The Body Image Issue: NEDAwareness Week

As a sort of response to National Eating Disorder Awareness week, February 26th-March 3rd 2012, I decided I would talk about something linked with it, which is the issue with body image. In my eyes, that is one of the main reasons for eating disorders--somehow, for some reason, there is just this malcontent with the way in which the body looks. It could be because of something that someone said. It could be because of the way media portrays both women and men. It could be because of something else entirely. It's probably a combination of many things.

All I know for sure is what I experience, and for me it's been a combination of many things. It's been a combination of comments, media, jokes and probably even things that I'm not entirely aware of. It's been a culmination of years and years of having to deal with these things. Actually, this is one thing that I'm most anxious about posting, even on here, because it is something that surrounds me even today. A lot of my other posts have to do with the past or past issues, and so it feels safer to talk about them. This is still very real and alive, so it's not as easy to speak about. But yes, I have had and do have body image issues.

At my heaviest, I was 155lbs, which probably doesn't seem like that much, but is overweight for a young woman of my height. Even before that, I was never really that thin and seemed to be on the heavier side. When I was younger, I would get the typical teasing because of it. Words like "fat" were thrown around, and when I was really young I don't much remember it getting to me, but eventually it did. And when it did, I started to feel insecure. And when I felt insecure, I started to hide myself in clothing and just hide myself entirely. It came to the point where I started to be hyper-conscious of my body, but I never really knew what to do about it.

I've always felt like I'm too lazy to try and be active, that I like food too much to truly be anorexic, and that I was too afraid of destroying myself physically to become bulemic, so I was stuck with the body that I had, feeling insecure and isolated. Perhaps on some level I did have an eating disorder though, because even though my eating habits didn't really reduce or change, I felt like I was more aware of what I was eating. People, even me sometimes, tend to think of eating disorders only as being a restriction of food, or starvation all together, because often those are the stories we see on television programs like Dr. Phil. But eating disorders are more than that. Overeating, under eating, just any issue with eating could be, in my opinion, considered an eating disorder. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders) probably has a different opinion, but I feel like that manual is lacking in many areas.

So maybe I had some sort of eating disorder back then. I am no longer the weight that I was, but it wasn't through stravation that I got myself here. A huge chunk of it was because first I had gum surgery and then not too long after I was really sick; maintaining that weight loss has indeed been a change in my eating habits, but those I also attribute to being sick and having the surgery since during that time I was eating less, and so it just kind of continued. A few have expressed concern that I don't eat, but I do. Just not a huge amount.

Recently I came across this image, which really irriated me. I'm sure there are some "skinny" people out there who "complain" that they are fat just to garner attention or because they're fishing for compliments. But at the same time, it could be directly related to a body image issue and even an eating disorder. My response to this image is: "That moment when people are insensitive to eating disorders and self image issues. Really?!" People don't seem to understand to what extent that those with body image issues don't see themselves as they are. Sometimes it could be because of that one comment someone made, no matter how long ago it was or how many positive comments have been made since. It's just not as simple as an image like this wants to make it sound and I was thoroughly disappointed to see this appear on my facebook news feed.

One complicated mess that I feel directly fuels body image issues is the media portrayal of people. For instance, I know that media images are contrived and photoshopped. I know that they aren't real. But even with this knowledge, the problem persists, because these are the images that are valued. These images are the ones deemed as sexy, hot, gorgeous, and ultimately ideal, albeit an ideal that is not reasonably attainable. To be other than these is to be mocked, or at the very least to feel like that is what will happen. Stupid jokes such as "What gets easier to pick up the heavier it gets?" with answers like "Women" are jokes that perpetuate this need to be skinny and this negativity towards all else. Some might be inclined to aruge that it is just a stupid joke, but the joke exists because someone believes it. There are just so many negative connotations towards people who are not "skinny" or the "ideal." How fair is that? How reasonable is that? It's not. Not at all. And so these problems persist.

To blame it solely on things like this would be equally unfair, because of course not everyone who faces these things succumbs to these pressures. I believe there is some sort of mental predisposition to it, but there are definitely outside triggers.

Overall, it's all one big complicated mess, and like most other things, I feel like we should make ourselves more aware and sensitive to eating disorders and body image issues. It needs to be realized that these things are not as straightforward as people want to believe. Even I have only scratched the surface, but hopefully, it has done some good.