I recently watched an episode of "Boston Public," and this is my response to the issue it raises about pro-anorexia ("pro-ana") websites and the depiction of eating disorders on television. It is one of confusion and contradictions, a jumble of thoughts that are loud, persistent and obnoxiously painful. Loudest of all is this: I feel angry. I get angry at the teenagers who create these websites, who consider the disease a lifestyle, who help each other with tips on how to get through their pangs of hunger. But then I get angry at myself because I understand how alienated they feel and how desperate they are for an understanding ear. I get angry at the media because the stories I see do not even begin to cover the insidious nature of real eating disorders and the seeming oxymoron of starving upper-middle-class western women. The news programs tout statistics and poll doctors and psychologists about causes, warning signs and treatment. The fictitious dramas on television end with the anorexic "coming to her senses" and eating a bagel. It all makes me angry, and the anger burns inside until it spills out my eyes in tears.
My sister is literally dying of her anorexia. I have rushed her to the emergency room twice on the brink of death. For the last two years, I have been terrified of phone calls, always afraid that the next ring means she's dead. The teenager on "Boston Public" defended herself by labeling her habits a "lifestyle" and not a disease, but in reality eating disorders are both. Every waking second of my sister's day is an agony of hunger, nausea, headaches, dizziness, severe joint-pain and obsessive-compulsive thoughts about food, contamination, a single imagined speck of fat, meat or carbohydrate somehow coming in contact with anything she might touch. She is anxious to the point of panic about every aspect of her life. She is too sick to continue with college, too sick to work and far too stubborn to abide by these facts. She walks three miles a day, has secretly taken a copious amount of laxatives, does push-ups and sit-ups whenever alone in her room and yet worries constantly and feels guilty about not doing enough, eating too much, not being good enough, not being thin enough, being a burden to others.
My 22-year-old sister is so embarrassed of her appetite that she can't even let her anorexic mother see her eat. During the day, she will only ingest Diet Snapple, hot tea and artificial sweetener, which she pours out into small mountains on the palm of her hand and licks up like a dog. She stays up until 4 or 5 a.m. just so she can eat absolutely assured of her privacy. Yet even then, she will only eat asparagus, spinach and the white part of orange and grapefruit rinds. She hordes food as if all the grocery stores in the world will close down tomorrow. She compulsively cooks a frozen block of spinach each night even though she will only lick the pot or bowl with her finger, leaving most of it to accumulate on the stove until the smell becomes so foul that she is forced to get rid of it. She peels three or four oranges or grapefruits a day so that she has amassed a small army of peels to pick at. The peeled fruit then goes in sandwich bags in the refrigerator so that it doesn't mingle with her copious amounts of rotting vegetable matter. All the while, my sister quite seriously insists that her flatulence testifies to the large amounts of food she consumes. I feel helpless and ashamed of my inability to rescue her from the depths of her despair. So instead I get militant and downright rude when I see other stick-thin girls walk by me. I want to scream and shout at them, but I have no words to say. Nothing would come out but deafening white noise.
I don't believe anymore that there is a cure for my little sister. No amount of therapy or intervention or hospital stays and forced feeding has helped her. She knows the drill: she knows how the disease works, she admits to being sick. But this is the cognitive part of the would-be junior-year Princetonian, and it can spit out what every doctor wants to hear but it can't convince the rest of her that it is actually right. This disease has literally corroded her insides to the point where nothing functions the way it was intended, not even her incredibly brilliant mind.
The girls who create these websites say they are desperate to stay or be thin, but they are desperate for something else too. And in each case that something is probably different. I read their diary entries, their menu plans, their encouragement and tricks of the trade. They seek companionship in a lonely and isolating illness. I am so sad for them, for all of us women. I have seen firsthand the ravages of this war and yet I too search for its bounty, always imagining a world of happiness when the desired weight is lost. I think that's why I'm so angry. How can I revile a deadly disease that is taking my most precious possession away from me (and in most respects already has) when I have so heartily subscribed to the same distorted doctrine that thin is beauty and happiness and fat is a life of misery? How can I?
Anorexia nervosa is a killer. It kills your body, mind and soul. Please, please get help before you or someone you love turns into my sister.
