National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (aka Bang my head on my Desk Week)

This is the first time I have been a participant in a meaningful way during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. How have I been disappointed and gobsmacked? Let me count the ways . . .

1. All the body-image stuff going from organizations that purport to be doing eating disorder awareness. Why, you ask? Let me illustrate:

All of you with body image issues stand up (I am fairly confident the percentage of you standing is in the high nineties). Now sit down if you don't ALSO have an eating disorder. Well, that was certainly loud with most of you sitting at the same time.

I love to talk about the way media and our thin-focused culture do girls and women dirty (and even guys now). Just NOT during  NEDAW--I want to talk about eating disorders during NEDAW. Sigh.

2. All the talk about how to prevent eating disorders by focusing on postive body image and having parents not be body-shaming, perfectionistic, driven and controlling stereotypes. Why does this bother me?

Because parents couldn't cause eating disorders if they tried and (as I learned the hard way) doing every. single. thing. on these prevention lists won't help in the end if you've got a kid wired for an ED. 

3. The images of the skeletal, blond seeing her elephantine reflection in a mirror that accompany most articles.

Guess who gets eating disorders? Everyone--really, being an pretty, thin, affluent, white girl is actually not a prerequisite for developing an eating disorder (just a coincidence that's my girl's profile). Also (news flash), anorexia is NOT the only eating disorder there is--and you don't have to be skeletal to be sick. These graphics may actually prevent people from believing they have a problem and that is definitely an eating disorder awareness fail. 

4. I don't have ANY problem with all the articles that are focused on research and treatment and funding for research and the issues of access to quality treatment and the problems surrounding the way insurance companies cover treatment and the fact that many medical professionals are still using 1970s knowledge to treat EDs in 2014. 

Wait . . . I do have a problem--I'm not seeing those articles :(

The bottom line is this: it really doesn't matter WHY someone developed an ED (accept in the context of research); it matters that they recover from their ED. 

You know those St. Jude's commercials that get us to open our hearts and wallets so effectively? They don't spend any time pontificating about whether or not the mother ate tuna high in mercury three times a week and "gave" her child cancer or whether dad smoked in the house when the child was a baby and "gave" his kid cancer or whether the kid "gave" herself cancer by playing next to electrical wires. They just ask you to support funding for research and treatment. 

You can bet that next year I will have a plan in place for how to deal with NEDAW--and it's going to include being prepared to comment and tweet A LOT about articles and postings that don't further the cause, but rather hinder it by conflating symptoms with causes and blaming patients and familes. 

If you are on Twitter and feel like seeing firsthand what I am talking about, explore these hashtags: #NEDAW #NEDAwareness #NEDA. If you want to see what I and others in the know are seeing, we are using hashtags #EDAfail and #EDAstar to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly (much more of the last two, but maybe next year will be different. 

 

 

Comments

[Alyson]

You are the only one I know who can take in a whole slew of information from all over the place, boil it down, and give out the facts in the clearest way possible. Your thoughts are brilliantly un-biased, and correct and I wish the whole world would have access to this post. Thank you for using your gifts so eloquently! (only one !, but I'd use more if it weren't here!)

[Alec]

Well summarized wrap up of NEDAW. The body image and mom-blaming focus of most of the awareness information was very disappointing. I found the #EDAfail and #EDAstar lists helpful to guide my reading. Next year I will be prepared to tweet with you!

[suburbancorrespondent]

I SO agree with you on #2. It's just that people want to believe that they can protect their kids from something like this, that they have control, when they really don't.

[Laura Collins]

Thank you so much for this. As frustrated as I get with the very issues you describe (so well!), the most frustrating part is feeling so alone in it. So few people speak up that I often feel like a lone banshee.

Or a bad smell at a pleasant party.

But I guess this is how paradigms shift. So nice to be on the same wavelength with YOU, lady!

[Green Girl in Wisconsin]

You know, I've never thought about the ED issues quite this way until you explained it to me. A little education does a world of good. And the parallel between treating the disease without asking WHY one has it--wow. Powerful. You are right--we don't ask "Why does this kid have cancer/leukemia/strep throat/MS/CP/epilepsy?" We just treat.

[momtaxijulie]

I love how passionate you are and that St. Jude's reference was great!

[Jen]

I think a better plan for next year would be for you to have your book published that will shine a light on some of these misconceptions. Or, rather than commenting on other people's misguided articles, write your own and spread the truth. SB is a good writer. She should write some with you - wait, wasn't that the plan?