Stop deleting your friends with an ED!
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I only deleted one friend who had an ED. That's because she would just add something ridiculous like 54,000 quick added calories to her diary, then write in the note section "I am a total loser", or words to that effect. After a month or so of trying to be supportive, it was starting to affect me emotionally.... I already suffer from depression and I didn't need anything to make it worse, so I reluctantly cut her loose. She needed more help than I could give her.0
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I deleted one of these people for posting about how she could only throw up half of the entire pizza she ate because it clogged up the shower drain. And when I made comments about how she should seek help or that it was unhealthy to purge, my comments were deleted. Obviously my advise wasn't very important. And if you want to brag about how little you ate or how much you threw up, I don't want to hear it.
what kind of pizza?0 -
People on MFP are not psychiatrists or therapists.0
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I don't delete them, but I will not compliment or even comment on a day that looks like they are depriving themselves of food and overexercising to get a super low net. I have a couple who are netting 500 and under, but unless they ask for my opinion or help, I am not offering it. I am not a shrink, but I will be a supportive e-buddy if someone admits to a problem and asks for support.0
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For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.0 -
I do. I don't feel guilty about it either.
I'm not a psychologist and I'm not qualified to deal with such things. I'm not a parent, counselor, teacher, or anyone else who's involved in their life. Being an 'online friend' leaves you with a very limited ability to help and often times, with my complete inability to bite my tongue, I more often than not, will do more harm than good.
I also can't deal with irrational and often overly dramatic status updates. I've had people with ED's on my list and I treat them the same way I've treated them with people in my real life that have gone through addiction. As soon as their willing to help themselves and make smart choices I'm with them 100% but until they make that decision their on their own.
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This is important as well, even as a licensed therapist I am not here to provide specific individual advice to ANYONE as that is unethical and illegal! Offering support and motivation is one thing...enabling and promoting ED is another.Unfortunately on my short time on MYP I have seem a lot of things that are borderline "proana" (and reported every last one!) I also, have seen may people throw the words ED around TOO freely when they mean disordered eating which is not the same thing. Education, open-mindedness, and objectivity are key.0 -
Well as a trained professional I would tell you that most any trained dietician who specializes with eating disordered clients especially ones with Bulimia or binge Eating disorders would HIGHLY dis agree with you. They not only would recommend calorie counting but would require it with supervision of a LICENSED team of nutrition/dietician/therapists...not just a website. I know first hand b/c I am a LC therapist and I specialize in the E.D. field.0
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Excellent point. Going further, online advice can be potentially dangerous for someone dealing with an eating disorder, or other serious situation where those giving advice may not be qualified.I do. I don't feel guilty about it either.
I'm not a psychologist and I'm not qualified to deal with such things. I'm not a parent, counselor, teacher, or anyone else who's involved in their life. Being an 'online friend' leaves you with a very limited ability to help and often times, with my complete inability to bite my tongue, I more often than not, will do more harm than good.
MFP is not designed to address eating disorders. That doesn't mean EDs are "bad," or shouldn't be talked about. But it's dishonest to consider MFP a qualified resource for ED support (at least within the context of friends/status updates/the general forum/etc.) Private groups dedicated to ED support may be an exception.
And I'll go ahead and poke the elephant in the room because I am as guilty as anyone. Lots of us like to give advice. Often, we're well-meaning and simply relaying experience and opinion. But it's an ego stroke. And that can sometimes mean being blinded by self-importance and/or codependency, taking on the confidant role, and suddenly finding ourselves in over our heads. If someone needs help, sometimes the best thing I can do as an Internet acquaintance is to point them in the direction of better resources.0 -
*****es need to eat. I don't have the professional abilities to handle all that crazy.
Its fine to say you do not feel qualified to provide support. Its not okay to call people with eating disorders "*****es" and say they are crazy.
Please make some level of effort not to be so rude and condescending0 -
*****es need to eat. I don't have the professional abilities to handle all that crazy.
Its fine to say you do not feel qualified to provide support. Its not okay to call people with eating disorders "*****es" and say they are crazy.
Please make some level of effort not to be so rude and condescending
you need to upgrade your browser so that it can detect sarcasm for you0 -
this site broke my disordered eating pattern by teaching me not to be scared of food but how to balance food and lifestyle... my ED is a self starve one. I think your point is well-intentioned but too generalised.People who have an ED shouldn't be on a calorie counting site counting calories. Period.
