How to have an eating disorder (for twelve-year-old girls)

I. am. livid.

Beinggirl.com, a website sponsored by Tampax and Always and geared toward young teen girls, has posted an article called What Does the War Have to Do With Your Weight? It begins with kind of a nonsensical explanation of how stressful situations such as the war cause us to overeat (because girls who were in second grade when the war started surely have been overeating as a result?), and then presents a list of helpful tips on how to avoid stress eating.

While some of the tips may be helpful and appropriate for adults who genuinely do engage in stress eating behavior, aiming an article like this at a bunch of twelve- to thirteen-year-old girls is downright repulsive. Especially since there is no caveat about what weight ranges are healthy, no advice to speak to a doctor before dieting, and no information on what a healthy meal plan would entail. The entire article comes at weight loss from the perspective that food is bad and will make you fat, and the only way not to be a cow is to play psychological games with yourself to help yourself eat as little as possible.

Now I will fully admit that my reading of this is somewhat tainted by the fact that I have lived with an eating disorder for most of my life — since even before I was at the age this material targets. Perhaps a young teenager with a more healthy mindset about food and body image could view these tips differently from how I see them. The comments posted to the article suggest otherwise, however.

A few bits that really piss me off:

1. At the moment you grab for something to eat, tell yourself you can have it if you still want it but you have to wait 30 minutes. The craving may pass, you might get distracted, you might become wise enough in that half hour to find a more life affirming way of getting rid of that creepy stress.

Seriously? This is such typical anorexic behavior. Who does this?? Who, besides the eating disordered, plays mental games like this?

2. Write down everything you eat. Icky, we know, but we also know there’s no better substitute (except looking at yourself in the mirror naked), that’s better than tracking what goes into your mouth to get you into the habit of thinking before you eat.

So many things wrong here I’m not sure where to start. Why would a normal, healthy twelve-year-old girl have any reason to think a list of what she eats in a day is “icky”? Why would any normal, healthy individual view food that way? Why the hell should a normal, healthy twelve-year-old girl be encouraged to view food that way?

And the “except looking at yourself in the mirror naked” bit grosses me out to the highest degree. Girls who are going through puberty are probably 112% likely to think they look bad naked — because their bodies are changing and they have never seen themselves look this way before. They are developing curves, growing extra hair, building up extra fat and just all around starting to look different. All of these things are normal and good, and convincing girls at this age that they should look at themselves naked to find motivation to stop eating…

No wonder we’ve got so many fucked up little girls in America.

5. Post-It notes are great for reminding you of the right thing to do. Stick them on the bathroom mirror, on the inside of your locker, on your computer. Be creative with your reminder. “How hungry are your really?” “Exactly why are you eating that now?” “What will the scale say tomorrow morning?”

*headdesk* Yep, I definitely did this when I weighed freaking 95 pounds.

8. If you really try and can’t stop obsessing about food, don’t despair. Indulging doesn’t make you a bad person. You have the rest of your life to renew your commitment to your good health.

Indulging and obsessing are not the same thing. Besides, this article encourages obsessing about food — obsessing about eating the least possible amount.

This just makes me so angry, because I can remember being 18 and severely bulimic, joining online “support groups” for eating disorders where all the girls on the forums would share weight loss tips with each other, and these were the same types of tips we shared. That this kind of behavior is being encouraged in healthy young women on a mainstream website just breaks my heart.

What breaks it even more are the comments:

I am 13 and weigh somewhere in the range of 108-110..
Is that normal? I don’t really know.
I am scared to step on a scale because i think I will get stressed out over what I weigh.

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I am 12 years old and weigh 130 lbs everyone says i m not fat but believe me i am someone plezzz help!!!!

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alright, I am 15 years old, 5′5″, and I weigh about 118 lbs.
what do you think about this?I always want to lose weight but I have no freaken self control!it’s so hard!

Just awful.