Elite Development model /Elite Models, New York
Anorexia is bad. It ruins your teeth, destroys your heart muscle, makes you forgetful, anxious, tired, paranoid, angry and depressed. It gives you chronically low blood pressure which leads to fainting and hypoglycemia which can lead to seizures. It leads to osteoporosis, fertility problems, hair loss on your head and hair gained on your body. You are cold all the time. Not to mention hungry.
Plus you could die.
And Yet
And yet… the thing is the vast majority of anorexics live. Some of them recover completely. Some of them make a sort of devil’s pact with their illness that mostly keeps them on an even keel. And then there are a whole host of women who fall in the subclinical category. I call them functional anorexics – those who maintain an unrealistically low body weight, unhealthy by WHO & CDC standards, but still function at a relatively high level.
Elite Development model /Elite Models, New York
They don’t end up in the hospital. They don’t do inpatient treatment. They bear and raise children. They hold down jobs and have relationships and go to college. Which isn’t to say they don’t suffer severe physical and emotional consequences. They just don’t die from them.
I believe that a lot of the Hollywood women and models fall into this category. Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss are both reputed to have a BMI of 14 or lower (18.5 is officially underweight according to the WHO). The former is world renown for her restrictive eating habits of which she makes no effort to hide. The latter is world renown for her unapologetic use of cocaine, meth & heroin to keep her weight down to her pre-pubescent trend-setting Waif level. But they have both managed to bear and raise children. They have successful careers and families and homes. And a good measure of their success can be attributed to that which we most denigrate them for: their unhealthy weight.
Auschwitz Chic
“Auschwitz chic” is the name given by one industry insider to these kinds of images, eerily reminiscent of the genocide people are too horrified to remember and too terrified to forget. Why idealize this? Is it because the last two generations of Americans haven’t experienced a holocaust on a personal level in their lifetimes and so they glorify this emaciation in the way that teenagers watch horror movies in an effort to use their fantasy violence, which they can control, to mute the real world violence, which they cannot? Do they truly mean to say that it is more beautiful to look like a concentration camp victim than a headless McFatty plastered on CNN?
All of this would be an academic discussion left to the genetic superiors and their handlers to sort out if it weren’t filtering down to the fundamental levels of society. Functional anorexia has gone beyond models and actresses to become a way of life. We see it in a Weight Watchers meeting where the average woman attending is a size 6. We see it not only in high schoolers but in their carpool-driving mothers and concert-attending grandmothers.
And we see it in our friends.
Take a birthday party for a girlfriend a couple of years ago. It was supposed to be fun – just a girl’s night out at a restaurant where we ordered a bunch of desserts and appetizers and talked and/or harassed the waiter until the early hours of the morning. And it was a lot of fun. Until the food got there. Not a single girl among us was overweight and yet we were all “eating healthy” (because nobody says “diet” anymore).
A feast of delicious, fragrant food in front of us and every last one of us with our napkin over our plates. We picked and poked and rearranged and even joked about who was going to end up with all the takeout boxes but we didn’t eat it. Not more than a few bites anyways. Then it came time for cake. Songs were sung, wishes were wished and cake was dished up. We all waited expectantly for the birthday girl to taste hers first. She ate the whole thing with us staring at her.
And then she went to the bathroom. I’d bet a plate of buffalo wings she threw it up.
All of which makes me wonder what the long-term consequences of functional anorexia are. What does it do to one’s body to hold it right at the edge of unhealth? What does it do to your mind to maintain that precarious balance between the physical desire of hunger and the psychological desire for admiration? On one hand, you might actually live longer on calorie restriction. On the other hand, there is the whole quality of life to consider. But on the other hand (I apparently have 3), one’s quality of life does suffer in our society if you don’t conform to the norm of thinness.
Oh the vanity. I can’t help but think that some day we are all going to be sorry for this.
Man. I read things like this and wondered how in the world I made it through my teenage years having relatively little idea about eating disorders, or worrying about being thinner.
I’d like to know, so I can help my kids have a healthy relationship with food too.
Something I’ve found myself doing more and more often lately, whenever I’m in a social situation, is wondering how many of the people around me have unhealthy relationships with their bodies and food. From the types of comments that people will make and the way they act (such as your example of everyone getting together for food and then not eating), and hearing people openly talk about their unhappiness with how/what they eat, it’d appear that almost EVERYONE has had some kind of disordered eating at some point in their lives. And that is a very, very sad thought.
That link to the WW meeting? Totally makes me want to sit in on a meeting myself to see what its like. No doubt it’d be incredibly interesting and insightful.
and Ive pondered so much the true anorexic (wearing the baggy clothes/all about control and NOT aesthetics and *not* caring one bit how others look) and the hollywood anorexic who LOVES her (his? hello MANOREXIC huh?) bod, flaunts it and *does* think that youre (the royal youre) fat.
man we have screwed up our society huh?
I watch my toddler intuitively eat and all the right stuff and pray daily I can preserve that.
M.
Just looking at the pictures made me sad–and furious. How come there is not more outrage that these images are being idealized? The fact that these are all MODELS, and not in-patients in some clinic, is just shocking to me.
