post of substance

I haven't had a post that says anything in a long time. I don't know why it seems much more productive to just post pictures of the cats, but alas, that's where it's been recently. But I thought it was about time I said something about something.

I finished Wasted, a memoir by an anorexic and bulimic woman that had me glued to the pages, literally. I thought the best part about this memoir was how she absolutely captured perfectly how crazy having an eating disorder makes you. It wasn't even so much the actually binging, thinking she was fat, throwing up, or starving herself that truly demonstrated her insanity. It was the fact that she thought this was the only option for a way of life, the way she lied to herself that she had to live that way to remain sane. She talked about the way our culture might have promoted her eating disorder behavior, but that ultimately it became an addiction, and then it didn't matter how society pressured her, because she was compelled to do it from something internal.

Anyway, for as much as feminism questions the origins of eating disorders and blames the media for them, I wonder what effect that kind of critique can really have. Ultimately, an individual woman has to choose to live, as Marya Hornbacher says in this book. And even when they make the choice to live, they still live with the thoughts of the eating disorder every day. Such is the nature of addiction. Her experience was really an interesting critique of feminism. She studied and studied, but it was never enough to help her take care of herself. Interesting.