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Glenn Gers (Mad Money, Fracture) makes his directorial debut in his latest film “disFIGURED,” billed as “a movie about women and weight.” The film pairs an unlikely duo – a struggling anorexic and a morbidly obese woman – in a friendship that challenges our thoughts on weight, body image and the ways in which we view both others and ourselves. Gers now takes time to share his thoughts with readers of The-F-Word.

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“disFIGURED” bills itself as a film about “women and weight,” but this is no chick flick of women bemoaning the sad, fat state of their thighs. Two women with overlapping insecurities – one is struggling with anorexia, the other with emotional overeating and morbid obesity – embark on an unlikely friendship in Glenn Glers’ directorial debut. Shot on a barebones budget of little more than unknown talent and a director’s dream, “disFIGURED” is both absorbing and evocative, sentimental but not saccharine. This is a film that shows female body-image dysfunction comes in all shapes and sizes.

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Wow, it doesn’t seem like a whole year has passed since the boy and I made our heathen-like cohabitation all official and respectable by churchy standards. We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary on Friday, so we’re headed out of town tomorrow for a few days. I would have loved to go back to Mackinac Island and stay at the B & B we got married at again, but with gas prices now requiring one’s first- and second-born children, we decided to stick closer to home. I love the outdoors and all, but I’m not exactly what you’d call a camping kind of girl, so I’ve reserved a fully-equipped log cabin that sits secluded on 165 acres of land in Ohio’s beautiful Hocking Hills region. I have a friend watching over the blog and the messageboard, but I won’t have internet access for a few days and won’t be checking in personally.

In the meantime, I’ll be posting my review of the film “disFigured,” followed by an interview with writer and director Glenn Gers. See you in a few days, everyone.

The husband and I had time to kill before the Cincinnati Rollergirls bout on Saturday, so we stopped by the eclectic Cincinnati community of Northside. Northside is kind of the liberal stepchild of an otherwise conservative Cincinnati – this is, after all, the city that shut down both Larry Flynt and Robert Maplethorpe yet somehow still managed to produce Jerry Springer. But Northside seems to have escaped the ire of the city’s moral crusaders and now boasts a diverse and gay-friendly community of ‘others.’

You can’t visit Northside without also stopping by Shake It Records. The locally-owned indie music shop specializes in the obscure, from Chicago post-punk art-rock to Ethiopian boog-a-loo. Each time I visit, I immediately head for the ‘C’ section in hopes of a Bruce Cockburn find. The man has some 28 records, but since more than a third of them were made before I was even born, they can be a rare find. I lucked out this visit and stumbled across his 1997 album “You Pay Your Money And You Take Your Chance.” The album is a compilation of previous hits, but it does have one song that I love and don’t have in my personal collection, “Fascist Architecture.”

One of the things I love about Bruce Cockburn is that while he’s old enough to be my grandpa, his songs still cover the gamut of my own rollercoaster of emotions. Throughout my eating disorder and recovery afterwards, his songs filled me with a hope and inspiration like no other. Bruce recorded “Fascist Architecture” in 1980 – just a year after I was born – but each time I listen to it, I’m reminded that while the past may at times seem like a bad dream, like the nights of Gethsemane, they were always lived through with the promise of morning.

Who are the artists that inspire you? Do you have any particular pro-recovery song favorites? Discuss your favorite artists or post a link to your favorite song lyrics in the comments below.

Mental illness continues to be stigmatized, but fortunately, more and more people are seeking out medical help for mental health issues. According to a 2005 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, 2.4 billion drugs were prescribed by doctors and hospitals that year. Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants, surpassing even high blood pressure drugs at 113 million prescriptions. In fact, the use of antidepressants almost tripled between the periods 1988-1994 and 1999-2000.

Many of us, especially those of use who are recovering from an eating disorder, are on some kind of antidepressant or psychotropic drug — drugs that affect brain chemistry. So, let’s have it. What are the good, the bad and the ugly about the drugs you’ve tried in the past? Are there any you’d recommend? Others you’d issue a warning label to?

As always, this discussion should not be mistaken for professional advice. The Mayo Clinic has a good section on choosing an antidepressant (sponsored by the manufacturers of Lexapro) although I prefer the plain-speak site Crazy Meds. You should also talk to your doctor.

You can read my medicinal experiences after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

I couldn’t concentrate on my work for most of yesterday. The words blurred into lines of nonsensical gibberish, my attention span was that of a Chihuahua on speed. I tried to sort through my ever-deluged inbox, but that and the blip on my phone alerting me to five more voicemails only left me feeling overwhelmed and even more unmotivated. I then tried to write a few stories I’ve had back-burnered, but my creativity seemed as inert as screaming angrily under water.

I have ADD, which is to say, the above is not unusual for me. But since I started on medication for it last fall, my focus and attention problems have gotten much better. And I’ve always been able to hyperfocus on things that I enjoy, like my job and looking up every cake design Duff Goldman has ever made, much more than things that I do not enjoy, like paying taxes or writing 25-page papers on Whiggish interpretations of the Revolutionary War.