I think you have a great point about there being “functional” anorexics, who probably kid themselves about their behavior because they haven’t killed themselves with it… yet.
The whole situation is so sad.
Oh Charlotte. That birthday story with your friends made me so sad! Sadder than the pics of the models, because I mean, they seem wierd and foreign to me. I don’t know of any straight man that finds that look desirable, only women and gay men in the fashion industry. Right? I mean, I would bet you money that if you showed those pics to 100 straight men, they would all go “ew”. And yet somehow women, including many models and actresses, think this is the way they are supposed to look?!
Me, I am a size 8. I could probably stand to lose 10lbs body fat, for my health. I am also an attractive woman who loooves food and would never, ever give up cake on my birthday! It’s hard to beleive that such women exist. Good for you for posting such an honest blog and for taking steps to heal yourself! I hope your friends are as insightful as you are.
Beautiful and brilliant post that I’ve read on the morning that I’ve decided today is the day I’m going to stop throwing up.
wow.
you’ve brought me to tears.
Lori
I’m with you MizFit, the one thing I pray for is that my daughter doesn’t end up screwed up w/body image & food like I did.
Although I’m no longer active in my ED I will always consider my self EDed…kind of like an alcoholic only you need food to live. But it’s hard for me to understand how a functional anorexic/bulimic can maintain functionality for so long (victoria beckham). Sure, I maintained it for a while, but eventually I became so consumed that my functionality went POOF and it was all or nothing. And my ‘all’ was a pretty nasty picture…nothing anybody would want to be around.
the fact that those pictures are what the agency uses to PROMOTE the models is, in a way, scarier than their thinness. “Functional anorexia” is a funny, bizarre terms, a product of our messed up times. Because today, you can walk around hating yourself, not eating anything but salad, puke occasionally, etc, and you are PRAISED. Coveted. 30 years ago you’d have been hospitalized. Now, I feel like you must be on the berge of death before anyone takes notice. And, speaking from experience, I can tell you that often the major goal of a girl with an ED is to be noticed in some way – and she does this by becoming invisible.
This makes me so sad. We have basically accepted eating disorders in our culture, and for what? I know a lot of EDs are about control and less about food…and I have even congratulated myself on “being in control of my intake,” but it just goes back to the question of WHY have we become this way? Why do we find the extreme so compelling? It’s so sad that we can’t accept ourselves, whether it be food-related or not. I think in a way TV was one of the worst inventions because now we’re a culture fixated on looks…and now we have the internet – any hope of ending this would have to start with a major power outage.
The reason the Victoria Beckhams of the world can continue to function (at least psychologically, I have no idea how they do it physically) is because, in that world, it is the norm.
In Hollywood, (and in the modeling industry) it is NORMAL to be disordered. In your eating, exercising, and thin-at-all-costs mentality. Smoking, living on coffee, and taking drugs (both legal and non, including Adderol) is a way of life. Working out for hours a day. And then, of course, lying about it.
In fact, it’s not just normal, it is EXPECTED. You’re SUPPOSED to be ultra-thin, so of course you do whatever it takes to get and stay that way. And then producers and studio heads act all shocked when someone’s drug dependency or ED comes to light.
I read every link from your article this morning and it really is horrible and normal all at once. That birthday story I have seen all too many times. My friends tend to be more subtle about it, we “share” a lot of entree’s or pick at 3 appetizers between 8 people. It’s sad. So I just stopped going. I stopped doing the 4+ women dinner parties because of their futility. We go kayaking instead, which feels slightly less disordered.
[Morbid joke alert]
That’s not a 3rd hand, that’s an emaciated bone sticking through.
Sorry, that’s what I thought after seeing those images.
I was at a Youth Conference last week with 25 kids 14-18yrs old. We had spaghetti/salad/rolls one night and many of the girls did not even touch it. The woman in charge over the girls grew up on a ranch in a small Colorado town and commented to me that she doesn’t understand why the girls don’t eat. She said when she was their age, when she was hungry, she ate. She then told me the next day that the girls ate every scrap of junk food/snacks we brought up for the nighttime. On the other 4th hand, the guys ate heartily, and did not even touch the nighttime snacks. But then again I hope the girls didn’t pass gas all night long either.
It’s like my scrawny 11-yr old daughter. She picks at her dinner and eats maybe 3 “mandatory” bites. And then raids the pantry all-night for chocolate chips, and potato chips, and cereal. And then complains that she’s fat.
Yikes. Glad I had lunch first.
And do you always make wagers in Buffalo Wings? Because you’d be fun to bet with.
I really don’t know what to say. I just want to complement you on the wonderful writing you do about difficult issues.
Dr. J
I see what Brian sees. Women/girls turning down normal food to avoid being fat and then consuming empty sugars to stay alive. That is what bothers me. At least the people living on the edge of starvation are conscientous about the nutrients and quality of their food. Food isn’t everything in life, whether you are eating it or not.
You’ve said it all so eloquently. I often wonder how my friends and I grew up without any sort of ED problems, and hope I can somehow raise kids to be healthy and happy.