Recovering people shouldn't be on a health site to try and stay healthy and try and stay recovered??? smh
It is often a trigger for disordered thinking and sends them into relapse. Most don't need to worry about calories, etc...most need to work on developing a healthy relationship with food. If you've been around here long enough, I'm sure you see how obsessive calorie counters can be...it is often not a healthy environment for someone recovering from an ED.0 -
I have deleted a two "friends" with eating disorders. The fact is that I am not emotionally, mentally, or medically equipped to give the very special type of friendship they need nor do I desire to do so. A long time ago, I stopped being friends with a woman who constantly cheated on her husband. Another kept being beat by her husband and despite the fact that I took her to the police myself twice, she kept going back.
There are sicknesses in the world that I am not judging but I do not chose to support. I am allowed to surround myself with very positive and wonderful people who abound themselves in this world and here on MFP but I do not chose to be Weighed down by any more things in life when it is something I can control. I have no obligation to put myself in those situations in life. It doesn't make me less of a person nor does it make me mean. It just makes me determined to surround myself with positivity. And I do it because I am empowered to chose to be happy.0 -
I wish I were at a stage where I could have people with EDs on my list, or rather, those with anorexia on my list, but I cannot, as I still find it triggering now I am starting to let go of being a low weight and directing my focus in other directions, which is hard enough in itself. I have people with bulimia on my list, as I have issues still with binge/purge behaviour, and it is good to have others who understand that around when I hit a bad spot, but when I had people on my list who were eating below 1200, I would be sat there feeling guilty and uncomfortable about my own 2000+ intake, and wondering if I should get lower calorie meal ideas from their diaries.
I certainly agree with you, Op, though, that everyone should have support and not be isolated due to their condition. But I think not everyone is equipped to be able to offer that support, or deal with the ups and downs that come with EDs, and the conditions that often accompany EDs. Kudos to you for being so open minded and open hearted.0 -
For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.
So, what is the ED called before they've reached that 85% figure? There's definitely an ED required to reach that <85% point.0 -
I am bad because when I read ED, I was thinking but I dont delete people with erectile dysfunction...That would be mean...
PS: I realize eating disorders are serious and people with them need help def not deleted.0 -
Its really sad that some have ED. I have to say that if it hinders my life in ANY way, I must delete. I know about addiction and there is nothing that anyone can do to help until the person that has the disorder is ready to help themselves.0
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I admit it that I have and probably will continue to delete people who eat vlcd or have ED. Why do you ask? Because when friend requests come in, I cant see many people's diaries and therefore I dont know that they are going to complain about being hungry, binging on a tortilla, throwing up the tortilla, find the negative in everything, not having enough strength to do xyz...etc.
I will also delete people who do not have an ED or eat vlcd if they do the same things.
Or if they dont log in regularly. Anybody who is not logged in after a month has got to go because they are not ready to make the change.
Honestly, I am looking for people like me. People who want to eat better but enjoy life and are willing to have a beer or three or ice cream every now and again. I want to be around people who exercise so I can learn from them. I want to be around upbeat people who look on the bright side often.0 -
Don't tell me what to do!!!!
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Without reading the responses, I'll just say I only refuse to be friends with people who have EDs and aren't dealing with it. Why? because it is triggering. Duh.0 -
For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.
So, what is the ED called before they've reached that 85% figure? There's definitely an ED required to reach that <85% point.
don't let the DSM IV control your life. It's obviously disordered eating.. so probably an NOS diagnosis.0 -
I sadly had to put it in my information, as you probably know (as we're friends, hee) but I try not to accept people with active eating disorders because of my own history with food, my inability to give them help/encouragement/advice and the fact that, sadly, most of the requests I've had from people with eating disorders have been people who are underage and seem to think they know better. Ain't nobody got time for that.0
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I hate that they use the term ED here.
