Eating Disorders and the Illusion of Control
11
59 p.m i don’t know about you
but i always submit my assignments which
are due at midnight at
11 59 p.m in fact
i’m pretty sure i submit my application
to give this talk
at 11 59 pm
because 11 59 pm has power
within those 60 seconds it is decided if
you are someone who is
responsible prepared and in charge of
their own life
you’ve gone to the edge and you’ve taken
control
but the truth is you’re not in control
of anything
your assignment is just as late as it
was submitted at 12 or 1201
but 11 59 pm tells a lie
and gives the illusion of control
and the adrenaline
is almost euphoric
this is the best
metaphor i have for an
eating disorder
disorders are not a lifestyle they’re
not
about health about beauty but they are
fundamentally
about control the logic is
if i control my body what i eat how i
look then obviously i’m in complete
control of what is happening to me
and what has already happened to me and
that does make sense
because an eating disorder is the
illusion of
control now what i’m saying may sound
insane to you it
it definitely used to sound insane to me
because
this type of thinking is what is
encouraged by our society and culture
eating disorders are shamed stigmatized
and used for profit they are either
not talked about or discussed in some
romanticized
glamorized b plot in the cw show
looking at you gossip girl and this is
extremely dangerous this is like
advertising a guillotine
as a vegetable slicer oh well if blair
waldorf has bulimia for
one episode in the first season and it
is literally never discussed again
oh that can’t be that bad
and you’ve drunk the kool-aid
however this casual treatment of eating
disorders is not solely
trapped inside our televisions but
rather
it bleeds out into our culture
it exists on three levels all right
let’s break it down
the first is the biggie social movements
eating disorders will do a bogus
metamorphosis
into digestible and acceptable forms of
consumption
the best example i have is the wellness
movement for those of you who don’t know
the wellness movement is an industry
built upon this idea
of health however this health
is not based in logical medicine but
rather upon natural white washed
cures like cleanses and superfoods and
intermittent fasting and so many more
manifestations
of disorders eating
and yet the evil
brilliance of the wellness movement is
that it presents a choice
are you well are you healthy
are you being good to yourself
or are you being unwell unhealthy and of
course the logical response to this is
no no
i want to be good i want to practice
wellness
because who would want to be bad
it’s the same rhetoric that created the
anti-vaccination movement
and it’s the same rhetoric that created
my eating disorder when i was eight
years old
i was diagnosed with adhd and my family
didn’t know how to handle it
and my mother was given a choice
put your child on medication that you’re
not familiar with
or control her diet so there i am
eight years old no idea what’s happening
to me and i am
taught that the only way to control
myself control the way people
see me and like me
and to fix what’s apparently
wrong with me
is by not eating white flour dairy or
any form of sugar
now try selling that to an
eight-year-old
pizza parties shocked
but that rhetoric has stayed with me my
entire life
and that’s the wellness movement you can
control your daughter’s mental disorder
you can control anything it sells
the illusion of control
now the second level is no surprise
social media i don’t know about anyone
else but my explore page is basically a
shrine
to losing weight a shrine with many
different forms
those health pages with those stupid uh
his and hers plates
oh calories of different nuts follow her
for a workout routine and then of course
my least favorite what i eat in a day
if i came up to you on this street and i
went hello
well i’m i’m a stranger and welcome i’m
hot
uh do i know what i ate today now you
eat it too
you would be very afraid
however we do this on social media and
not only is it an accepted form of
communication
but rather an encouraged one we would
rather
emulate a thin stranger
than listen to our own bodies
the third and final level is the most
dangerous
our everyday interactions this is how
diet culture
is cemented because it becomes part of
our language
especially on a college campus we take
pride
in our disordered eating oh i only had
coffee today i’m
feeling thin today i’m feeling fat today
skinny legend oh god i ate so much i’m
going to throw up
lmao i feel like i’m gaining the
freshman 15.
there’s literally too many examples for
me to name
and this is the lifeblood of eating
disorder culture
because it completely assimilates eating
disorders into way that we communicate
with each other
it makes it cute it makes it pretty
it makes it nothing
but it’s not nothing
the truth is eating disorders are not
pretty
they’re not cute they are
gnarly all consuming
ruinous things
and they have to be treated as such
so how do we do this how do we not only
begin dismantling the victoria’s secret
model lab system but also our own
personal eating disorder beliefs
and the answer is but what we’re doing
right now
we are having an honest and vulnerable
discussion
about eating disorders
when i had anorexia and bulimia it was a
secret
no one knew not my family not my friends
no one and the lie
it allowed me to spiral deeper until i
had to ask for
help when i was at rock
bottom and it was because
i didn’t know that anyone else was
experiencing this
when i make art about eating disorders
it’s not for no reason
i had a piece up at the kennedy center
about my anorexia and bulimia around
three years ago and a girl came up to me
a stranger
and she said i have not eaten
in two years and this was the first
time anyone has said what i was feeling
thank you she started crying
and i started crying
and it was one of the most beautiful
things i’ve ever experienced in my
entire life
because we were two people strangers
but we weren’t alone anymore
and that is the power of talking about
eating disorders that is the power
of putting an uncomfortable issue at the
forefront of discussion
you are breaking the pattern
and this can be through artwork creation
talking to your friends your family or
standing in front of all of you
and talking about my eating disorder
all of these take strength resilience
and bravery four years ago
when i was sucked into my eating
disorder i never
thought i would be here in recovery
talking about it and my hope is that
this
talk has made at least one of you feel a
little
less alone and i’m not fully recovered
i still have my you know uh-oh moments
but now i’m prepared i’m resilient
and maybe one day i’ll be submitting my
assignments the day before
and not one minute until midnight
thank you