Functional anorexia. That is so my mother. Every day she would weigh herself to make sure she was exactly 98 pounds. I was a tall skinny girl and at 5’9″ weighed 110 when I graduated high school. I went to college and went down to 95 pounds and scared even her. She spent my teenage years telling me I was fat and my college years sending me food.
Mom is still anorexic and weighs about 85 pounds. She needs a lady to come in every day to feed and bathe and take care of her. She has tremors and cannot move around on her own. She is an invalid and still thinks she is fat. So much for quality of life.
For me, I find that it is better to be friends with men. They generally do not have these eating issues and I don’t have to sit around and not eat with them. You will never see a group of men at a restaurant, staring at food, and not eating it. I am no longer underweight. I don’t feel funny eating what I want. The guys all eat more than I do anyway.
Whoa, this is pretty intense. I can’t believe nobody ate anything! Was the food bad, i.e., lots of hydrogenated fats, no veggies, etc? I can understand if nobody touched anything if that were the case because I NEVER eat that stuff. If it’s “buffalo wings,” that sauce BEST be made w/ some organic, low-sodium, MSG-free ingredients. My friends think I starve myself when I don’t eat such junk, but I always tell them it’s because I can’t stand to eat the garbage they’re serving. Plus… I was also under the impression that obesity is the bigger problem. or… ARE WE JUST MAKING TOO MUCH OF A BIG DEAL W/ THESE “OUTLYING CASES” BY TRYING TO MAKE THEM SEEM LIKE THE AVERAGE/NORM? Or do most of you out there engage in similar starvation practices?
Oh Anonymous! I do hope that you stopped throwing up. I hope you manage to never do it again. You are strong enough and you can do it. Life is worth it. (((HUGE HUGS)))
Brian – Very interesting comment about your youth group & your kids. I think I will do a whole post on that one;)
Why won’t this girl’s mother help her?? Why doesn’t her family do anything? Are they blind? Feeding off her success? How can her modeling agency condone this? Why doesn’t someone put her in a hospital?
It doesn’t make any sense.
they’re so beautiful!
Anorexia is a serious illness and those that have it should be help. However, you need to do some homework before you go pulling pictures of models to use as examples. I happen to be the mother of Alyssa Young and I can guarantee that she is not a functional or any other kind of anorexic. This picture you posted of her was when she was 16 and had just reached the height of 5’11”. She also was in professional ballet training so she had a very physical lifestyle. She has always been a thin person. So much of it IS genetics. Also she probably eats more for a snack than some of your posters each in a day. She does eat a full balanced healthy diet and by healthy I mean food that is not processed and not full of chemicals and preservatives and she exercises. She also has physicals once a year and has always been healthy and drug free. So help those that need help by doing your homework first and kindly remove Alyssa’s picture from your examples before you find yourself with a slanderous lawsuit.
Hi Bobbi,
Thanks for taking the time to write me. My heart goes out to you as you are obviously a concerned and loving mother. I am glad that your daughter is doing well & is healthy! I removed the pictures, per your request. However, I left the link to the original source article – you may want to speak to them as well about having her image removed. I wish her continued success in her career(s)! Do let me know if I can be of help to you in any other way.
Thankyou for your quick response. The girl that I had asked to be removed is Alyssa Young. You removed someone else. Please remove Alyssa.
Bobbi –
Wow, that’s embarrassing! Sorry about the confusion. The proper picture has been removed.
When people say you will live longer on calorie restriction. They don’t mean anorexic restricition which is anywhere from 100-800 calories. They mean anywhere from 1000-1700 calories. So don’t go saying you will live longer if you eat 600 calories a day. No, you won’t live longer, you will DIE AN EARLY DEATH BECAUSE YOUR BODY CAN’T SUPPORT ITSELF ANYMORE.
For some reason, none of this even matters to me. I'm 15, and at 14, I started Bulimia. Now I don't eat. I have been overweight my whole life, and never cared until I turned 14. Now at 15, I have this huge obsession of not gaining weight. I lost around 40 pounds in 5 weeks, and I weigh 145, and still see nothing but fat. If I don't like how I look that day, I will cancel out all my plans and stay home, escaping the world. The truth is, no one ever taught me about this. I figured it out myself. Everyone tells me I'm not fat, and never was. But in third grade, I weighed 236. Whice I've always been a two years older then everyone else in my grade, but still. To be honest, I'd rather be dead then fat. And the funny part is, I'm a guy.
Anonymous – I don't know if you'll be following up on your comment but I seriously hope that you will reach out to someone (not anonymously and not on the Internet) to get some help. All EDs feel good at the beginning but TRUST ME, they take over your whole life until you are nothing but a slave to their whims. You're young, don't let this control the rest of your life. Please, please talk to someone you can trust that can help you (i.e. a school counselor or a teacher or a pastor etc.)
There is only one rhetorical question in this post to which I would respond, "yes." As an anorexic young woman who has made this devil's pact and lived on it for three years, I support any anoretics who can function well under the thrall of the disorder.
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