Anthony Citrano responded to my follow-up post about eating disorders. No, actually, I take it back. He offered a non-response, and then he let me know that he would not be responding any more:
It’s a bit frustrating that you have missed my thesis entirely, while claiming you know it.
In your second comment herein, you actually say the same thing that you eviscerated me for saying – that non-anorexic women are being called anorexic out of “punishing and jealousy.”
If I can gain anything from your putting a great deal of your own words into my mouth, I hope it’s that you and your readers will take a few minutes to read my piece and give it a fair shake.
The anorexia bullshit is a perfect example of the cognitive biasing power of “availability heuristics” – that is, the perceived danger of a given threat is fueled more by its dramatics than its facts. While I admit to a touch of cartooning (as is my lifelong style to get my point across,) my goal is to bring more facts than drama to the issues I take on.
Anyway, like I said to Jill, I do appreciate the discourse, even if we disagree. Thanks.
And then:
I tried to engage you constructively, but you insist on changing the subject, misinterpreting what I’ve said, then (in violation of any civilized rules of debate) going ad hominem. My doing so with you would be too easy.
So instead, I’ll move on, and hope that you eventually shed the anger and explore my points with a clear and open mind.
And by the way, thanks for helping me finally figure out what it is I find so hot about Hatcher. It had been bugging me.
Oh, please don’t tune me out! I’ll modulate my tone, I promise. I didn’t mean to get angry! I’ll be good! And please, please, please don’t insult me! I don’t know if I’d ever recover! I’d probably start purging!
Let me lay it out for you, Anthony–or, rather, for myself; you were never listening. Were you open-minded, you would have encountered and taken pains to understand all of these critiques of your argument long before we started talking.
An eating disorder–the actual condition–is defined by self-hatred projected upon the body. Like I said, the body and the control forced upon it are usually symbolic of a need to control one’s life or self. It isn’t exactly about the body, although the body isn’t chosen at random.
An eating disorder as defined by our culture is typified by denial of appetite resulting in emaciation: “delicacy” taken just a wee bit too far. The changes it causes in the body are not considered negative until they reach the far extreme: the skeleton, the corpse. The damage it does to the psyche, and the underlying pain it represents, are not considered particularly important unless and until the sufferer is extremely unstable.
This culture does not have any problem either with denial of appetite or extreme thinness in women. We think both of those things are pleasing and admirable. Our beauty ideal is defined by the latter, which necessitates the former. Teri Hatcher may or may not have an eating disorder; however, she has a body that cannot be arrived at through any regimen that isn’t obsessive and unfeasible. Women are taught to emulate Teri Hatcher. We do not look at Teri Hatcher and see someone doing something wrong or freakish. We see someone on the cover of Mademoiselle. (Remember, too, that being a sex symbol is not necessarily a ticket to uncomplicated prestige. Teri’s desirable, not desired.)
This is why our culture is confused about anorexia, and why you engaged in such a disastrous misreading of the anorexia “slur.” We do not have a definition of anorexic pathology apart from the level at which it becomes fatal–a level that most eating-disorder sufferers never reach. That is the point at which the cultural understanding of anorexia begins to distinguish itself from our ideal of beauty and fitness, not before. Apart from that, we have no concept of when self-hatred, body obsession, and rigid control are understood to be bad things for women. We have not drawn a practical line beyond which a woman is unhealthily invested in her body.
So when a woman derides another woman for “anorexia,” she is not saying, “Goddamnit! How dare she be thin! She must have an eating disorder, and how pathetic is that! Cheater! Crazy bitch!” She is saying, “I wish I looked more like the ideal!” She speaks with the understanding that most people who manage the ideal are people whose diets are profoundly disordered. She understands as well that as far as everyone else is concerned, there’s nothing wrong with a woman who hates herself. She understands, finally, that her appearance outweighs everything else about her–will, in fact, be taken for her (“knows how to say no to herself”). There is no moderation compatible with that.
The damaging aspect of anorexia doesn’t enter into the calculus. It’s a brutally efficient way for normal girls to get skinny, full stop. She’s not jealous of thinness. She’s jealous of the women “like her” who’ve gotten hooked up with the best diet regimen ever. And make no mistake: she is not underestimating the severity of the changes anorexia wreaks on the body or the desperation it would involve. She is not looking towards “reasonable” self-denial.
Now, as far as this “availability heuristics” bullshit: no, not so much. We don’t over-focus on the deaths because we think anorexia is a scourge of youth or because we don’t want to talk about obesity. We focus on them because we don’t want to deal with what disordered eating actually is. We don’t want to deal with the far more common, far less dramatic, far less freakish symptoms most sufferers display, or with an understanding of eating disorders more nuanced than mortality. That would involve looking at a cultural understanding of women’s “health and fitness” that puts anorexia nervosa on a continuum with “healthy” self-perception and eating habits. In other words, looking at you:
My personal offhand estimate had been that we might lose about 100 Americans annually to anorexia. My research this morning showed that I was not far off – a 2001 study by the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychology of every American death for the most recently available five year period showed only 724 people with anorexia as a causal factor – 145 per year. Christina Hoff-Sommers, in her research for the book Who Stole Feminism, came up with a number below half that. In a presentation to the International Congress of Psychology, one expert (Dr. Paul Hewitt) estimated a death rate for anorexia of 6.6 per 100,000 deaths. Even if you assume that sufferers outnumber deaths by a few orders of magnitude, it would still seem that all objective evidence shows the health impact on Americans from anorexia is statistically nil. Now, I know that doesn’t make for very good shock journalism, but it doesn’t change the uncomfortable fact that it’s true.
With a few more recipes, and a little more carrot than stick, this could be copy for any women’s magazine:
I know several girls whom others consider “anorexic” because they are very lean and don’t have emblematic American appetites. They are in fact not anorexic; but they are more cautious about their intake than most. They are vibrant, healthy, and adequately nourished; they can even run a couple of miles at a good pace. And that’s much more than most Americans can say.
So, please, ladies – the girl who has the body the rest of you wish you had is not anorexic. The girl who delicately refuses the eighteen-ounce wedge of deep-fried cheesecake the rest of you dive into after dinner is not anorexic. The girl who is obsessed with fitting back into those size 1 jeans is not anorexic. She’s just thinner than you, knows how to say no to herself, and it makes you jealous.
Girls, girls, you can both be pretty!
You’re this patronizing, and this shallow, and you expect people not to get angry? You started out oblivious, and you’ve clearly decided to stay that way. Why would it bother me that you feel insulted? At least you can read something right.