That is all.0 -
I removed one person who kept eating around 900 calories a day. Her profile said a few things about her eating habits that sure made it sound like she had an eating disorder, but she also declared that she wanted to hear no criticisms about it. I figured we had nothing to offer each other--I am not a therapist, and she obviously wasn't about to start following my example, so what do I owe this person? She's just an internet stranger to me.0
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I will only keep a person with an eating disorder on my friend's list if they are actively trying to help themselves out of it. I refuse to add or keep anyone who makes being "ana" or "mia" a part of their lifestyle as a way to feel superior or for the sake of vanity. There are many who have a severe problem with anorexia and bulimia that are genuine and cheering them on in their progress to getting better is the only thing I would like to do.0
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For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.
WRONG!
You are confusing Anorexia with Anorexia Nervosa as defined by section 307.1 of the DSM IV.
You may be a therapist but be careful not to confuse people by citing the DSM when I never mentioned Anorexia Nervosa in my post.
Anorexia (which I was discussing) is defined as “lack or loss of appetite, resulting in the inability to eat.”
Your definition relates to Anorexia Nervosa (rom DSM IV) which I never discussed:
* Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and
height, for example, weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight less than 85%
of that expected or failure to make expected weight gain during period of growth,
leading to body weight less than 85% of that expected.
* Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
* Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence
of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current
low body weight.
* In postmenarcheal females, amenorrhea, i.e., the absence of at least 3 consecutive
menstrual cycles. A woman having periods only while on hormone medication (e.g.
estrogen) still qualifies as having amenorrhea.
Type
Restricting Type: During the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the person has not
regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior (self-induced vomiting or misuse
of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas).
Binge Eating/Purging Type: During the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the
person has regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior.0 -
Why are so many people on MFP who struggle with an ED abandoned by their "healthy" friends? Often I see posts about how someone does not want friends who eats under "xxxx" calories or talks about struggles with purging after a binge.
Most people on MFP are not deleting friends who are morbidly obese and are still struggling to lose weight. So why are you deleting people who are thin and struggling with anorexia or bulimia? For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
If any of my friends were struggling with anorexia or bulimia I would want them to be honest about it and share their feelings instead of being ashamed or fearful of being judged.
My goal is not to make anyone feel guilty. I realize some people want to avoid interacting with people with an ED they are themselves trying to recover from.
However for those of you that are healthy why not try to support your friends with an ED the same as all your other friends? Some people are on MFP to gain weight, some to lose weight, some to focus on building strength and cardiovascular health. I sense there is a double standard on MFP where the members focused on losing weight, improving strength or cardiovascular health are treated better by the community than those with an ED.
We all have different goals. I try to support all of my friends whether they are overweight, underweight, athletic or sedentary. I wont delete someone because they occasionally relapse into unhealthy habits. We all have to start somewhere and achieving our health and fitness goals can be difficult. Instead of forcing certain groups to isolate themselves (hampering recovery) lets all try to be a more open and supportive community.
Assuming this is not a troll, It's because we are talking about pro anas, mostly.
If I had someone on my F-list who was recovering from an eating disorder and talked about that, unless I somehow found that their posts were somehow triggering ED warning behaviors in me, I'd keep them. But there are a lot of people on this site who use it to try to induce an eating disorder or support eating disorder patterns who are not trying to become healthier and that's counterproductive to be around for most people who aren't doing the same thing.0 -
Everyone has a different story and I am here to support in a positive way. I don't dish unwanted advice and have never deleted anyone from my FL. That being said I don't think I have anyone on my FL that has an ED, but they are welcome.0
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Depending on other factors they may be dx as bulimic, sometimes that specific qualifier is the only thing that keeps that particular label off. But if depending on other personality traits they probably would be considered E.D. N.O.S. (not otherwise specified) but for may reasons which are to political to debate here insurance won't pay dr./therapists rarely want to use that label...bc the client suffer and isn't able to receive the treatment they need or they can but at extreme out of pocket cost most cant afford :-(
Many don't realize that bulimic restrict to, some do not throw up i.e. purge at all.
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So, what is the ED called before they've reached that 85% figure? There's definitely an ED required to reach that <85% point.
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I dont let any book control my life NONE. But the poster was giving misinformation I corrected it. There are lots of things that are disordered eating...that doesn't equal a E.D. to equate the two is to seriously minimize what all of my clients and millions of people who really do have E.D. go,through. IMHOFor the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.
