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For years it was considered a disease of white, middle-class women. Society considered Latina women “culturally immune” to anorexia nervosa, but with more and more Latinas adapting to the standards of United States culture, this is no longer the case.
Anorexia nervosa, more simply known as anorexia, is a psychological disorder characterized by a pathological fear of weight gain, leading to faulty eating patterns such as restrictive eating and/or purging through vomiting or laxative abuse. Many anorexics also exercise compulsively. As a result, malnutrition and excessive weight loss usually occur. Despite these dangerous resulting symptoms, anorexics have a distorted body image and fail to realize that they have driven themselves to emaciation; and sometimes, when they do realize they have a problem, they are still unable to get their eating behaviors under control. As a result, many anorexics ultimately die of starvation.
According to the article Minority Women: The Untold Story by Marian Fitzgibbon and Melinda Stolley, research shows that the number of U.S. Latinas with anorexia is now similar to the number of white women with the disease.
This does not surprise me. Because although the society seems to worship the curvy figures of Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek, the same society publishes unflattering pictures of Christina Aguilera in magazines and criticizes her for being “too fat.” Just a few months ago, magazines were posting pictures of Jessica Simpson, who is reported by her sister to be a size two, calling her fat. What was even worse was that many readers actually gave in to the madness. “She’s a fatty,” wrote one internet user on a website discussion board--and this was one of the kinder comments I came across. Society’s mixed messages are confusing for adolescent girls everywhere, regardless of their race. I know this because at age 15, I suffered from anorexia.
GOD, SHE’S SO FAT
I was like many Mexican-American girls I know-- smart, nice, and disciplined. I was 5’2 and 140 pounds. My doctor said I was within a healthy weight range, but I thought I was chubby and, as a result of that, felt blazingly insecure. Although I did well in school and had friends, I couldn’t shake off the little comments I heard everyday.
“God, she’s so fat,” I would overhear girls say about girls who were skinnier than me.
“Oh she’s so pretty,” I’d hear boys say about girls who were thinner than me.
The comments were hard to ignore. I not only heard them in the halls of my high school, but in the media as well. Every time I’d go to the grocery store, I’d see a beautiful thin woman on the cover of a magazine with a title next to her saying, “How I lost 20 pounds and became successful.” It wasn’t long before I began to put all of the messages I received together.
HOW FAST IT HAPPENED
My road to anorexia started off innocently enough. At some point I decided that although I couldn’t really control my insecurities, drama with friends, and life’s curveballs of disappointment, I could control how I looked. I thought that if I was skinnier, I would somehow be happier with myself and everything else would fall into place—that’s what all the people on TV and in the magazines said would happen. I started watching what I ate, exercised more, and began weighing myself more often. At first it was great. I received compliments on how good I looked--but at some point in time, I crossed a line without realizing it.
Watching what I ate and exercising regularly soon turned into eating only 600 calories and exercising compulsively. Every time I lost a pound I’d experience a minute of extreme euphoria, followed by a sickening thought—what if I gain the weight back? This fear drove me to push my body further and further. Pretty soon, my period stopped, my hair began to fall out, my fingernails turned blue, and I was always cold. I dropped almost 50 pounds in six months and looked pale and emaciated. You could see almost every bone in my body.
Despite all these symptoms, I still didn’t believe I had a problem. Denial is a powerful thing--I had lost control and didn’t even know it. Sure, I looked in the mirror and saw how gaunt and disproportioned I looked. I saw how every bony ridge in my ribcage protruded, but that wasn’t what I was looking at--all I could focus on was the “fatty” stomach pouch below my belly button and how I needed to do anything and everything to get rid of it. Even after my family and doctors confronted me several times, I still didn’t believe I had a problem. I only went along with their attempts to change my eating behaviors because they threatened to take me out of dance--the thing I loved most--and I wanted to get them off my back.
BUT YOU GUYS HAVE FOOD ISSUES TOO!
