Anorexia is a mental illness.

last time you said it was 2 stone

I feel I should respond to the male posters here who are insisting that men have nothing to do with women feeling pressure to be thin. I work almost exclusively with men and know a lot of them prefer thin. And they are mostly conceited enough to tell any passing female that she's carrying a few too many pounds. As though she should care. They aren't the majority but they aren't a rarity either. As one esteemed colleague says of his taste in ladies "thinner's for winners".

LAURA, sorry, I guess I must be a bit thick, but 'willpower' is often an ability to weigh up mathematical consequences of risk. As a young lad, I could either smoke or put more fuel in my motorcycle, with me as always money won.
I well remember as I lined up a light aircraft for my first solo flight, scared, not really. I thought if the instructor would trust me with £50000 of aircraft he must think I was OK. So throttles open.
And clear and instant thinking enabled me to save someones life, I want no medals, I was in no danger, but I didn't sleep well for a fortnight. Guess I just have a logical mind, in spite of being in a wheelchair.

Thank goodness for Brian & Molly's measured comments on this article, begging for a sense of proportion and an awareness that one of the greatest threats to health in developed countries in obesity, not anorexia. Would be interested to see Laurie's response to their comments in particular.

Anorexia turned me into an utter bitch, especially to my mother, I didn't mean to be but I genuinely believed she hated me and that I'd get something out of it. Also, hunger just ceased to really exist, I felt the effects but never the desire to eat that comes with it. http://www.greatrippedabs.com/

Shut up about curves, Mike, Axmad & co!

You're all as bad as the stupid Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone, telling women that they should look like Christina Hendricks rather than Kate Moss, or whoever the skinny comparison was.

Lots of women with normal BMIs and a healthy attitude to their bodies aren't curvy. Debates on what is 'natural' for women always seem to oscillate between these two equally unattainable extremes, and leave everyone unhappy with their size and shape.

@DavidVintner:

"Stick to 1500-1900 cal a day" - yes, and there's a simple way to avoid lung cancer: don't smoke. Overweight people aren't overweight because they don't understand the calories in / calories out equation; they're overweight because they can't find the willpower to actually do what they need to do to lose weight. They're overweight because they have an emotional relationship with food. You may as well tell an anorexic that all she needs to do to get better is. . . wait for it. . . eat more.

@MrDivine: I think anorexia definitely does have something to do with the onset of puberty and reproductive capability (interesting how in ages past it seemed to kick in later, late teens rather than early - in an era when women generally started menstruation later, and when teenagers were less subject to social pressure to be sexually appealing / active. It's a rejection of womanhood - trying to avoid getting a woman's figure, trying to stay a little girl. I knew someone who got it after she was the first in the class at school to develop breasts, and all the other girls made a fuss about it. It can also be about trying to deny your own adult sexuality and desires, r a kind of phobia of pregnancy, birth etc.

Interesting article but am confused by the apparent contradiction in your having initially stated that Isabelle Caro's ad campaign backfired because it was based on the notion that women starved themselves to look more beautiful rather than due to deeper trauma, only to then apparently claim exactly the opposite. Or am I missing something?

I also wish that commentators on anorexia would address the issue of how to persuade women against starving themselves whilst at the same time acknowledging without encouraging the much bigger (no pun intended) problem with obesity.

Maybe the answer is to be less specific about individual eating disorders and to address people's distorted relationships with food, whichever form they take?

@Laura: Yes I think it could be a rejection of womanhood but then you have older women (in their twenties) doing it. Of course we can't be sure but I think you could be right.

Sometimes I think it could be a kind of 'rush' you obtain when you change your diet. Both of my psychotic episodes occurred when I was radically reducing my food intake (and increasing my exercise). There's a kind of a high that you get when you start reducing weight. And psychosis isn't necessarily a bad thing because some parts of it are great, far higher than you ever achieve with a drug. I suspect that's true with anorexics, that they are on or trying to achieve a kind of physical high, or it is an attempt to be partially psychotic.

People label psychosis as a 'disorder' but like I said at times you can not beat the 'high' and many of us want to get to the other side of the wardrobe/to break on through to the other side. There's a beauty there like no other, where you forget all there is in your life and experience every second of your being.

@Buckskins: I think Helen is pissed off with you because you make disparaging remarks about overweight people, of which I suspect she is one. She wants you to admit one of your faults. That's what will make her feel more kindly towards you.

Buckskins

Where does the article 'blame men'? Or is that you saw the article was about anorexia, was written by a feminist and therefore, without even bothering to read it - given your prejudices, you just decided it must 'blame men'?

@David & Buck

This is not about us, (men) or sexual desirability any more than Vogue or Cosmo is.

Believe it or not, women have their own issues, though in many cases, per Simone de Beauvoir, they are as a direct result of how women were created and moulded by men and patriarchal society of times past & present.