So, what is the ED called before they've reached that 85% figure? There's definitely an ED required to reach that <85% point.
don't let the DSM IV control your life. It's obviously disordered eating.. so probably an NOS diagnosis.
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Lol, so no you claim you were not referring to the eating disorder although you post is titled stop deleting your friends with e.d.....you really meant fat people who lost their appetite i.e your def of anorexic not the clinical mental health term everyone has been referring to for days. So you got corrected did not like it and made up some half baked attempt at justifying, blaming, and mollification to deflect and CYB. Didn't work, just makes me really question your intentions now.
For the record, you can be anorexic or bulimic at any weight.
[/quote]
One correction here, you can not be an anorexia at anorexic at any weight. One of the requirements of anorexia according to the DSM-IV TR one must refusal to maintain a body weight less than 85% of what is expected for their age, height, and frame. That is very much requiring them to be under weight. Sorry but as a therapist that specializes in ED I couldn't allow that misinformation to sit out there like that.
[/quote]
WRONG!
You are confusing Anorexia with Anorexia Nervosa as defined by section 307.1 of the DSM IV.
You may be a therapist but be careful not to confuse people by citing the DSM when I never mentioned Anorexia Nervosa in my post.
Anorexia (which I was discussing) is defined as “lack or loss of appetite, resulting in the inability to eat.”
Your definition relates to Anorexia Nervosa (rom DSM IV) which I never discussed:
* Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and
height, for example, weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight less than 85%
of that expected or failure to make expected weight gain during period of growth,
leading to body weight less than 85% of that expected.
* Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
* Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence
of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current
low body weight.
* In postmenarcheal females, amenorrhea, i.e., the absence of at least 3 consecutive
menstrual cycles. A woman having periods only while on hormone medication (e.g.
estrogen) still qualifies as having amenorrhea.
Type
Restricting Type: During the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the person has not
regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior (self-induced vomiting or misuse
of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas).
Binge Eating/Purging Type: During the current episode of Anorexia Nervosa, the
person has regularly engaged in binge-eating or purging behavior.
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'If you're thin, you are a kook; if you're fat, you're a failure'
The rise of Lena Dunham, Adele and Christina Hendricks might challenge the tyranny of thin, but our obsession with body size is still out of control, argues Lionel Shriver.
The Guardian, Friday 10 May 2013
We're used to actors stripping on camera by now, so, in the many episodes of Girls in which Lena Dunham tugs her dress over her head, what's shocking isn't the bare breasts, but the belly: it's convex. Though Dunham could hardly be called fat, her stomach displays a distinct little jiggle. Has she no shame? No, as a matter of fact. She doesn't.
By increments, the tyranny of the thin is seeing cultural pushback. The bouncing roly-poly Beth Ditto and the formidable what-are-you-looking-at? Christina Hendricks in Mad Men project an audacious aesthetic alternative to the functional-anorexic ideal. So incendiary has the issue of physical size become in the west that weight takes on the character of a political statement. The rise of stars such as Melissa McCarthy of Bridesmaids (who has started her own plus-size clothing line), and television shows such as My Mad Fat Diary, could collectively be seen as the formation of a new party. With the belligerence of Ukip leader Nigel Farage, standard-bearers of the unapologetically three-dimensional say: Shove your skinny minnie game, because we're not playing.
Lena Dunham
Since Girls is a hipper, grittier update of Sex and the City, Dunham's Hannah is clearly crafted in counterpoint to the lean, gym-chiselled Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker. Short and a bit dumpy, Hannah wears tented dresses with unflattering high waistlines. Hannah's ex from college submits the dubious defence: "You were never fat. You were soft, and round, like a dumpling." We never see her on an exercise bike, and when Hannah eats ice-cream we don't picture Dunham spitting it out the moment the scene wraps. When her sort-of boyfriend presses Hannah on whether she's ever "tried a lot to lose weight", she deflects, "I have some other concerns in my life." Imagine any contemporary woman having "concerns" that would top the all-consuming prime directive to be thin.
Weight having become politicised, anyone with a profile in the media who either subscribes to or departs from the template of tininess implicitly represents a constituency, whether they want to or not.
