Happy with the skin you are in?

Light. Flash. Snap and the paparazzi capture yet another designer-clad celebrity in a miniscule outfit and we can’t help the natural sense of envy it induces within us.  The imagination flies a little and sits but doesn’t settle. Envisaging our skin in that same dress, identical hairstyle and mirroring makeup – ‘perfection’ we seek but not what our eyes during this process of visualisation. Despondent and demoralised at the realisation we don’t quite match up!

     

We rapidly flick over the page (so it is almost torn) in a desperate bid to see someone ‘normal’ but to our despair we are further met by pages and pages of rake-thin girls that could fill the beauty library several times over. Observing the rest of the magazine; you don’t want to look (our rationale knowing that it is an unattainable timewaster) but you can’t turn away. The longer the glance, the worse the feeling, the more you want to shut it, but the deeper you are drawn in. Captured by  beauty’s illusion.

     

Dark. You eat your ordinary meal (treat yourself a little perhaps ) then retreat alone stare in the mirror, examine every angle and find endless imperfections. Unpleasant emotion; angst and critical then guilt begins to creep into your subconscious, followed by a trip to your bathroom scales that is an unfamiliar one yet one which in soon becomes fixated in your weekly, daily and eventually hourly routine.

   

This of course sounds rather tell-tale, young girls looking in magazines and trying to emulate their idols, this is often what the media portrays and what people believe. ‘Anorexics are stupid, starving themselves to look like people in magazines’. These, harsh words ( were spoken by a fellow student in an English lesson), each syllable burnt and did nothing to alleviate my feelings of isolation at time when I was suffering and in denial. It again accentuated misconceptions about eating disorders, as for me (and most sufferers) it was nothing to do with looking ‘like people in magazines’

   

One cannot blame the media but it is, nonetheless no innocent party, it confuses us; frequently sending us mixed messages. On one page criticising ‘size-zero’ models and on the opposite scrutinising natural ‘lumps and bumps’ on a healthy bikini-clad beach girl. But even the media mystification surrounding us is only a catalyst (at most) in the development of eating disorders. My fundamental view being that some on us are susceptible to the condition, it is more than a complex response to events and circumstances and it’s simply a matter of time.  I believe that ultimately it stems from personality (it did in my case) This opinion is supported by research that indicates sufferers share similar characteristics and puts those who are: perfectionists, have low self-esteem or are high-achievers, higher up the risk-scale.



Scientific findings show that your genetics may have small impact upon whether you develop the disorder or not. There are not as of yet many concrete facts regarding eating disorders,  much of them still remain a mystery even to the most knowledgeable of experts.  Yet if there are any facts in the complex world of eating disorders, it is an illness. The one statement of truth, the one so often denied naturally by suffers-in-denial but also families and friends because of the stigmatism attached to mental illness. In our society mental illness has become something of a taboo subject, we fear the connotations of lunacy and images of ‘axe murderers’ spring to mind when the topic surfaces, so that the ill remain dehumanised and forgotten crucially hindering recovery. Eating disorders in particular have a strong basis in feelings of isolation and inadequacy, things which need to be reversed to regain health and stability.  Negative perceptions of mental illnesses remain but collectively we are partially responsible for the severity of these conditions.  The Chinese whispers, the break-time gossip only alienate a sufferer further and consequently the likelihood of opening up dwindles and so they fall further into dark decline.  Reality is the desolate world of a sufferer who is set you aside from common humanity.  Misunderstood is that the spectrum of mental illness is very broad yet someone with an eating disorder is generally either classified as anorexic or bulimic- no inbetweeners, put in a box, when is anyone really just one label?

     

In the UK eating disorders are said to be affecting 1.1 million people, a minority. However eating disorders are all around us and we are blind to their presence. What springs to mind are girls (is it forgotten that males suffer too?) sticking their fingers down their throats, abusing laxatives and consuming nothing but diet Coke and lettuce! But at what point does binging become more than a binge?  When does calorie control become obsessive? And running round the block become excessive? So that it is no longer dependant on you…..but you dependant on it. Could it be that you are one of the unidentified minority?



You know what follows. It’s predictable. Open up; seek help, words you are allergic to. Perhaps you obtain a false enjoyment from what you do, it gives you a buzz, keeps your weight down and despite your physical decline all you see is your physical improvement. The scariest thing of all and the greatest danger is that no matter how physically unwell you are: swollen face, gaunt face, rotting teeth, sore throat, vomiting blood, emaciated, bloated; it is not enough to stop. Poignantly ironic is the truth that if you saw someone with any of those distressing physicalities the alarm would sound. You would declare them unwell, yet what sufferers look into is a skewed mirror of distorted self-perception. 

 

An eating disorder is not sustainable (too often mistaken as a lifestyle choice) A choice of blood-stained fingertips? A choice of rotting teeth? A choice when your body cries out in protest and you lose the basic independence to feed yourself? Surely signalling a life that has truly fallen to its dictator and can no longer be classed as their own, is that a life at all?



Eating disorders are the most real and artificial illnesses that exist and maybe never vanish…..but do you want to stay trapped in the skin of an eating disorder? Or be happy with the skin you’re in?