphoric. anyway, my imput.

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Among girls at my high school, some level of anorexia and bulimia was the norm. The kind of self-indulgent refusal to accept responsibility at appropriate times and then gleeful acquiencence with the dictates of expensive professionals and expensive institutionalization on the part of parents was also the norm. I wanted to smack those parents then and I wanted to smack the guy who wrote that article.

I don't know why it's apparently so fucking hard to figure out that most people cannot tolerate being dumped into completely chaotic, yet coldly institutional morass of dorm life. It's not only bad for people psychically, it is a epidemiolocigal nightmare waiting to happen - except for those people who have already been maimed or killed by bacterial meningitis, for whom the nightmare has already happened. The only social purpose I can see it serving is giving everyone a taste of life under socialism, so they will all turn into rabid defenders of the free market, but oddly that doesn't seem to happen.