Later, it occurred to me: I had eaten nothing all day. I normally do not eat breakfast, but it was mid- to late afternoon and I hadn’t had lunch, either.

Basic law of physiology: A starving brain will not function properly. Intellectually, I know this; in fact, I parrot it often on this site. But while they’re two halves of one whole, reason and emotion can be two very different beasts. I consider myself stable in recovery, and yet I still couldn’t quell that disordered part of me that immediately whispered “You’ve gone this long without eating… why ruin it? Don’t give in; you can wait until dinner. Think of the weight you might lose!”

Ahh, the ever-familiar Bitch in My Head. She and I once had a close, intimate relationship, but although she lives rent-free in my head, I can’t quite evict her.

I can, however, ignore her.

This is what recovery looks like: You will never be free from the disorder and you might even relapse from time-to-time. It and you will reside uncomfortably in mutual antagonism, perhaps, for life. Eating disorders are ever so seductive and there will always be triggers luring you back into into eating disorder hell. The distinguishing mark of recovery, however, is that you have now have choices. I could choose the possibility of losing a fraction of a pound and be irritable, unfocused and unorganized for the rest of the day; or I could choose to nourish both my body and mind with a healthy lunch and then get back to my life and my work.

I ignored the high-pitched mosquito whine in my head and fixed myself some tomato soup and a cheese and lettuce sandwich. Pepperjack on rye never tasted better.

Roni Caryn Rabin — yes, the same Roni Caryn Rabin — has an article out on MSNBC about the newly enacted New York law which mandates chain restaurants to post the calorie counts of each food on its menu in the same size and font as the price. Restaurateurs have not yet exhausted their legal challenges to the law, but the city will start fining violators up to $2,000 beginning Friday. Officials say the law will help reduce the number of obesity in New York by 150,000 over the next five years, and will prevent some 30,000 cases of diabetes.

New York restaurants are already feeling the squeeze of the new regulations. One TGI Friday’s restaurant ran out of its Classic Sirloin — one of the lowest calorie items on its menu — before the dinner rush. Other patrons are reporting “sticker shock” at the newly-revealed calorie counts of their favorite foods, with many choosing to forego them altogether. Some restaurant customers have even requested old menus, sans calorie counts, so they can continue to eat in calorie-free bliss.

I’m kind of straddling the fence on this new law, which may be surprising to some given my past eating disordered history, but in all fairness, I will make cases for both before offering up my final thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

Past contestants on Project Runway haven’t been very successful with the few challenges involving designing clothes for women who wear above a size 4, let alone those who wear double digits. So, it’s refreshing to see a contestant in the new season five whose specialty niche are clothes for “full-figured women.”

Thirty-three year old Korto hails from Liberia and attended fashion school in Canada. Here’s her bio, according to the show’s website:

After school, she moved outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, where she now resides with her husband and daughter. Drawing from her African roots, Korto infuses tribal details into her classic designs. She is inspired by rich fabrics and textures and says her designs are intended for real, full-figured women. In her spare time, Korto works as a freelance fashion photographer, dances in an African dance troupe and does African hair braiding and makeup. She says her family considers her to be fun and easygoing.

Warning! Minor spoiler ahead if you missed last night’s premiere.

Ready?

After just the first challenge, Korto has already shown herself to be a designing force worth reckoning with. She placed in the judges’ top three for her creative re-imagination of ordinary grocery store items. I tend to dislike the application of the term “real” to full-figured women — all women are “real” women — but full-figured isn’t always a euphemism for fat, either. A friend of mine recently went to a posh and pricey boutique and lamented over the fact that the only items on clearance and in her price range were in sizes 2 and 4. She is at a healthy weight for her frame and is clearly thin by societal standards — and she wears a size 8-10. “Real” is a poor word choice; I think we would be best served if used the term “average” instead. And the average American woman? Isn’t a size 2 or even 4. In fact, she’s a size 14. Realistically, how many women do you see walking around today who can fit into the double-negative sizes of the models on Project Runway? As the Body Shop said in its “Love Your Body” campaign, “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only eight who do.”

The carrot dangling before contestants on Project Runway is the opportunity and financial means to create their own fashion line. If we go by current estimates, some 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to continuously shifting government guidelines. Wouldn’t then the designer who designs clothes for a larger subset of the demographic thus have the best chance of success with their line? Here’s hoping Korto goes far in the competition. There are three billion women who could use some fashionable clothes.

The blog Between Living and Existing wrote about a new eating disorders awareness PSA campaign across Canada. The Looking Glass Foundation, a non-profit organization seeking to develop Canada’s first residential center for the treatment of adolescents with eating disorders, is the sponsor of the campaign. Their PSAs sound very hard-hitting — images shown include girls compulsively weighing and measuring themselves and a bulimic using a broken toothbrush — and seek to expose the realities of eating disorders.

