I kinda thought it’d be a cold day in hell when I used US Magazine for anything other than a source for pure sugary gossip, but turns out I was wrong. It’ll be about 53 degrees in DC today, and damned if US Magazine doesn’t have a really interesting story in the back of this issue.
The story has to do with a documentary made by the BBC called Super-Skinny Me: The Race To Size Zero. In the documentary, two young British women who are a US size 8 (UK size 12) use a combination of diets made famous by celebrity to see if they can drop to a US size 0 (UK size 4) in 6 weeks or less. The women are supervised by producers and nutritionists as they begin to follow a stricter exercise regime (that, not surprisingly, becomes more intense as the weeks go on), and start using such famous diets as the Master Cleanse (which is also known as the “Lemonade Diet” or “That Insane Diet of Water, Cayenne Pepper, Lemon Juice and Maple Syrup that Beyonce used for ‘Dreamgirls’”), the raw diet, the macrobiotic diet, and the generic “Steamed Fish and Vegetables” diet. One also took advantage of that good ol’ LA mainstay, the Colonic.
The two girls both succeeded in the dropping the weight. One of them, Katie Spicer (pictured above) — who admitted she’d had a tendency towards eating disorders in her teens which was never fully realized — quickly began restricting greatly, then began to binge, and soon began to purge. To their credit, the BBC producers and nutritionists immediately stopped her program when they found out about the purgeing and pulled her from the documentary, telling her she was developing bulimia and demanding she get help immediately. Spicer — in the article in US — said she’s still frustrated she wasn’t allowed to complete the film, and maintains that she knew what she was doing and knew that she was on a dangerous path… but that she was in control. Once again, good on the BBC for knowing that eating disorders are dangerous and those who are developing them can never be trusted with their own health.
But the most interesting and revealing part of this article — beyond how incredibly disturbing the documentary is in both premise and execution, which (thankfully) seems to be the BBC’s point — is what both of the women said about their lives now after filming. Both have gained back most or all of the weight they lost (yay!), and both continue their mostly-new exercise regimes, and both are suddenly much more interested in eating “healthily.”
It’s the eating “healthily” part that made me sit up and take notice. Most of what they mention as part of their new healthy diets — fish, vegetables, less frying more steaming, lean protien, less sweets, etc. — come recommended on almost a daily basis to both the American and British publics (England is another country that is very much struggling with a national weight problem). But their new commitment to new, more restricted diets in light of the extreme exercise they just participated in sheds light, I think, on a more pervasive and terrifying eating disorder that is developing among most girls and young women (and older women too, don’t get me wrong) today: health obsession and nutritional anorexia.
Neither of those terms is clinical. I’m sure that doctors know more about this on me; what follows is largely anecdotal. But I’m sure many, many of you girls will recognize these symptoms in some — even many — of your friends, and maybe even in yourself.
I knew a girl in college who was a beautiful, smart girl. She loved running — usually ran twice a day for about an hour each time, either outside or in the gym — and was very, very picky about her food. There were a lot of salads, a lot of vegetables. Lots of skinless chicken and fish. Very little red meat, and while she certainly wasn’t afraid of bread or pasta, any carbohydrate was accompanied by something that could arguably make it “healthier” — like flax seed oil instead of olive oil in her pesto. She also had an intense vitamin regime, and while she loved to drink (not a binge drinker, just a college student), she was very careful about “cleansing” her body the next day, usually through some kind of detox tea followed by a couple diuretics to get the extra toxic water out. I envied her calves for all three years that I knew her. She, while a bit thick and flabby around the belly, was in excellent shape.
It became clear to me after about a year of knowing her well that this was not just a diet or a dietary preference — it was an eating disorder. We were both part of the same campus organization (because this blog contains my real name, and there’s a possibility she or people we both knew could find it, I’m opting to leave out as many details as possible both for the sake of her anonymity and because I am not a doctor and I do not want her to feel I am labeling her incorrectly — I am simply stating my observations and the impression they left on me, and the worry they caused me), and when that organization had functions or celebrations that had us eating out in restaurants she could become very finicky and hard to please. Numerous special requests would be sent to the chefs, and concerns about butter and salt would come to the fore. She loved sweets and deserts, but eating them in restaurants made her restless, and after indulging she would talk about going to the gym.
I want to be clear: she was NOT anorexic or bulimic. I don’t beleive she ever binged and purged (we all binged from time to time, especially during stressful late night sessions associated with this organization, but I never once saw any behavior that would indicate she was purging), and I never saw her restricting her caloric intake severely. What she would do, though, was avoid high-calorie or even mid-calorie foods under the guise of being “healthy.” She had many appointments with the school nutritionist, and was often reading about new health trends in magazines. What she restricted was how much real food made it past her lips, opting for the soy substitute for just about anything soy could sub for, because it would have less fat, less calories, less salt, less sugar.
The more I look around, the more I see young women learning this kind of behavior from parents and older siblings, and the more I see them synthesizing it as both normal and healthy behavior. You’re just looking out for your body! Eating more protien, less fat, less salt, less sugar, less carbs; you’re helping. Keep out the natural toxins. Skim milk is good for you; margarine is good for you; butter and cream and the devil. Only to be indulged in minimally at holiday time.
Except this isn’t necessarily true. Yes, everything in moderation (and I’m not Paula Deen — I love me some butter, but I’m not going to put half a pound into everything I cook. I also fucking love salad and all things vegetable), but there are things we get from fatty foods that we desperately need. Take, for instance, the fats found in whole milk and butter. The majority of those fats contain Omega-3 Fatty Acids, which are absolutely integral to brain growth; they coat brain cells, protecting them from damage caused by other things we partake in our lives, from the chemicals in some foods to the damage done by drinking. Since brain cells cannot regenerate, the protection of the ones we have is paramount. Omega-3’s also encourage the growth and maturation of brain cells, literally making us smarter people.
Likewise, non-trans fats provide important energy for the body to use when we aren’t eating, and if Americans ate like the rest of the world — in smaller portions, 3-5 small meals a day — those fats would come in very handy for keeping our energy consistent throughout the day.
Moreover, the ability to eat real food without freaking out about our health would allow us to once again act like real human beings. We eat to survive, yes, but one of the most laudable things about our collective civilization (on every continent, in every culture) is that we’ve made something we need to do into something we like to do. To be part of the new health-obsessed culture is to deny the pleasures of Creme Brulee, or Steak Au Poivre, or quiche. Food is good. We eat it because we need it, but we also eat it because it tastes good and we have learned to do wonderful things with it. The new disorder that so many young women are falling prey to is the first step in robbing our lives of all its sensual pleasures; already we’re told not to actually take pleasure in sex because that makes us sluts, or dirty, or that we’re going to get diseases and die. To rob us of life’s two greates pleasures, eating and sex? How terrible! Also, it is worth it to note that the stigmas attached to eating and sex are almost exclusively applied to women. Men can eat and fuck all they want; if a woman does either (much less both), something is wrong with her.
Frederic Fellini once said, “Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.” It is important that we remember that we do not lose the right to enjoy both food and sensuality just because the world wants us to be stick thin and vapid. And while it is noble to strive for health, it is both degrading and dangerous to give into the obsessions we are developing over food, what’s in it, what isn’t, and what should or shouldn’t go into our bodies.
–Sara Tenenbaum