As I started my road to recovery, I remember thinking to myself that everyone was so hypocritical. Several of the good-hearted people who tried to intervene were battling with their own food and weight issues themselves—only from the opposite end of the spectrum. Isn’t being overweight unhealthy too, I thought to myself, as I forced myself to eat “normally”? I couldn’t understand the hypocrisy of it all. Why was it okay for everyone else to say I had a problem and try to control my eating behaviors when many of the people around me obviously had issues with food themselves? Being overweight, like anorexia, can also wreak havoc on your body. Why was I the only one being forced to change and examine my eating behaviors?
Not to mention, it was really hard to gauge what “normal” eating really was. Looking around my school cafeteria wasn’t the best option. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., found that ”Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives.”
Looking to adults wasn’t always a great option either. Statistics compiled by The Renfrew Center Foundation for Eating Disorders show that “one in five women struggle with an eating disorder or disordered eating patterns.” On the other hand, as portion sizes and calorie intakes have increased over the years, the Center for Disease Control estimates that “66 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.” It seemed that everywhere I looked, people were always on opposite sides of the eating spectrum, and almost no one consistently modeled healthy eating patterns. So as someone who was struggling to redefine my eating habits, I often wondered--What was “normal” anyway?
Eventually though, I did realize I had a problem. I went to therapy and figured out that although depression didn’t necessarily cause my anorexia, it definitely was a contributing factor. My family had a history of depression, anxiety and alcohol abuse, which probably made me more susceptible to the disease. However, I know it was more than just genetics. The media’s glamorization of thin women didn’t help me, but to this day, more than anything, I believe that everyday people in society contributed to it most. People who were supposed to love and support me, but called me “fat” when they were angry with me. People who doted on thinner girls, but never mentioned that someone who had meat on her bones like me could be beautiful. People who decided to give in to the media’s ridiculous ideals.
RECOVERY
I’m doing better now. I’m at a healthy weight, and for the most part, have a positive mindset and body image. I graduated from college, and just finished my first year of teaching high school language arts. Most of my students know about my battle with anorexia. I feel that the best thing I can do is be honest and open with them about it, so they can fully understand how this disease can arise and affect someone. The fact that I am able to use my battle with anorexia to help others is the only rewarding experience to come out of this hellish disease.
I even had one student, a Latina, come to me for guidance. She admitted to me that she’d been throwing up her food, and needed help. I remember when she explained to her mom what was going on, she said, “Dad calls me ‘Gordita’.” Her mom said, “But mija, he’s just kidding, he calls us all his gorditas!” As I listened in on that discussion, I couldn’t help but feel that my student’s conflict was somewhat cultural. In the Mexican culture, a term like “gordita,” is used as a term of endearment or affection. But in English, calling someone “fat,” is almost always viewed as an insult. I thought, how difficult it must be for girls who identify with both Latin and American cultures to bridge the two very different meanings of the same word!
THE VOICE
The sad thing about eating disorders, however, is that although you can recover from them, they never truly go away. Even when your eating returns to “normal,” that voice in your head (that resembles your own and sounds like your conscience) tells you to be strong and put the food down, or it tells you to take laxatives so that you won’t have to deal with the repercussions of your food-filled, restaurant-hopping weekend.
Most of the time, I ignore the “voice.” When I am feeling “fat,” I remind myself that even though I feel fat, I’m not. I try to remember, I’m in control. It’s my responsibility to fight this demon, and not let it consume me. And, when my clothes are feeling a little tight I try to eat more healthy foods, not less food, and I try to go for a walk every day or push myself to go all-out at dance practice—nothing too excessive. But sometimes the voice is too hard to ignore, because it is not my own.
The voice is a tabloid ripping apart a “fat” woman for being a size two. It’s a brother calling his sister fat, a husband telling his wife that he’d be more attracted to her if she lost a few pounds, a parent modeling disordered eating behaviors for his/her children. It’s a woman making snide comments about another woman’s weight; random strangers making flippant comments about people they see on the street; poorly worded comments by friends and family members that are unintentionally yet undeniably hurtful; and society’s failure to acknowledge beauty in a variety of forms. It’s the sad, insecure student I see walking down the halls of the high school I work at talking about how fat and ugly she is, and her “friend” who says and does nothing to change her perception.
Now the only question I ask of you, dear reader, is--have you ever been part of the voice?
July 2009
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