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Eating disorders among women are on the increase.  Over the past twenty years they have become more evident in our society and are changing the way we live.  Natalie Barrett investigates this ‘lifestyle’ and takes a look the world of dieting.  

Twenty years ago the term “Anorexia Nervosa” was almost unknown to most people in the UK.  It was used amongst doctors, psychiatrists and those in similar professions to describe an obscure psychiatric illness that was usually confined to teenage girls.

Today it has become a well-known illness and has taken its place in the tabloid kingdom.  It seems that anyone who is in the public eye and particularly skinny will at some stage be accused of being anorexic.  Popular press journalists report on the sensational side, one example is Victoria Beckham’s size after she gave birth to her son Brooklyn.  The serious press usually report on the cures or the new theories of the illness and the women’s magazines regularly publish “My triumph over Anorexia” stories.  

Eating disorders have become part of our everyday lives.  We read about them in newspapers and magazines, we see documentaries about them on TV and some of us have first hand experience of them - whether personal or through a friend or relative.  We seem to have become desensitised to the severity of what an eating disorder can do to its victim and their loved ones.  Anorexia, Bulimia, Obesity, Obsessive dieting, the list goes on yet the knowledge of why it happens seems frozen in time.  

One I one hundred girls are sufferers and almost all anorexics are middle-class women from the developed West.   This seems to suggest that the illness has a direct relation to the social position of women.  Whether this is the case or not, we have definitely got a problem to deal with.  

As women in the 21st century we are lucky to have had lots of doors opened up for us over the past thirty years.  One of the things we can be grateful for is the amount of clinics and advice and help lines available to us.  These are ways of getting help for ourselves or for people we are worried about.   

When I was researching for this article I decided to look on the Internet for information about eating disorders and advice pages.  I found hundreds of excellent sites (some of which are listed at the end of this article) but I also found some very disturbing pages, some of which I had come across almost a year ago.  

After typing “eating disorders” into a popular search engine I was horrified at some of the web sites still on the list.  It became alarmingly clear that not all of the sites in my list were information or help pages; some were pro-eating disorders.  

Over the past few years girls, mostly in the US, have been using the Internet to create a community of pro-eating disorder sites.  These sites offer “trigger pictures” - which are photographs of extremely thin women, and tips and tricks on how to stay thin and hide your diet from your parents.  Some of the hit counters had totalled more than 14,000 hits in a couple of months, probably the tracks of repeat viewers.   

As I looked through the sites, out of curiosity as well as for research purposes, I began to pick up on a popular theme: anorexia as a lifestyle rather than an illness.  These girls did not want to recover, they ‘liked’ the way they were living and through these pro sites they felt as though they were a part of something.  They related to each other’s stories and gave comfort and advice through emails or chat rooms.  

I wrote an article for Planetgrrl.com about a year ago, which was titled Wasting Away on the Web.  It told of these pro sites and the danger of them towards young girls.  It was completely against the sites and asked for a way to inform parents against them and even a government ban.  This argument started to go into areas of freedom of speech and Internet regulation; things that I do not want to go over here.   

Since writing that article things seem to have changed.  Most of the hosts have deleted the pro-anorexia sites, or pro-Ana sites, as they are more commonly known, from their searches.  Home pages have disappeared and the number of pro-eating disorders pages has decreased, but there is still a worrying amount available hiding between the lines of the search engines.

This relatively new angle on the subject of eating disorders only confirms how out of control it has become.  Should anorexia be talked about as a lifestyle?  Should young girls, some only thirteen, be living this way because they are that worried about how they look?  Where does it all stem from?

As females we are expected to look a certain way and have a certain size, shape and style.  As we know, everyone woman is unique and therefore has the right to look however she wants to.  But in a society where looks seem to be more important than anything else the - pressure is most definitely on.  From magazines to television and advertising to films women are being displayed in a certain way promoting a certain look.  This ‘look’ is being fed to us, leading us to believe that it is true beauty.  

For some women, whether through insecurity or vulnerability, this need to be ‘beautiful’ overtakes their lives.  An eating disorder is formed out of an obsession to look like the women they see in the magazines and their lives become a battle to stay thin. 

The dieting industry is booming.  There are clubs and societies popping up all over the place, women flocking to school halls in the evening to get themselves weighed and find out the latest tips on how to save their ‘sins.’  Books are being published by the hundreds on how to count the calories and the latest fads are always finding their way into our homes through newspapers or word of mouth.  Young women are signing up for long-term memberships to their local gym and middle-aged women are taking part in the slimming club phenomenon.  It seems that everyone is obsessed with the way they look.

Channel Four recently put out a documentary called Skinny Women, where twelve women with eating disorders told their stories to the camera.  The women were from different backgrounds and of different ages but they all suffered with the same obsession – they hated the way they looked.  As the programme went on it seemed that each case was more severe than the last.  This went on until we were introduced to a woman who was ‘recovering’ from anorexia and weighed an alarming three stone.  Each story was different but held the same structure.  Someone or something had triggered them into thinking they were ugly or overweight, whether it was a friend, a past lover or the media.  This programme proved that eating disorders and obsessions about how we look have become a part of the way we live our lives.

Dieting has become a commodity to be consumed.  The seriousness of the more severe eating disorders is being brushed over by the consumer culture.  It is an illness not a trend to try out.  Women die from eating disorders and others let it take over their lives.  Our lives are so short we should be able to live them without the constant pressure of looking how other people want us to look.  It is time that women started helping other women to love themselves and to look in the mirror and like what they see.  We need to be positive and be in a position to encourage and help sufferers instead of creating images and idols that are impossible to live up to.

We need to remind ourselves and the other women in our lives that there are “3 billion women who do not look like supermodels and only 8 who do.”

By Natalie Barrett