COLUMN: A Deadly Disease

From Chris Iorillo's "The Bucks Stop Now," Fall '95 From Chris Iorillo's "The Bucks Stop Now," Fall '95Everyday we are bombarded with messages telling us that the key to happiness, success and love is a better body. Advertisers, the media, the weight-loss industry and our own passivity have entrenched this view so deeply in our culture that we have begun to place more importance on appearance and weight than on health. Having control of one's food intake and maintaining an ideal weight have displaced our physiological sense of hunger as the measure of what we eat. What we have been left with, according to a former bulimic, "is a modern culture of dieting based on the idea that the personality creates the body. That our size must in some way be voluntary." Natural weight expectations have been lost to the "10 pounds obsession." Despite the fact that certain frames are meant to carry more weight, some lose all confidence in themselves if they are unable to shed this negligible amount. Have we given control of our bodies to the whims of society? Stepping back from our cultural guidelines reveals the disturbing nature of our focus on dieting and working out. While millions suffer from "disordered eating," millions more develop very serious problems. In a study of 33,000 women, 75 percent believed they were "too fat," but only 25 percent were medically overweight and 45 percent were actually underweight. Another study found that women ranked "losing weight" highest on a list of "Things which would make you happy," placing it above dating and even professional success. The University, as a focal point of education and personal development, should be the place where acceptable and healthy social behavior is determined, but the weight-loss mentality is particularly damaging to undergraduate women. Twenty percent of college women are estimated to binge and purge on a regular basis and experts believe that more than half have done so at some point in their college career. And while the majority of research focuses on white females, African-American women, often under enormous pressure to be "perfect" in order to counter negative stereotypes, are perhaps more at risk of developing an eating disorder. One African-American undergraduate described the pressure which led to her bulimia by saying, "I was going to be the best black female analyst those bastards on Wall Street had ever seen. In addition to doing impeccable work, that also meant wearing a size four." The overwhelming majority of anorexics and bulimics are women, but approximately one million men have eating disorders as well. Actors, models and athletes under pressure to meet weight standards suffer these diseases in addition to the thousands of men who ignore health concerns and use steroids to enhance their physique. The most disturbing statistic of all, though, is that 150,000 women die each year as a result of an eating disorder. The American Anorexia and Bulimia Association estimates that the combined mortality rate for those who suffer anorexia and bulimia over a period of years is as high as 20 percent -- the highest rate of any psychiatric disturbance. Surprisingly, women readily acknowledge that they and their friends have dealt with eating disorders, but the issue is rarely brought forward to public debate. The public silence stems from the fact that the issue is, according to one psychologist, "the most potent political sedative in women's history." In a bizarre Catch-22, controlling body weight has been grasped by many women as a mark of feminism. Those who have control of their lives demonstrate it through their appearance, while those who disdain the culture of dieting are often perceived as having "lost control." Both experience anxiety, low self-esteem, guilt and depression as a result of having no political hegemony on the issue. Men almost seem to have no business prying into the issue, as if it were an accepted rite of passage which simply cannot be understood. But men's ignorance only supports the cultural values which have made the issue a social dilemma and leaves them out of the discussion on a problem to which they are inexorably part of the solution. Men are not entirely unaware that the problem exists. Any man who goes to the gym sees female members who appear unnaturally thin and always seem to be on the stairmaster. The issue surfaces especially around formal time, when it is unusual for a man not to hear his female friends discuss the extreme measures they are taking to squeeze into a smaller dress size. But perhaps the most obvious evidence comes in dating. As one man believes, a relationship is going really well if the woman he's dating orders and eats dessert when they go out to dinner. One hundred years ago, impressionists such as Renoir and Degas glorified the female form which was anything but thin. Fat was a prized possession as an indicator of status and wealth, but today this has dramatically changed. What can we, as a society, do to reform our misconception of ideal beauty? The advertising industry certainly needs to be a target of our frustration. As one former anorexic said, "My entire aesthetic sensibility has been formed, or more accurately, deformed, by Madison Avenue." Magazines, billboards and commercials continue to flaunt Calvin Klein's latest model, Kate Moss, but few men or women find her emaciated frame attractive by any standard. But even "standard" models are not normal. An American University study of beauty pageant contestants, models and centerfolds found that these women were, on average, 13 to 19 percent below their ideal body weight. The logical conclusion to draw from this is that the ideal woman, according to the executives who create these ads, is one with an eating disorder. Another target should be the weight-loss industry. Americans pay Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and other companies $30 to $40 billion a year in order to lose weight. This industry has created more concern for losing weight than the health risks of obesity could possibly justify. The resultant fear and belief that dropping a few pounds will lead to happiness brings in millions of customers. One woman who succumbed to this persuasion wrote, "The number on my scale became my totem pole. I thought if I could change that number I could change my life." It would be ridiculous to assume this problem will ever go away, but that cannot excuse the need for a public reaction. We must begin by raising our "collective consciousness" of eating disorders and the culture of dieting. Politicizing the issue will empower those who are afflicted and bring the problem out of the closet and onto the public platform. In doing so, we send the message that this is intolerable and unacceptable.