Checking out the competition…
There is a widespread belief that eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are confined solely to women in their teens. In the popular imagination once the sufferer had left his or her teens behind his or her symptoms miraculously disappear. Sadly, this is not always the case.
A very good friends of mine, Liza O’Neil, is a twenty five year old example of someone whose eating disorder did not cease when she reached her left her teenagers years. After a brief period of anorexia when she was in her early teens, Liza developed bulimia. Liza says, ‘My problems with my body began when I was about twelve and people made comments about the extra weight I was carrying. In hindsight I realized that I was never clinically overweight just carrying a little puppy fat but I was made, as a result of the insensitivity of others, to feel as though I was elephantine.’
Liza has oscillated between anorexia and bulimia for most of her adult life. She is now on the borderline between anorexia and bulimia and is clearly deteriorating rapidly. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it. Just stand on the sidelines and watch her decline. And the hand with which she reached out to the medical profession for help was simply brushed aside.
I have just found out who Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s mate Liz Jones is. She is the fashion editor and columnist for The Daily Mail. She used to worship at the Altar of the Cult of Thinness and, if she is involved in the fashion industry, she still does. She is a former anorectic and used to be editor of Marie Claire, a magazine that also worships at the Altar of the Cult of Thinness. No doubt she passed on her ‘wisdom’ to any vulnerable young woman foolish enough to purchase that magazine. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who spends a good deal of time in ‘Working Men’s Clubs’ watching ‘working men’ ‘swigging beer’: ‘Responding to beer-swilling blokes in Wibsey Working Men’s Club, in Bradford, who said on television that they had lost their place as the backbone of the nation because Asians were overtaking them, she wrote: “A snail with special needs would overtake this lot … It is patronising and not remotely useful to treat the white working class as though they are all helpless, giant toddlers in need of conservation.’
I cannot find any evidence that Ms. Jones is of ‘working class stock’. I’m willing to bet that the working men she expresses such contempt for have contributed more to society that she ever will. I wonder how many young women’s lives have been destroyed as a result of the tyranny of slenderness promoted by the magazines she has worked for. She clearly doesn’t believe young women are ‘in need of conservation’ either.
I once called Polly Hudson of The Daily Mirror ‘Vacuous Bimbo Extraordinaire‘. Well, sorry Polly love, you’ve just been usurped. Step up to the stage, Ms. Jones, to accept your new title.
Addendum: I’ve found out why Nobby is called ‘Nobby’! Good old Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobby_Clark
During one of my admissions to the EDU (that’s Eating Disorders Unit for those unfamiliar with the jargon) one of the nurses told me that, in her oh so humble opinion, that I was adopting the role of the ‘Pollyanna of the ward’. She asked me why I insisted upon focusing on other people’s issues at the expense of my own issues. I hated her at the time but maybe she was more astute than I gave her credit for. Denial? Isn’t that a river running through Egypt? This is the closest I’ll get to a mea culpa.
Some prose for those of you who think my poetry sucks like a Dyson:
Aurora was what was known among the nursing staff and patients alike as a revolving door patient. She spent her life going in and out of hospital. ‘I’m treatment resistant,’ she boasted. Each admission was a badge of honour. ‘I black out,’ she told Gemma. ‘Especially after sex. It was with my downstairs neighbour this time. We spent the day drinking. Before he … you know, did what he did he told me he loved me and then afterwards he just abandoned me. Another neighbour – this elderly guy – found me standing in the middle of the road. He put me in a taxi and sent me here. Not all men are total gits.’
Why are you telling me this? Asked the voice inside Gemma’s head. Do you expect me to be impressed?
‘I was really high that night,’ Aurora went on. ‘Higher than I’ve ever been. I thought someone or something was spying on me. You know, like MI5 or something. I wouldn’t settle down. I walked through the ward, searching for bugs or secret cameras. Then the doctor came and gave me enough meds to fell an elephant…although I suppose to someone like you I am an elephant.’
Well, you said it, thought Gemma.
‘They call us failed anorectics,’ Aurora said.
‘Who? ‘ Gemma asked. ‘Who do they call ‘failed’ anorectics? And who’s ‘they’.’
‘Bulimics. That’s what people call bulimics. And ‘they’ are the medical profession.’
‘I’ve been bulimic too, you know,’ said Gemma defensively.
‘Oh, that wasn’t an attack on you. After all it’s not your fault that the medical profession chooses to play favourites.’
Gemma knew that was exactly what it was.
I’ve been hearing rather a lot about him recently. Apparently, he hosts a daytime TV show for people that is like a new human form of bear baiting. Well, being partial to a little of that myself, I casually tuned in (as you do) and very nearly tuned right back out again. However my butler passed me the smelling salts, I steeled myself and carried right on watching. I rang the Queen and asked her if she would be prepared to give me the George Cross for this outstanding act of bravery. She thought about it for a while and then told me to bog off.
To begin with our ‘Jezza‘ presided over the jobless, the feckless, the reckless, the talentless, the tedious, feeding off their inadequacy – smug, supercilious and sneering at the centre of the stage. People have compared him to an American talk show host called Jerry Springer. There is, however, one crucial difference: unlike Kyle, Springer does not pretend to be some well-intentioned social worker out to save the world. Springer knows what he is providing: entertainment and nothing more and he is quite prepared to admit it.
Halfway through Kyle’s minions led a mother and her bulimic daughter onto the stage. The solution they offered to this girl’s mountain of ‘issues’ was to parade a group of real anorectics before her. Then Graham, the show’s psychologist (and now, apparently, ED Specialist) told her that in order to ‘shock her into recovery’ the ‘team’ would take her to a clinic where she could see end-stage anorectics ‘in the flesh.’ The girl on the stage switched off at this point. There was a ‘the lights are on but there’s no one home’ look on her face. What Kyle and his sidekick Graham didn’t seem to realize was that the message they were sending out was not the message that was being received. In her own mind she wasn’t as thin as the other young women being paraded before her were because she was weak. She was just a ‘wannabe’ and I bet she left that show determined that she wouldn’t be one of those for much longer. Such is the twisted thought process of the anorectic. What part of the phrase ‘distorted perception’ doesn’t he understand? Why does Graham, the psychologist seem unfamiliar with the concept of ‘triggering‘? The anorectic’s denial of nourishment is born out of a need for control, about the need for self sufficiency. ‘The fashion industry; and ‘the desire to be glamorous’ do play a role in this but those issues are not at the core of the illness.
As I’m a dedicated follower of fashion I’ll say what many others have elsewhere: that guy should not be allowed within a million miles of anyone remotely vulnerable. Halfway though the show he threw up his hands and said ‘I just don’t get it.’
Well, he got that bit right. Dead right.
Oh, and leave it to a judge to state the freaking obvious.
So Sick of Drowning 