Binge Eating Disorder
As promised, I wanted to talk about the appearance of Morgan (aka Fatgrrl) on the Mike & Juliet show. Here are the videos (are you guys getting tired of Mike and Juliet yet? To think, two weeks ago I had no idea who they were).
There are also blow-by-blows at Morgan’s site and at Rachel’s site. Some highlights:
Marie’s part of the interview bothered me, mostly because they filmed her bingeing for the sensationalist aspect of it…and in the voiceover the emphasized how “shameful” it is and how BEs “wolf” food down and consume “thousands and thousands” of calories. That bothers me because BEs already feel a huge amount of shame about what they’re doing, and I don’t see the benefit to making binge eaters feel even more shamed than they already do. I just don’t see why making someone feel like they’re dirty and shameful will prompt them to get help. I really feel like it’s tied in a neat little bow along with fat prejudice and the misconception that making a fat person feel like they’re disgusting, shameful and unworthy will inspire them to lose the weight and join the rest of society in the joy and bliss that the weight-loss ads claim all thin people feel.
This speaks right to the raison d’etre of this blog: shaming fat people is counterproductive, and that definitely includes fat people who suffer from BED. I wish Marie and Morgan nothing but the best, and hope that this experience ends up being a postive one for both of them. On her blog, Rachel responds to a perspicacious quote from Juliet:
Juliet surprised me by pointing out a brilliant observation:
Juliet: “When you’re anorexic you get attention and sympathy because you look sick, but with BED…”Dr. Bartell: “Binge eaters get criticized and ridiculed. But it really is a disorder. We need to think of it like that.”
Bulimia and binge eating disorder eclipse anorexia nervosa, but anorexia is often glamorized because it carries what I call the “maiden in distress” element. When most people think of an anorectic, they often think frail, weak, and emaciated, compounded by the fact that anorexia most often develops in adolescence and predominantly among girls. There’s also another component: envy. I think many people also secretly admire the anorectic’s (perceived) sense of control and abstinence from food, as well as the fact that by DSM-IV definitions, anorectics are extremely thin. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard women say, “I wish I could catch a little anorexia.”
I would add that anorexics and bulimics, for a long time before they begin to “look sick,” receive a great deal of praise for their weight loss, regardless of the fact that they’re hurting themselves in order to achieve it. Whereas people who suffer from binge eating disorder, if they are obese, are immediately seen as “fat and lazy.”
Morgan and Marie were very brave to go on the show and speak so openly about something that affects many people in the fat community, but that must be extremely difficult to talk about when it is so personal. Thank you, ladies. You’re both beautiful.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Eating Disorders, Meta, TV, Video
That was a suprisingly well-done segment – there were parts that were a little insensitive, but mostly I felt like “Wow! They’re taking this seriously, not making it into ‘lazy fat people’, etc. etc.”
And both Marie & Morgan were amazing – articulate, smart, and very relatable. I’m thinking that seeing them will help a lot of girls get themselves some help.
What is your idea of a possible solution to obesity? If obesity is not to be criticized, how do you propose it be helped?
Skittle: your question presupposes that there is something wrong with large bodies in the first place. I’m not looking for a solution to large, healthy bodies because I don’t see a problem.
Any psychologist worth their salt will tell you that punishment doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work. In my case, beating myself up over symptom use from my eating disorder just keeps the cycle of guilt and eating going. I have had to find a new way to structure my thinking about food and size.
I would argue that, similarly, what this culture needs is less criticizing and more restructuring of thoughts.
I very much wish that eating disorders were not compared in this way by those of us in the FA movement. As the mother of a teenager who had anorexia, I can assure you that there is just as much blame and shame associated with anorexia and bulimia as with obesity.
While it’s true that my daughter did receive compliments on her “figure” while emaciated, she–and we–also came in for a lot of disgust and assumptions: that she was a spoiled brat doing this for attention, that she was ungrateful, that she was selfish, that we had abused her (sexually or otherwise), that we’d neglected her, that we’d criticized her appearance one too many times, etc.
It’s hurtful and unhelpful for us to pit these e.d.s against each other, in our own minds or projecting that onto the general public. Believe me, there’s plenty of shame to go around here. We need to counter that by refusing to compare and compete for the most-to-be-pitied award.
I missed this so thanks for posting clips.
I feel as though Ive nothing powerful to add as it has been said so much better by both you and commenters above.
