It’s not about being thin. (Except for the new wannarexic.)
(More on “wannarexia,” below.)
Anyway. Just like “it’s not about the food,” it’s also not about the weight.
It’s about calming anxiety. (you can’t stop & eat on the roof of a burning building)
It’s about taking up less space. (Saint Mother Theresa deserves this food more than i do)
It’s about taking up less space. (the smaller the target, the harder to aim.)
It’s about controlling a body that insists upon making you a target for predators. (you can’t grope what isn’t there)
It’s about punishing a body that is deformed. That bleeds. That wheezes, or vomits, exposing your vulnerability when you’re upset.
It’s about expressing “THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG HERE AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS BUT WE ALL NEED HELP” in the only way you know how and that will demand help because you’re literally dying.
It’s about not looking pregnant. (pregnant=sex; childbirth=death)
It’s about becoming invisible. (you can’t hurt me if you can’t find me)
It’s about tolerating intense pain. (feeling invisible doesn’t hurt as much when i can blame myself for disappearing)
It’s about seeing an abusive grandparent in the mirror. Each birthday, your memory of her, at your current age, is clearer. (I wasn’t alive when she was 35 or 40. I was too little to remember her at 45. But I do remember her at 50. I remember even better when she was 51. Better at 52.)
And each year your body looks more and more like hers. (why do you know what hers LOOKED like?) (what, EVERYBODY’s grandma didn’t run around in a bikini?!?!)
And each year the mirror makes you sadder and more ashamed.
OK. So what about Wannarexia and Wannarexics?
First. No matter how/why/when you starve, malnourished people are all the same.
(sorry, no, starving doesn’t make special – it makes you like every other starving person)
See: “Minnesota Starvation Experiment” (meaning: see it by googling it)
Wannarexics are only different at the beginning.
(IN GENERAL:)
They’re not embarrassed they starve; they’re proud of it and will draw attention to it.
They’re not desperate to trick you into thinking they eat more; they’ll publicly post their tiny meals on Facebook and Instagram, desperate to get noticed.
They don’t try to hide their shrinking frame with baggy clothes; they highlight it with clingy fabrics & styles that bare their midriffs and thigh gaps and (disappearing) cleavage.
And then they’ll photograph their skinny selves in special poses that look skinnier which you can learn on YouTube.
And they’re far more comfortable displaying their curves in these pics than a “real” anorexic who is trying to annihilate those curves.
They don’t lie about how little they eat; but they will lie about how much.
For them it IS vain and about getting attention and being popular.
They don’t have a mental illness.
But they WILL.
Lack of nutrition, like lack of sleep or oxygen, immediately has a physiological effect on the body. That body includes a brain.
Brain + no oxygen = death.
Brain + no sleep = insanity.
Brain + poor or insufficient nourishment = an insane death.
In November of 2009 a hundred-or-so undergraduate nursing students were taught by the nurse with the PhD in the front of their lecture hall that “all eating disorders start with a diet.”
I wish I’d the courage, then, to say what I will, now:
No. All WANNAREXIA starts with a diet. Eating disorders, like all mental illnesses, all start with as many different reasons as there are the different people who have them.
The nurse with the PhD was talking about her granddaughter.
That nurse was my therapist.
She brought her son (the granddaughter’s dad) to almost every session, though he wasn’t in the room. And everything was filtered through him. Even her undergrad lectures.
…all those misinformed nursing students…