It's a fascinating subject for those so interested, "the beauty myth" is a good book, (not nearly as scary as "the female Eunuch" :) but for a more general reader "Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy" is an excellent read, especially for the ideas around Six (the female robot/cylon) & Starbuck, the female combat pilot. [Wiki:http://is.gd/kzlcT]

It is not without a vicious sense of irony that you can't help looking at the bed that man has made for himself with women. It's no wonder we don't understand them.

How the media portray it is irrelevant. That is seeking someone to blame.

I find the statement of "sexist surveillance of patriarchal culture." also unhelpful.

1 in 10 anorexia sufferers are male.

Neither are they are doing this to attract a male. Most men I know admire a healthy woman with curves.

Not fat, not skinny. Healthy, that can mean size 8,10,12,14. I think it would be best to say, height and weight proportional.

Neither is this purely about self-image, self-perception and realisation and this is about self-worth.

There are many physiological reasons for this illness that cannot be discounted.

Singling out one specific as a cause it outrageously naive and ill-informed.

In terms of socio-cultural aspects, a 1,000,000 person study showed that the biggest social contributors (the physiological being by far the larger contributors) are gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status.

Also, the recovery rates are dependent on treatment by are over 75%; family therapy treatments have a success rate of over 90%.

David and Buckskins:
Did you actually read the article? I think you'll find that not once were men's attitudes even mentioned.

Laurie knows full well that anorexia is about a world of things other than what men want women to look like.

If something is considered beautiful then it's not just about how it looks to men, it's about how it's perceived - both physically and conceptually - by everyone. Laurie's right - anorexia has gone from being ignored to being idealised and romanticised, regardless of the veneer of disapproval that's applied.

PS imagine thinking that you have undergone personal development!

Women are often other womens worst enemies. Aside from the 'taking up space' issues etc, women are obsessed with other womens sizes. Fascinated by other womens weight loss stories and critical of other women who have gained a few pounds.

This article prompted me to dig out and listen to "4st 7lb" by the Manic Street Preachers. I'd forgotten how good it is.

In case you're not familiar with it, the lyric was written by bandmember Richey Edwards, who had been hospitalised with anorexia nervosa, and is really quite haunting. I don't know any better, so I like to think it offers an insight into the mindset of the anorexia sufferer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy2ebaAGMU0

Lyrics: http://www.lyricsdomain.com/13/manic_street_preachers/4st_7lbs.html

So now I know this 'womens' thinness thingy has nothing to do with men, just what other seriously bothers women? I thought they were allhappy together. Just as I can be discussing a racing motorcycle engine with my knowlegeable friends,
[ladies welcome to listen!]. But it's the engineering that counts, not our weight or height! Pass the spanners gal!

I'm reminded of teenage boys taking harmful amounts of steroids in order to get big. So long as health is the real issue, fine. It's just a look, an image, like the big bloated bodybuilder. We are all different, and that's great. It's just a shame that the words 'happy' and 'anorexic'have never been combined, side by side. A happy anorexic would make a nice picture.

I know this is late, but I read this article when the magazine was published and want to thank Laurie Penny for another fantastic, insightful, and accurate article.

I'd also like to fully support the sentiments of 'fuckskins' above. Buckskins really has no idea about the experience of anorexics, or their families who have to support them.

Hi Matt,
I wanted to say that my comments probably come across more confrontational than I mean them - I'm not looking to start arguments. My perspective is as a former sufferer and academic, which means I've spoken to hundreds of sufferers over the years but obviously couldn't possibly predict, understand or explain the multitude of issues involved for every one of them.

I agree that a significant proportion of sufferers are male, but I think that in general the overall balance of issues tends to be a little different in male patients. I don't for a minute want to give the impression that I think a societal obsession with women being thin causes anorexia. It is significant that the existence of anorexia predates the modern concept of thinness as beauty. However, current attitudes pressure women to be "good" and "successful" through food restriction. Eating disorders aren't diets, but they often begin as diets. Alternatively for some sufferers issues of self-denial and control predominate, and this is particularly common in male patients.

I think a lot of misunderstanding of eating disorders comes from the natural urge to explain things simplistically. Unfortunately are very much woven from a tapestry of personality, values, experiences and physiology and that just can't be broken down into simple maxims.

It strikes me that the discussion thus far has, in part, ignored some of the thrust of the article: namely, not whether or not being size zero is in fashion, but whether talking about, obsessing over, condemning, or crusading against anorexia has in itself become something of a fashion.

I liked the comment about the sidelining of Bulimia and Binge Eating Disorder, both by the media and by health services in many cases. It's certainly been my experience as a sufferer of one of the manifestations of disordered eating less focused upon by society.

I've always respected the women who are curves. They are beautiful and natural. Please forget about this skinny asses look alike females. The bigger the better. Laurie - when are you going to write about the BBW? Cheers,

oh, and I absolutely agree that other eating disorders should not be sidelined in favour of (mis)representations of anorexia!

I'm addicted to these comment threads.

& I know, if I'm honest about my situation, that with each hit & the subsequent access to the appalling insights of cretinous people who have somehow managed to find a computer, I am undoing 25 years of personal development & the damage might well be permanent. But I can't stop myself.