hi just coming back to your post about anorexia as a class signaling phenomenon. sorry about the rant - I’m just curious to hear your thoughts.
while I agree in the case of celebrities whose bodies embody and engineer the standard of what’s «to-be-looked-at» ,I think it’s not different from the resource intensity of keeping up any extreme physical appearance. the kardashian body that preceded this return to heroin chic is just as resource intensive.
there exists a very widespread notion that eating disorders, anorexia in particular, is an illness of affluence. it is true that fatness is punished more severely in those growing up in the upper classes. but research is inconclusive as to whether anorexia as the means by which to achieve thinness is more frequently occurring in the upper classes - both occurrence and variation in characteristics seems to have little correlation with class.
I personally believe that relating anorexia, one of the deadliest mental illnesses, with restraint in the face of abundance or some sort of privilege-demonstrating effort is potentially harmful. because it is related to the coding of fatness as lazy. and because anorexia is very often not about conscious effort, but about a type of control that spirals out of the sick person’s rational reach.
i'm long term anorexic and at a point where I don't even gain weight when eating normally also have intense pain digesting food sometimes. I was severely underweight most of my early childhood for a variety of reasons. so i'm quite aware of how anorexia is perceived, I don't think i've had a normal relationship with my body my entire life, and was in and out of hospitals
there is a larger prevalence of anorexia in high income countries, it doesn't mean it's a privilege per-se but if you haven't dealt with food insecurity or been around food insecure people idk what to tell you--I can say for certain people will absolutely show more concern for my physical state if they're not well off because they correlate my weight with not having access to food rather than discipline! this happened at my old job often actually
why is it controversial to say? when peoples' basic needs are met they focus on external appearance more and class signaling through exclusivity is a thing. my post was also specific to wealthy celebrities in the united states. it's not a generalization about anorexia. that's quite a specific group of people. it's my observation of the behavior of just one group among many that have the same illness.
but regardless, his insistence that illness must be fully sympathetic to be taken seriously needs to end. it's just not realistic. you'll be unable to handle topics like drug addiction with this mindset. I will say that there is a lot of misconceptions about anorexia, and stigma. it's also of course not as simple as wanting to be thin because if that were the case, way more women would be underweight. a lot of women engage in disordered eating but most do not reach that physical state from it