Adele
Indeed, for many in the public eye this de facto advocacy must be unwelcome. As Emma Woolf notes in her forthcoming book The Ministry of Thin, women's magazines hold up Adele "as a role model for 'real' women (when she's just a great singer)". Did Adele choose to go on the campaign trail for the amply proportioned, or is she simply a talented woman who doesn't happen to be neurotic about her weight? You don't volunteer for this job; you get drafted. Anyone in the spotlight is necessarily a gladiator in what has grown into a national spectator sport: following the fluctuating weights of public figures. We comment smugly from the sofa that all those state dinners have certainly filled out Hillary Clinton's cheeks. Resigned to the inevitable scrutiny of her contours, Oprah Winfrey has for years offered up her losing battle of the bulge as a running soap for her fans.
To the degree that the hefty celeb becomes an unwitting champion of her weight class, slimming reads as treachery. "When a famously fat woman loses a large amount of weight," writes Woolf, "there is the sense that they're somehow letting the side down." For zaftig fellow travellers, the voluptuous Nigella Lawson's dropping two stone, or Fat Friends star Ruth Jones dropping four and a half, can amount to disloyalty and desertion – since long gone are the days when your dietary and athletic habits were nobody else's business.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Ironically, heavier comedians, actors, and the characters they play are actually more sympathetic, and easier for audiences to identify with, than the svelte. The skeletally slim are more apt to draw envy, and if you do play the skinnier-than-thou game you will be judged harshly if you gain an ounce. Gwyneth Paltrow, with her chia-seed-strewn cookbook, is not as inherently likable as Jo Brand (whom the tabloids used to decry as a cow). Dunham is beguiling in Girls not in spite of, but, in part, because of that little roll at her waist, and for her to lose that baby fat at this point would be a big career mistake. Accordingly, I gave the narrator in my new novel Big Brother 20 excess pounds, which would make her more appealing to readers in a novel that dealt so intimately with food issues.
So if the ranks of the little and the large are the cultural equivalent of the Tories and Ukip, what are their platforms? The ruling party of the rail-thin embraces the "striver". The human form, and thus the human spirit, is perfectible. Salvation awaits, so long as you pass on that cupcake. All you poor caterpillars can turn into butterflies by dropping another jeans size. Skinniness is next to godliness, and, as you narrow, you near redemption. Subscribers to the ethos of evaporation believe in purification through sacrifice, in the mortification of the flesh, in the triumph of the will. It's an unending battle for self-improvement, but with this crucial caveat: to improve the self is to improve the body. The self is the body. What you see is what you are.
Melissa McCarthy
The upstart party of the portly – or the party of the visible-to-the-human-eye – plumps instead for acceptance. Its supporters reject the "misery today for nirvana tomorrow" model, since that bony lot are never thin enough, will never be satisfied unless they disappear. So gratification delayed is gratification foregone. Moreover, standards of beauty are elastic. How much easier than to starve all day is it to amend the absurd, unachievable aesthetic to which all those serial-dieting suckers are struggling to conform. Believe big is beautiful, and have lunch. Scandalously, this radical faction has the gall to suggest that there is more to life than diet and exercise; that intelligent people occasionally turn their attentions to something else. As Melissa McCarthy told Good Housekeeping magazine about her broad silhouette: "I'm OK with it. I've got other things to think about." The most revolutionary tenet of this manifesto: comely or plain, the body is a husk. It is a home, and can be loved in its way, but in time it will betray you, the scrawny and stout alike, and it is not you. Skinniness is not next to godliness; it is next to nothing. A new look is not a new self. A smaller waist is not the solution to all your problems. Get down to size six, and you will still hate your job and be at loggerheads with your mother.
I know which party I'm voting for.
Me: unlikely poster girl for the size obsession party
Relatively slight, I may make an unlikely poster girl for the UK Independence From Size Obsession Party (Ukisop). Still, I applaud the emergence of cultural icons who don't collapse into a vertical line if they turn to the side, who aren't embarrassed to be seen eating in public, and who, we presume, once in a while think about something other than whether to dress their salads. Let's leave aside for a moment the whole "obesity epidemic" – though last time I checked, fat wasn't contagious – and its attendant health concerns. As I have personally confirmed in the last few weeks during the release of Big Brother, this weight-and-fitness hysteria is out of control, and I think we can all agree if we take a step back that it is only getting worse.
