http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2HuNierhX4
Imagine a costume with a skeleton etched onto a skin-tight dress, modeled with a tape measure belt around the dress’s waist: one would hope it would be immediately pulled off the shelves of Halloween websites like Halloweenstore.com and Ricky’s. How could someone even agree to model for a costume that represents eating disorders so clearly?
The name of the costume is Anna Rexia; the feminine, cute name suggests that this disease should be your BFF. But Anna isn’t the coolest girl in school, walking down the hallways in slow-motion as her perfect blonde curls bounce up and down. She’s a bully, who calls you fat and, with the help of her accomplice, (Buli)Mia, shoves your head in a toilet bowl.
Anorexia nervosa is no joke, and a costume glamorizing the disease is beyond inappropriate and offensive. There is already enough pressure on girls in the weeks before Halloween to go on extreme diets, so that they can slip into skimpy lingerie and throw on a pair of bunny ears and heels in order to dress to impress. When these “diets” turn into eating disorders, they become serious matters.
In fact, there is enough pressure during all times of the year in this day and age. As young women, we are growing up in a time where we are constantly, even involuntarily exposed to what society demands of us in regards to appearance. We flip through magazines to find our favorite celebrities’ detailed and scarily low-calorie diets, and we watch the evolution of their stick skinny figures. We even scroll down our Tumblr feeds to find photos like those of legendary model Kate Moss next to the quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” And because Kate is telling us this implicitly, we can’t help but feel that it’s true and that we should submit ourselves to these destructive messages.
We start to think that protruding collarbones are beautiful and that the word “frail” is a compliment. We soon believe that if we don’t possess the infamous thigh gap, then we aren’t skinny enough. It can sometimes feel like society is the one sticking its finger down our throats, forcing us to upchuck. The stress placed upon young girls can act as an anchor, holding them back from pursuing their happiness. They start to become consumed with all this nonsense as they stop themselves from actually consuming.
These Tumblr posts, Instagrams, status updates, and retweets advise us to mold ourselves into people who don’t exist, all to be approved with a roar of applause from society. But society doesn’t have hands, so this praise or disapproval is made up in our heads due to what we have seen and heard.
There is nothing cute or glamorous about eating disorders. Depriving yourself of meals and replacing them with coffee and gum is not sexy, and a diet like that can ultimately result in severe health problems in the long run. Eating disorders are diseases and traps that girls fall into during their most vulnerable states. A girl who is stripped of all her body fat and more importantly, her happiness and security, should not be admired and followed by girls staring at her through their computer screens, a habit that is all too real today.