Harriet’s last sentence? POWERFUL and thought provoking.
“We need to counter that by refusing to compare and compete for the most-to-be-pitied award.”
Boy isn’t that true! I know people who always want pity and it’s just annoying. I agree with anorexia, for some time I stopped eating as well, but then developed the opposite effect of eating too much. It is shameful, you’re constantly tired, you’re constantly told you look good and not to stop, and then you realize to be healthy, you have to stop. It’s not because you want attention, it’s because you’re completely obsessed with being the ‘ideal’ female.
You’re absolutely right, and if I implied any kind of competition between eating disorders, I apologize. I think people with eating disorders of any type struggle with all kinds of issues—some the same, some different—and should be treated with equal compassion.
Just a little antectote:
Yesterday I was at lunch with a friend of mine who happens to be extremely slender but who can scarf down a jumbo chili-cheeseburger with the best of ’em.
We ran into some acquaintances, and as my friend’s food arrived, the acquaintance said, “I didn’t think you ate!!!”
After we finished the meal and walked out of the restaurant, my friend expressed how horrible it makes her feel when people accuse her of being anorexic.
I began to understand that my friend and I were a lot more alike than I thought – even though I’m always accused of scarfing down the Krispy Kremes.
Incidentally, I’ve lived in a town with a Krispy Kreme in it for almost three years and never stopped by.
Oddly, I’ve also been accused of not eating – and I’m fat! This guy I used to work with looked astonished as I ate a sandwich and orange at my desk and claimed he never saw me eating. I suspect this was because I tended to eat breakfast at home before work (and doughnuts at the office rarely tempt me) and often went out to lunch, instead of eating at work.
In another case, a guy I was dating decided that I must be eating secretly before our dates because I couldn’t finish the portions at most restaurants. To be fair, he had recently lost a lot of weight and had his own body image issues. (He also accused me of having low self-esteem for refusing to go to a tanning salon. If he’d asked, he’d have learned that I have a horrible phobia about skin cancer, being a light skinned person with a lot of moles.)
Thanks for your insight, Harriet. I think you’re right that there is plenty of shame/blame that gets passed around. I developed an ED in my 20s in graduate school and there was definitely a lot of scoffing that I had the problems of a teenage girl or had spoiled white middle class girl syndrome. I even had medical professionals who accused me of being attention seeking and/or simply being immature. I can only imagine the blaming that goes along with being a parent of an eating disordered child (and I want to say that my parents are pretty darn awesome, too, though they have gone through plenty of self-blame for my problems).
I think in a lot of ways women (and in different ways men) are really trapped. We are blamed if we “let ourselves go” and we are vain if we worry too much about our bodies.
Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. You’re so right, pennylane.
And gawd knows the world lays enough crap on us for how we look or don’t look. We’ve got to be kind to one another. The new feminism, maybe?
Speaking of perceptions, one of my very best friends is one of those girls who is very thin despite completely subsisting on fast food and junk food. She even admitted that she really has “no right to be as small as I am”, because it’s really just “dumb luck and in no way a result of healthy living.”
I eat healthier and probably less than she does, yet I weigh TWICE what she does. But she made a great observation once, she said
“People look at you, see you are overweight and automatically the assumption is that you are larger because you lay on the couch eating Cheet-os. However, no one ever sees me and says ‘Wow you are so thin. I bet you work out everyday and eat great!’.”
She is right. It really is all perception. For all the proclamations of the importance of health, health is not what is valued. Thinness is the only commodity that counts (in society). It doesn’t matter how it is accomplished.
The naturally thin individual is to be admired and envied. The individual who achieves thinness (by whatever means) is to be revered and commended.
I honestly agree with what is being said about anorexia and our society. I don’t think it is a matter of pity or saying one ED is worse than another, I think it is an issue of misconception. We live in a society that is obsessed with image and the image that is desired is the thinner. In that regard anorexia especially is often missed at first because of the obsession with beauty and being thin. I have worked with girls with ED and often it wasn’t until they were sick that people started to realize that the size they were maintaining was not natural or normal for their bodies. Then when being told there is something wrong with how they look now it only further exacerbated the ED, in the same way that those of us struggling with BED have the cycle of seeing how people perceive us and it only furthering our shame and guilt leading to further binging episodes.
I just wish this morning shows hosts were not so bubbly when talking about things like suicide. As well as the fact that Juliet seemed to be asking really ignorant questions. At least they were willing to do the segment.