Publishers like their authors to take advantage of publicity opportunities. Garnering any media attention for fiction is a challenge, and anyone who's spent years crafting a novel wants people to read it. Thus, after having been repeatedly punished for doing so, I still give interviews. Following this release, I'll reconsider that policy, although by now that would amount to locking the stable door after the bull**** has bolted.
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious drag, I'd surely be classed as a "serious writer". Yet most profiles of me run in the last few weeks have focused almost exclusively on what I eat, how often I eat, when I eat, how much I exercise, what kind of exercise I do, and exactly how many repetitions of those exercises I perform – in comparison to which the occasional diversions into how often I turn on the central heating qualify as merciful excursions into the profound. Pursued at my age purely to slow, not prevent, my musculature's turning to pudding, my dreary little fitness regimen doesn't begin to compare to any proper athlete's training. Yet one article insinuated that what I described was impossible. Really – how sad would you have to be to lie about how many star jumps you do in front of the Channel 4 news?
Granted, to some degree I invited this nosiness with the subject matter of Big Brother: obesity and our complex contemporary relationship to food. A tentative connection to the novel's themes helps to explain why I might be willing to discuss mundanities like the energy I biologically ingest and expend with journalists. (That and my fatal tendency to answer a question merely because someone asks it unless I can think of a reason I shouldn't, and I usually think of that reason too late.) But this has happened with previous novels that had nothing to do with diet. What I have regarded as decorative chitchat in preparation for the real interview ends up occupying the vast majority of the subsequent profile's text, which focuses on – that's right – what I eat, how often I eat, when I eat … In a recent essay for the Sunday Telegraph, I argued that we over-signify our own and each others' size, and that our focus on food and weight is backfiring. What headline did they choose – which was antithetical to the essay's very point? "MY FEAR OF FAT." You'd think that at least a book review would be obliged to concentrate on the novel at hand, but no. Last week's Evening Standard review of Big Brother begins with – surprise! – when the author eats dinner.
It gets worse – it gets even pettier.
Complimentary tea and biscuits
I often give interviews at One Aldwych, a London hotel that serves a civilised pot of tea with a complimentary plate of biscuits: two cherry-coconut and two chocolate. When I met my first interviewer for Big Brother there in March, the biscuits arrived on the journalist's side of the table. Neither of us touched or even alluded to the biscuits. I didn't like the whole drift of the interview, and wasn't in the mood to munch – although in a brief email exchange exploring the possibility of a second meeting that never materialised, I tossed in the softening, friendly sounding line: "Next time I'll hit the biscuits – which at One Aldwych are killing."
How did this creatively morph in the published profile? We're told that throughout the interview I had "kept urging" the journalist to eat the chocolate biscuits, while refusing to have one myself. Surely, she wrote, I mistook her own refusal to eat a biscuit for the same self-denial on which I obviously pride myself – while, in fact, the poor woman was obliged to keep defending herself against an incessant assault of unwelcome force-feeding because she doesn't like chocolate.
This is minutiae – crumbs, if you will – but oddly important. I was cast as one of those skinny *****es who always needs other people to eat more than they do so they can feel superior.
So, I meet a second journalist in One Aldwych. I eat half a biscuit. Vital information about a literary figure that, of course, makes the profile.
By the third interview, the plate of biscuits lands like a gauntlet on the table. If I decline to eat one, I am a calorie-phobic priss who's terrified of displaying weakness in public. If I eat one, I defy my burgeoning rep (thanks to the previous profiles) as an ascetic, and I am a liar: lose-lose. The only answer was to take that plate head on. We talked about the biscuits.
We talked about the fact that if a journalist granted an interview with Philip Roth were to have filed a piece giving any space whatsoever to whether the author ate a biscuit during the interview, and, if so, what proportion, his or her editor would cut the passage. (True, in rare instances we do learn the dietary habits of influential men; before he retired, the New York Times reported that General David Patraeus eats one meal a day – which bulwarked his daunting image as a strong, fierce military man. When Lionel Shriver eats one meal a day, she's a nut.) We talked about how women in particular now use food and fitness as the currency through which they relate to each other – how at this journalist's office, the chatter between female co-workers was relentlessly about who skipped lunch, violated their diet, started a new diet, broke down and finished the Jaffa cakes, or failed to go the gym. This is how women connect, and how women compete: with biscuits. I enjoyed our conversation, although I went home depressed.