I applaud any effort to raise awareness of and education about eating disorders. I especially applaud the organization for not being afraid to show the often harsh and definitively unglamorous side to an eating disorder. I further applaud the organization for seeking to establish a residential treatment facility, and for its summer camp and scholarship programs. We need more organizations like The Looking Glass Foundation.

My only issue with the campaign, and it’s a minor quibble, is its theme: “Not every suicide note looks like a suicide note.”

It’s a common stereotype that people with an eating disorder are subconsciously or even consciously trying to kill themselves. And I can see where many might get this idea. After all, eating disorders erode not only the mind, but also the physical self. Many sufferers, like me, are left with lasting physical reminders of our eating disorders years after we have reached a stable point in our recovery — that is, if one succeeds in recovery. For all too many, recovery is the carrot forever dangling out of reach. And don’t doubt it: Eating disorders are as real and deadly as cancer. There is no cure. The final symptom is suicide.

I’m sure there are people with a death wish who hope an eating disorder will help them achieve this goal, but for me and most people with eating disorders I know and have talked to, eating disorders aren’t a way to die. They’re a way to live. There is a reason why people who promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice say that a dead anorexic is a failed anorexic. For many, an eating disorder is a way to cope with larger emotional issues in their life. We are unable to comprehend and manage the real issues in a healthy and constructive way, and so we fall back on our bodies, allowing its behaviors and compulsions and urges to say what we really feel and need. In flesh, we describe a pain we can not communicate in words. For me, my eating disorder came at a unique crossroads in my life, a time when I felt deeply depressed, confused and unsure of myself and also a time of great upheaval in my family, personal and professional life. Starving gave me a goal, a way to stand out and exert control.

Many eating disorders naysayers like to bandy about the statistic that only some two hundred people die each year from anorexia, but the truth is, we have no way to realistically estimate just how many people die each year from an eating disorder. One would be hard-pressed to find anorexia or bulimia cited as the cause of death on any death certificate, just as obesity itself is never listed as a cause of death. Most often, it is the complications that arise from an eating disorder — heart irregularities, malnutrition, kidney failure, electrolyte imbalances, depression and suicide, etc… — that cause the death of a person with an eating disorder. And since we don’t even have a reliable estimate of the numbers of people with an eating disorder — many cases go unreported for fear of shame or due to a lack of resources — we will never be able to pinpoint a reliable estimate of just how many lives are taken each year by eating disorders.

It is true that an eating disorder is often a silent cry for help. It is also true that starvation and chemical imbalances brought on by an eating disorder often cause such great depression in sufferers that many feel suicide is the only way out of their pain. It is also true that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. In fact, the annual death rate associated with anorexia alone is more than 12 times higher than that of all other causes combined for females between 15 and 24 years of age. But most people with an eating disorder do not want to die and their disorders are not a suicide note in the making. Most people with an eating disorder want to live – and an eating disorder allows them the only way forward they know how to take in order to keep living.

Eating disorders carry with them great ironies: Most develop as a form of control, but soon begin to control us; the object of our obsession does not bring us happiness, but rather more sorrow and pain; and no matter how much weight we lose, it’s never thin enough. But perhaps greatest irony of all is that that which allows us to live has also the power to kill us.

What about you? Would you say your eating disorder represented a form of suicide or is it instead a way to cope with life?

One of the first things we’re reminded of in eating disorder recovery is that fat is not a feeling. One can be fat and one can think they’re fat, but you cannot feel fat. Most women, of course, will disagree — one can indeed “feel fat” — and many of us know exactly what someone means when they say “I feel fat.” The term is often a euphemism for “I feel gross and out-of-shape;” “I feel bad about myself and my body;” “I feel insecure and anxious;” and/or “I feel hopeless or depressed.”

I came across the website of Irene Rubaum-Keller, an eating disorder therapist based in Los Angeles. She has a wealth of good articles on her site related to eating disorders and body image. She wrote about “feeling fat” here (originally published in Strive magazine) and I want to re-list her tips of how to work through the feeling of fatness.

How To Turn A Fat Day Around

Here are some simple things you can do to help yourself feel better when you’re having a fat day:

* Go to the gym. Not just to work out for your health, but also to spend some time in the locker room. Here you will see what real bodies look like. This is the only “fair” place for you to compare your body to others.
* Think Sophia Loren. She’s not 23, she’s not a size 4, and she’s gorgeous.
* Dress and act as if you were having a thin day. Pretend you feel good about your body. Again think Sophia Loren.
* Be aware of how you talk to yourself on a fat day. See if you can be nicer.
* Find all the studies that show men prefer normal weighted women to thin women. Read them often.
* Get into therapy if your self-image is poor and it’s making you miserable. It’s worth the investment in yourself.
* Spend some time looking at a Rubens. If you’re built like that, you’ll see the beauty in it. If you’re not, for a few moments, you might just feel thin.

What does “I feel fat” often translate into for you? What are some other ways you turn your own fat days around?