Why Touting EDs as "Lifestyles" Hurts Everyone

Girls who are reluctantly in recovery for or are confronted about an eating disorder have this one battlecry: "It's not a disease, it's my lifestyle!!" Even when you can acknowledge that your eating habits, your relationship with food and with your body is entirely screwed up and atypical, there's still this trend of seeing it as a matter of choice, of free will. I have met too many girls at various points on their recovery process who believe, honestly believe, that their eating disorder is not a disorder at all but a sustainable way of living.
Now, it should be acknowledged that there is pretty solid medical evidence that the symptoms of an eating disorder are perpetuated and intensified by starvation; the more we are self-starving, the more we are driven to self-starve and the more we obsess over our food and our bodies. So while this seems so hopelessly naive and stupid, you have to see it in its context.
But even if I can understand where it's coming from, I have serious concerns for this philosophy and not simply because it will eventually kill you. Within the (predominantly online) "pro-anorexic" community of mostly adolescent girls who "support" one another in their totally unattainable goals, this angry voice emerges, claiming that EDs are "lifestyles," and while sensible healthy people might see this as the voice of a skinny, starving, delusional demographic, it is nonetheless a message sent out into the abyss.
And on the other side of some confusing up-and-down void of sense and rationality, there are the girls who are ready to escape an eating disorder, who struggle to accept that it is not within their capacity alone to heal themselves. And for these girls, let me tell you, there is nothing more fucking frustrating than the people who cannot understand that it is a disorder, a disease, an addiction, and not just a changeable behavior.

It's funny: when we are caught in the throes of anorexia, we fervently reject hunger, normal eating patterns, and everything else that smacks of health and wellness. And then, when we finally recognize how utterly unsustainable this is, how dangerous it is to let this go unchecked, we have to relearn sense to fervently reject disorder and addiction to reinflate ourselves.

"Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find it's not Bad to be Good"
Deciding when to have consensual sex is a totally personal thing based upon totally personal factors, and I don't think it's anyone's place to judge someone else's sexual activity or lack thereof. Which is why I would not judge someone who was abstaining until marriage. But it's also why this book title pisses me off so much, not because I oppose abstinence or even movements to encourage abstinence among young people, but because it colors the issue of having sex as simply a matter of "good" versus "bad" and assumes that women sacrifice their "self-respect" when they have pre-marital sex. Isn't that completely playing into this whole ingrained philosophy that female sexuality is bad and wrong and sex is primarily the pleasure of the man and the duty of the woman?

oh, barf!

Taco Bell and S.I. to join forces

Seriously look at that...when I try to imagine shitty fast food and sex in the same context I just imagine feeling nauseous and bloated.

lottery card: Your lottery card has been entered successfully.
The card priority is 1.00.
Your lottery group contains the following members:

Yang, Margaret K. Female Priority:1
Srebro, Kendra C. Female Priority:1 Card Captain

We really want Coral Tower, which is at 3rd Ave and 13th and a mermaid fantasy castle.

interesting little truth

I have only lived in two states in my life, but while living in both of them, the governor resigned amidst corruption and scandal.

what am I NOT thinking?

three extremely important things:

1) Chris selflessly gave me his ticket to SNL so despite not having endured the full agony of waiting I still got to go, and it was truly one of the coolest experiences ever. Everything is much much much smaller than one would think.

2) Monday morning I woke up and peeled (I initially wrote "unpeeled"?) a banana for breakfast but for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about how much it seemed to resemble a penis in weight and girth and it bothered me so much that I threw it out. Go ahead and pick the Freudian shit out of that one; I apologize to starving orphans who would have loved that phallic banana.

3) There is nothing quite like realizing you are totally willing to eat a grocery store's garbage totally sans compensation and purely for the sake of (assisting with) reporting to reaffirm your faith in the fact that yes, journalism is really what you should be doing.

Homegirl won her shit

Hillary takes Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and is eventually just named queen of everything.
Julia Allison thinks I'm adorable (semi-far down)

Kendra Srebro
7:43
i love waking up to my morning cup of YOU in the morning..light and sweet!

this day is so good and it hasn't even started yet!

Today I:
- Got a job as a camp counselor at a sleep-away camp (CTY) this summer outside of Albany
-Watched at least 15 hours of CNN election coverage
- Met Julia Allison

I think I'll only need 4X, but still, I'm thankful to have options.
Also, this is so weird. Pro-choice, pro-life, political affiliations aside, it's so weird. I'm not an obstetrician (I know, I know, I get that a lot) but I'm pretty sure that at 10 weeks you're still essentially a shapeless mash-up and don't really have precious pollypocket-sized feet-resembling feet.

Weird!

Tonight, Julia Allison is going to be in my dorm doing a thing.

Weird sleeping.

According to Chris, I snore, grind my teeth, and have full conversations while asleep. It is weird to feel guilty about behaviors I can neither remember doing nor possibly avoid.

Today is not even a day at all. It is just a huge joke. Anna Karenina flaked on our 8am recitation and my boss sent me a facebook message to tell me I don't need to come in today, so I've regressed to pyjamas and am overthinking the organization of my netflix queue.
I'm not trying to alarm anyone, but I'm toasting week old bagels on my radiator. It's not terrible.

STOP THE PRESSES.

News to surprise absolutely no one.