I only have my own personal experience to share here, but it may be helpful. It may not be that eating disorders are "contagious," per se, but that the power of suggestion is so strong that it may as well be.
In my early twenties, when I was at quite a reasonable weight and hadn't ever felt the need to diet, I read an article about eating disorders. I couldn't get it out of my head, though my initial reaction was a negative one. After a few months, when I'd gained a little weight and was wishing it would come off easily, I started a binge-purge cycle that would last about five years. I have been over it for a couple of decades now, but still remember the "power" i felt in being able to control my body weight in such a way. Suggestion is powerful when given to a vulnerable person, and so many of our young girls are feeling the pressure to be super-thin that there's no question in my mind that it can make an eating disorder seem "attractive" in some diabolical way. They are too young to understand the costs to their health and their self-esteem.
My niece, at 10, who is actually tall and gangly, recently informed me that her tummy is fat. It is not, at all, and it made me so sad to know that this nastiness about body image has trickled down more than a decade in just the last generation.
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I only have my own personal experience to share here, but it may be helpful. It may not be that eating disorders are "contagious," per se, but that the power of suggestion is so strong that it may as well be.
In my early twenties, when I was at quite a reasonable weight and hadn't ever felt the need to diet, I read an article about eating disorders. I couldn't get it out of my head, though my initial reaction was a negative one. After a few months, when I'd gained a little weight and was wishing it would come off easily, I started a binge-purge cycle that would last about five years. I have been over it for a couple of decades now, but still remember the "power" i felt in being able to control my body weight in such a way. Suggestion is powerful when given to a vulnerable person, and so many of our young girls are feeling the pressure to be super-thin that there's no question in my mind that it can make an eating disorder seem "attractive" in some diabolical way. They are too young to understand the costs to their health and their self-esteem.
My niece, at 10, who is actually tall and gangly, recently informed me that her tummy is fat. It is not, at all, and it made me so sad to know that this nastiness about body image has trickled down more than a decade in just the last generation.
September 23, 2008 - 8:46amThis Comment
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