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In print | Published December 4, 2008 — Updated December 05, 2008 10:10

To the Editor:

While I found Tamar Lerer’s column entertaining and well-written, I simultaneously found myself bothered by the premise on which it is based: that disordered thinking and eating center around a desire to be thin. Experience has taught me that on the contrary, eating disorder behaviors are mere symptoms of a larger problem. Often they are accompanied by depression and other maladaptive coping mechanisms; they are the manifestation of how one deals with life’s stresses or trauma, and cannot be reduced down to a desire to look good in a bikini. It’s not that I believe Lerer seeks to minimize eating disorders, for she writes with the compassion of someone who has tasted this mania.

Unfortunately, however, her column perpetuates the misconception that girls with eating disorder behaviors (constant body-checking, weighing oneself more than once a wek, negative self-talk, self-image and so forth) are only seeking a better-looking body.

I do not deny that poor body image is an important component of almost any eating disorder, but it is not the only component. Lerer’s column ignores the mental/emotional component that fuels the eating disorder and feeds the obsessive behaviors.

Telling someone with an eating disorder to stop obsessing over the quantitative measures of her appearance (numbers on a scale) and to instead worry about the qualitative measures (how her jeans fit her) does not deal with the problem at all.

In fact, this advice merely suggests that girls keep obsessing, just in different ways. It’s as if Lerer is saying, “Keep the behavior, just tone it down to a more acceptable form.” But to suggest this to someone plagued by ceaseless, nagging obsessive-compulsive thoughts (these thoughts are the only mechanism that can drive someone to weigh themselves more than twice a day), is as helpful as telling an alcoholic to only drink in social settings.

My point is that eating disorders are not so simple. Just as binge-drinking is a symptom of a larger problem for an alcoholic, eating disorder behaviors are maladaptive coping mechanisms aimed at silencing other stressors.

The act of engaging in an eating disorder behavior, whether it be restricting, bingeing, purging, or a combination of the three, is a way to distract or numb oneself from feelings or thoughts that seem indomitable by any other means. For some, envisioning how their jeans used to fit and comparing the (possibly distorted) memory to the present may only feed the fire. What is someone to do when she looks in the mirror and doesn’t like how any of her clothing looks, regardless of the size? At this point, the question is not, “What clothing will make me look better?” but, “What do I really want?” If we delve beyond that first craving or impulse, the ultimate desire is not to be thin and attractive, but the perceived outcome that will arise from being thin and attractive: attention from our crushes, instantaneous world-wide approval (especially from those who never loved us) and of course, fulfillment.

When Lerer declared that she had found “two better and more tangible measures of you as a person,” I was dismayed to find that the alternatives she offered were merely qualitative substitutions for quantitative behaviors, that for many (those with over-exercise patterns or body-image dysmorphia) would fuel the same obsessive cycle.

Amber Wantman ’10

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