Ms. Blogger Aimee Liu is the author of the first American memoir of anorexia nervosa, Solitaire (1979) and most recently published Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders, (2007). Her forthcoming book on the subject is Restoring our Bodies, Reclaiming our Lives (April). Apart from her work on eating disorders, she has published various works […]
Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are psychological conditions that cause dangerous patterns of unhealthy eating that can be treated with medication or therapy. Anyone can develop an eating disorder, though they most commonly affect women.
The Weight of Words
Some years ago I nearly lost one of my writing students over the word “glutton.” Jay had submitted a short story with a female character described as large and middle aged, generally dressed in overalls, who binged on candy bars when stressed the way others might chain-smoke. Jay himself was large and middle-aged, generally wore […]
The 24-Hour Treatment for Anorexia
For years now, eating disorders patients and their families been watching and waiting for clinical trials to verify what treatment experts have been observing in practice: that the family-based Maudsley method really is the most effective treatment for many young anorexia patients. Last week The New York Times reported a new study by Maudsley pioneer […]
Concluding Thoughts on Love Your Body Week
Today marks the last day of “Love Your Body Week,” and the blogosphere has been actively posting useful tips on how to love one’s own body even if it does not live up to the marketed ideal. Of course many women find it hard to love their bodies when they’re “overweight,” even though the fashion-model […]
(Self)Love is a Battlefield
My body is a battleground. I have spent most of my life waging a war on it. I have vivid girlhood memories of my worth being measured by my waist size and numbers on a scale. I was taught that I must “suffer to be beautiful.” This irreconcilable relationship with body and self continued into middle school, as […]
Today’s the Day to Love Your Body
There are things we say to ourselves that we would never say to the people we love. Can you imagine telling your best friend her butt is too big or her breasts are too small? Or telling your daughter she’d have more friends if she just lost a few pounds? How about letting grandmother in on how much more beautiful […]
All Walks Beyond the Catwalk
At the National Eating Disorders Association conference last Saturday in New York, I had the delight of attending Susan Ringwood’s presentation [PDF] on “All Walks Beyond the Catwalk.” Susan is the chief executive of beat, the leading UK charity for people with eating disorders. As I know from serving with her on the Academy for […]
Dear Salon.com: Veganism Isn’t an Eating Disorder
While reading an article on Salon.com, I became distracted by a sidebar entitled, “Glee‘s mysteriously shrinking Rachel.” I enjoy reading criticisms of how awful Glee is as much as the next blogger, so I clicked. First, in the subhed, the article tries to connect Glee actor Lea Michele’s shrinking body to the quality of the […]
Thinness is No Panacea
Whether the overvalued ideal is a “perfect” size, diet, faith, or political belief, the undercurrent that drives us toward that ideal is our own inchoate and multifaceted distress. Feeling overwhelmed and helpless makes us more inclined to elevate simplistic ideals in ways that can end up doing us harm.