Christian Jessen
But then, men are on course to become every bit as neurotic about their physiques as women. Surely feeling the critical eyes of his audience upon him, Christian Jessen of Supersize vs Superskinny has grown noticeably more gaunt, and didn't seem displeased when the fat content of his buff, cut frame was measured recently on the programme as medically too low. While male celebs such as Robbie Coltrane have typically been able to get away with being chunky so long as they give good value in other departments, in 2011 Jonah Hill of Cyrus fame lost 40lb (18kg), to much comment from the peanut gallery, only to have the Daily Mail banner photos last year suggesting that he'd gained most of it back. Plenty of male actors have caught the diet bug: James Corden, the chubby sidekick on Gavin and Stacey, has now lost five stone (32kg). These gentlemen's girths being a private matter, I really shouldn't be able to look this crap up, but the rise and fall of male celebrity diets have become nearly as much of a public spectacle as the women's.
Consider, by the way, how gleefully the media would have gone to town had the author of Big Brother sported a reproachful bloop above the belt. As I have been mocked for working up a sweat every day, I'd have been mocked as ruthlessly or more so were I a slob. If you're thin, you're a kook; if you're fat, you're a failure. You can't win. In fact, nobody in this game is winning.
A slimmmed-down James Corden
Thus, I herein formally announce my defection to Ukisop. The trivilialisation of my life, character and career in the print media this last month – the reduction of what I write and believe to how I work out and what I eat – is yet more evidence of a communal mental illness. We have bought into a new materialism even more demeaning and superficial than the old kind, whereby the good life meant ownership of a slick make of car. Now we are the material. The mere body in which we shamble defines who we are, and fat-to-muscle ratio scores our very worth as human beings. The most convincing aspect of that alternative "platform" seemingly touted by people in the news with meat on their bones is the rejection of an equivalence between body and self. That need not entail a flat-out rejection of the possibility of self-improvement. Yet it does challenge the notion that to "improve" the body – it goes without saying that translates to "slim" – is to improve the self. In times past, "self-improvement" referred to learning Spanish, taking an adult education course in medieval history, or expanding your vocabulary. Now it refers exclusively to cutting calories and doing crunches.
In his newly translated book The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity, Frenchman Georges Vigarello observes our "changed outlook on the body" and "the displacement of its status to the central spot that organises one's identity". Catastrophically, "the subject 'is' his or her appearance". He concludes: "More than ever before, identity comes from the body, and, more than ever before, we have the anxious feeling that this body can double-cross us."
Quite. Anyone who's disabled, who's survived a terrible traffic accident or been blown up by an IED in Afghanistan, who's gone through painful reconstruction surgery from an acid attack – anyone who gets old (sorry to bear bad tidings, but sooner or later that means you) – can testify that the self is not the body. The soul of a man in a wheelchair is not crippled. The interior world of an elderly woman is not withered. The new materialism is philosophically crude, morally deficient, evolutionarily regressive, existentially stunted and plain dumb.
Kate Winslet
Whether for the sake of rivalry, ingratiating self-deprecation, or bonding, how have we come to the point – and by "we" I do mean we women – where what we eat and how we exercise mediates our relationships and colonises the content of our discourse wholesale? Since when does a mere plate of biscuits present itself as a minefield on which one false crunchy step condemns you as either a snooty ***** or a weak-willed hypocrite? In days of yore, writers, recall, lived the life of the mind, right? They were intellectuals, or creative gnomes, hunched over keyboards, who flourished in their feverish imaginations. All right, I'm a writer. Those journalists were your emissaries, sent to have conversations with me on your behalf. Given an hour with me across a pot of tea, is that what you'd want to talk about – how often I eat? Why do you care how many press-ups I do, or whether I do them at all? For that matter, why do you care what Kate Winslet weighs, or whether a colleague passes on a second sandwich? This stuff is small-minded, catty, humiliating and pathetic. It plays to exactly the stereotype of silly, tittering, mirror-gaping girlies at which many men still, perhaps justly it seems, roll their eyes behind our backs, even if the blokes, too, are increasingly prey to the same navel-gazing at their guts – and it has got to stop.0
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