Seen and Heard:Teenagers Talk About Their Lives by Mary Motley Kalergis
"It’s hard, because we live in a society that worships thinness, so
I still equate skinniness with goodness and fat with badness. Most teenage girls
struggle with feeling good about their bodies. My body was changing and my
family was falling apart. The one thing I could control is how much food I ate
and weight loss became some sort of twisted triumph."
Genny
Munn (14)
I call my eating disorder "Ed", and I’ve learned
how not to listen to that craziness and not abuse my body. It’s hard,
because we live in a society that worships thinness, so I still equate skinniness
with goodness and fat with badness. Most teenage girls struggle with
feeling good about their bodies. I mean, very few girls are pencil thin
with large breasts like the models in the magazines or movie stars. You
start to think, "If I looked like them, I wouldn’t have any problems."
For anorexic girls, it’s not a quest for some ideal of beauty as much as a struggle
for control. My body was changing and my family was falling apart.
The one thing I could control is how much food I ate and weight loss became
some sort of twisted triumph. Even though I’m eating now, I’m still not
completely at peace with my relationship with food. But when I do eat
now, food tastes really wonderful to me, after depriving myself for so long.
I expect I’ll always be terrified of becoming fat. Some of my friends
from the anorexic clinic still haven’t learned that there’s so much more to
life than a scale. I missed a lot of things last year and I’m grateful
to be living at home, going to school and having friends. "Ed" is still
in the background noise of my life, but the disease is not my whole life any
more. When "Ed" runs your life, you can’t have a life outside of your
obsession with weight loss. You’re too self-absorbed to be a good daughter,
sister or friend. You hate yourself. Few people understand that.
Visitors since October 15, 1998.
