Monday, January 15, 2007

Anorxia, culture, and a Golden Fork award

JG's thoughtful responses to my previous post included a link to an interesting article on eating disorders and culture. It's a good overview of the conventional wisdom on the role of culture in eating disorders, and I'm putting the link up here in case anyone wants to read it.

JG writes, "I'd give anything to spare a young woman today from going through what I did." That's how I feel--I'd give anything to spare a young woman from going through what my daughter did.

I think if we keep talking about this, keep questioning, raising the issues, that's a good thing. I wrote here months ago about the posters at my younger daughter's middle school--there were bulletin boards in the hallways promoting "healthy eating," exercise, and, yes, unbelievably, weight loss. I went in and talked with the assistant principal about it. The posters went away for a while, and have no, my daughter says, been replaced with posters saying something like "Losing weight is not healthy for children and adolescents."

Yay! Hamilton Middle School got it! I hereby award them a Golden Fork award for being responsive to the issue. One small step at the table, one giant step (I hope) for our understanding and treatment of eating disorders.

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