Words by: Rachel Okunev
Graphic by: Eva Morris
Graphic by: Eva Morris
Hunger—particularly that of women—has grown increasingly fetishized within today’s media. The honoring of a woman’s hunger is simultaneously incomprehensible and erotic. There has always been a societal obsession with women eating, women not eating, and women taking up more or less space than is deemed “just right.”
All of these have plunged generations of people into disordered thinking and habits around food—making the aforementioned seem not only normal but necessary. Such rhetoric has only overtaken more and more of the Western psyche. We see it in social media trends, film, advertising, and the (predominantly female!) scrutiny of Bella Hadid’s self-proclaimed love for pizza, or lack thereof.
The enormous overlap between those with an eating disorder and marginalized populations is not coincidental. Women, queer people, people of color: those who repeatedly receive messaging encouraging them to hide, to make themselves disappear.
Our bodies—our needs—have been picked apart since before we understood what it even meant to truly have a body. And this has poisoned us.
Since its beginning, NEDA week has been twisted into a tool to further trigger those who are already sick. Online platforms, such as TikTok and Twitter, have seen a steep incline in content circulating around “body checking,” or posting photos and videos of thin bodies solely to showcase their thinness.
With every pseudo-recovery trend on social media, we are provided with another method with which to try and prove that we have finally made ourselves sick enough to deserve to get better.
Not only is this entirely unhelpful to those in recovery, but it is actively harmful.
Instead, I would like for the close of this week to encourage the opening of a conversation about how a disorder with such a private nature has affected nearly 30 million Americans.
Sharing personal stories is incredibly valuable and has the opportunity to empower those in recovery—but what led to so many personal stories in the first place?
What led a collective of multiple millions of minds to turn against bodies? This incessant loop pushes people to grow smaller and smaller until they disappear altogether—where did it come from?
The posting of “What I Eat In a Day” videos is certainly tone-deaf, even problematic. Still, the sudden outpour of hate towards the creators of this kind of content begs the question: why do we, as individuals, feel so deeply impacted by other people's food choices and appearances?
In a world that is controlled by algorithms designed to detect and spread content receiving engagement, we, as users, are the ones continuing to popularize these messages, especially with applications such as Instagram or TikTok—where there is no such thing as a “dislike” feature. In the eyes of the algorithm, any and all engagement is good engagement. Popular content will continue being pushed out to greater audiences, regardless of messaging.
These repetitive “calls to action” have done little to legitimately help the prevention and reduction of disordered eating and body dysmorphic disorders. Such sentiments are simply too deeply ingrained in how we view ourselves and others. And with social media quickly becoming the antithesis of support, genuine recovery seems to slip further and further out of young peoples’ grasp.
So as we head out of another year’s NEDA week, let us take a look inward for once. Let us ask ourselves why how others treat their bodies intensely affects how we see and think about them. Let us ask why we have such a profound need to justify our choices with our bodies—and by extension, our lives.