When i was hospitalized for my ed, one of the key things they used to assess my mental health (and to declare that i was “mentally deteriorating” the longer I stayed) what by looking at how I performed femininity. When i was first hospitalized I woke up super early and did my hair + makeup everyday, wore tight feminine clothing, shaved, etc. As the months went on I stopped doing those things, I wore baggy clothes, never wore makeup, stopped shaving, always tied my hair up, and my doctors declared this was a sign of worsening mental illness, and that I needed to try harder to recover (and that my medication dosage needed to be increased), trying harder meant they wanted me to force myself to go back to my original routine of uncomfortable femininity, never did they even consider that a. it was so fucking ridiculous, especially when i was living in a fucking hospital full time for months on end and b. that i was so uncomfortable being forced to live in a hospital, having no freedom, and being forced to gain weight, and baggy clothes/not participating in exhausting, appearance focused routines gave me a small bit of comfort in a seemingly never ending state of extreme discomfort.
A few times a month we had makeup artists and hair dressers come in to do our makeup and hair as “therapy”, and we would once a week be allowed on an outing to get our nails done. Refusal to participate was considered “non-compliance” and refusal to participate in treatment, which meant that your little freedom to do things like sit outside or have supervised walks were taken away, and your stay would be extended for 2 weeks.
I mean it was so totally beyond fucked up that doctors would do that to anyone, let alone teenage girls suffering from severe eating disorders. And yet they wonder why almost none of the girls there got any better. Any sort of appearance based “therapy” is bullshit and not getting to the root of the problem, and further harming girls.
I can’t touch on the ED part, but when I was 16 and forced into a mental hospital for two weeks, at the end of the two weeks they wanted to put me in a long term mental health facility (which was a whole illegal and immoral process in itself that left me PTSD for life but I’ll talk about that another time) Of course me being forced there, I did not want to stay there any longer, and I decided to go to court to make my case to leave. The lawyer against me had used the fact that I “had stopped wearing my nice clothes and makeup and has horrible personal hygiene” ?? I took a shower every day?? I just had stopped “"caring”“ because the only people around me were doctors and patients going through the same thing, I was in the same building for two weeks, why would I make an effort on my appearance !!! Point is he won the case with that and I had to be forced into another long term care facility in that basis of not performing my femininity 😕😕
