on eating disorders and feminist guilt

tw: discussion of anorexia and orthorexia.

more often encouraged to evaluate ourselves by our body images than by our actions, we become objects of desire. seeking validation primarily through the interest and excitement reflected back at us by others, we gradually lose sight and control of our own needs, wants, wishes. we become objects even to ourselves, constantly surveying our bodies and our psyches as though from an external point of view. doubting our own abilities and knowledge, we need reassurance; lacking confidence, we long for flattery. unable to know ourselves authentically, we want to be wanted instead of loved. we lose track of how it feels to be in charge of our actions and desires. yet this feels perfectly normal, somehow connected to becoming a woman, because almost everyone else is doing it too.

women and desire — polly young-eisendrath

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i’m constantly watching, imagining the way my legs look from the back, wondering if the way i’m standing is creating a desirable-enough gap between my thighs. all while the now overused margaret atwood quote runs through my mind. particularly, the last line: “you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. you are your own voyeur.” i feel sick. the guilt is washing over me again. i distract myself.

i don’t do cardio anymore, i can’t do it without the motivation being thinness. i try to be incredibly intentional with my exercise. the only time i run now is to get out of my head or when i’m trying to catch the bus to work. i don’t really touch pilates now either, i just envision thin asian women on youtube, bodies leaner than i could ever hope for. i think of my pinterest thinspo boards, perfectly done up, sweatless, lululemon-clad. i shudder. sometimes i do yoga.

i feel the guilt most of the time, the shame. guilt at my hypocrisy, i look at the other anorexics, the girls clearly body-checking on my instagram explore page and i judge them, i know they’re ill, i wonder why they don’t get help, why they resort to posting thinly veiled thinspo instead. then i realise i’m feeling anger, i’m jealous, i’m comparing myself. sometimes, when i’m really strong, i repeat ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ over and over (the words don’t really register), press ‘not interested’ and i click off the app. most of the time i click on their page and continue scrolling.

i feel like everyone around me is sick of hearing about it. sometimes i share my disordered thoughts with my boyfriend or my close friends, i try to pass it off like it’s funny, i’ll throw in a little laugh after for good measure, break up the awkward silence a little, none of them ever laugh, they know better than to ‘joke’ back with me. i try to journal about it, but i think it just makes it worse. having an eating disorder is very lonely. you can’t really bond with others in the same place, it gets competitive, but the ones not in that headspace don’t entirely get it. they usually just seem disturbed.

i don’t know how to live sustainably, i’m always one way or the other. since attempting to commit to recovery, i’ve found that food rules don’t work for me. so i’ll let myself eat freely, honour my cravings, a month or two goes by, i start trying to incorporate some healthier foods, soon i’m full-swing back into orthorexia. i’m fearing oil, fearing anything i haven’t cooked myself, i’m remembering to take my supplements, i’m drinking probiotics and ginger shots that make my throat burn and my stomach churn. quickly it turns into me not eating at all. this cycle won’t stop repeating.

and i feel sick again. i feel like it will never end. i started crying on the bus last week while the line ‘took a long time to stand, took an hour to fall’ from elliott smith's ‘a passing feeling’ played through my headphones. it feels like i’m never not trying to get better. like i’m never not re-recovering, getting back on track.

as a barista, i cannot count the times i ask the woman in front of me if she’d like anything else with her drink, she tells me ‘oh, no!! i’m trying to be good.’ before winking at me and leaving with her skinny latte. it makes me seethe when they’re accompanied by their husbands who usually have a large drink with full-fat milk and a slice of cake on the side. i suppress a loud ‘FUCK YOU’ i want desperately to scream at the well-meaning customer, but it’s too much for me. it’s too much the way women share these things with a smile and a sly nod of acknowledgment, as if it’s all normal, as if i too am dieting, as if i know her pain, i do. the red-top milk bottle symbolises too much pain for me.

and i watch my mother struggle, for a long time i’ve watched her struggle with her image, with food, with exercise, i’ve watched her punish herself, i’ve watched her pick herself apart. i know she doesn’t want to live like that, neither do i. but i cant help but feel like i’m seeing into the future, the way my struggles parallel hers. the way my struggles parallel most women in this world. women from all walks of life, united by self-loathing.

sometimes i believe i am above it. i find my cognitive dissonance so exhausting. i know the way capitalist marketing works, the way insecurities are sold to you, where anti-fatness and beauty standards originate from. i know that the patriarchy benefits off of women’s suffering, women’s desire to be smaller, but yet i still want it. i am so repulsed by the way women who aren’t thin are treated as entirely unworthy by society, yet i feed into the exact same bodily ideals. i starve myself just to achieve a body that i still don’t think is good enough. my internal monologue makes me feel like a ‘bad feminist’ (whatever the fuck that means), a fraud, a liar, a cheat.

i tried writing this piece a while ago, started it sometime last september. i probably deleted and rewrote it five or six times, never content. i realised it felt like a façade, everything was written in past tense as if it was over, as if i had recovered. i was writing as if the worst was over and i was all fine and normal again. i tried for so long to round the essay up and to end it on a nice conclusion about how recovery is always an option, and of course it is, it just felt like i was lying to myself about my own situtation.

it feels like i’m never going to stop recovering and relapsing again and again. i spend a lot of time at the moment feeling like i will actually explode, like i need to rip myself out of my own skin, scream, destroy things. i start to get better again and then i’m dragged under by my own hatred of my healtheir self. i want so desperately to turn back to my old ways of harming myself, but i think of all the women before me who either get skinny or die trying. i don’t think i’m willing to die trying, not anymore. i know i have so much to live for, so much to do, so much to try. but i don’t know when i will be able to shake the urge to be thin while i do so.

i’m getting pulled each way by my conflicting thoughts and i’m not sure how to break free.