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I tore out this snippet I found in one of those “health” magazines at my doctor’s office. You know the kind… the ones that purport to be about health and yet the first half of the magazine is devoted to “losing weight” and “looking better.” Yeah, well, it was either that or read Nicole Ritchie’s gushing about her new baby.

Gym-goers who look out of shape aren’t the best role models, but they might actually inspire you more than people with buff bodies. University of California, San Diego, researchers found that women who exercised next to plump peers worked out two minutes longer than they did when working out next to fitness freaks. Lead researcher James A. Kulik, PhD, thinks the women wanted to show off next to (or avoid becoming like) someone less fit, but they felt demoralized when next to a woman who was more toned.

What strikes me most about this snippet is that because the “non-plump” gym-goers are compelled to exercise more, the tone of the brief seems to condone and even promote the behavior, regardless of the destructive motivations driving it (it was included on a page with other weight-loss advice and tips). Both hypotheses — the woman who wants to “show off” in front of a fatter woman or the woman who uses her “plump peer” as the yardstick by which she measures her own self-worth — indicates a degree of self-insecurity and self-anxiety, feelings that an extra two minutes on the stairclimber won’t ever whittle away.

I looked up the study and found it ironically enough to be published in the July, 2007 edition of the International Journal of Eating Disorders - abstract here. Some additional context: The study included female undergraduate students (who may be more susceptible to this kind of behavior) and sought to measure the the effects of peer comparisons in a naturalistic setting or on objective behavior one body-image perceptions. The results?

Exposure to a fit peer had undermining effects on women’s body satisfaction and exercise duration, whereas an unfit peer produced no compensating greater body satisfaction but did elicit longer exercise duration relative to controls.

The thrust of the study measured body dissatisfaction, and so it’s inclusion in an eating disorders journal isn’t strange. What is curious is the “health” magazine’s positive slant on it as evidenced by its very title, “Fitness Freaks bad for your figure.” Maybe a more appropriate title would have instead been “Low self-esteem bad for your mind.” Instead of recognizing the negativity revealed in the study published in an eating disorders journal, the magazine chose to appropriate aspects of it to further promote “health” and weight-loss. Once again, what would be considered disordered and even mentally ill for thin people is liberally disseminated as healthy advice for fat people. Who needs pro-ana sites when mainstream media normalizes disordered eating and behaviors?

My gym membership now is through our company’s on-site gym and I’m usually the only one working out in the late evening hours. My last gym membership where I worked out with other people was during the heydays of my eating disorder, when I habitually compared myself against every other woman anyway, so, my perspective may be a bit skewed. I do acutely remember one particular instance, though, from a few years ago, partly because I journaled about it. I usually ended my workouts with my own hillbilly version of yoga in a darkened, unused aerobics room. I was stretching on the bar when another, thinner girl about my age came in and started stretching also. I don’t think she was paying me the slightest bit of attention, but I soon began mimicking her movements and deliberately stretching farther than she and longer in a physical and mental game of endurance. She soon left and I “won.”

Have your workouts ever been subject to influence by the woman working out next to you? Do you feel like others pay any attention to what it is you’re doing at the gym?

The recent death of Polly Ann Williams struck a chord with a lot of people. Even now, months after her suicide, she remains among the top ten search words leading people here to this site and my eulogy to her remains one of the most visited entries since I began the site last January.

Polly, of course, was one of four women featured in Lauren Greenfield’s Emmy-nominated documentary Thin, which follows the womens’ experiences at the Renfrew Center, a residential facility for the treatment of eating disorders. I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the film, although I do have the book it is based on, but many people who have seen the documentary have shared here that they really empathized with Polly and felt a connection, even through television. Polly’s life - and even her death - has left a lasting imprint upon many people.

Polly’s sister commented on my eulogy post here, suggesting that though Polly suffered incredibly in the past year of her life, her family is comforted by her show of faith. One of Polly’s sisters, Staley, has continued to update readers of Polly’s old blog. In her post today, Staley shares some Bible verses the Williams’ family has found especially comforting. She writes:

Although our hearts miss her, we find ways to rejoice. She still touches so many people today. For that, we can rejoice. Polly is no longer in pain–for that, we can rejoice. Polly is finally free of the torcher of the ed. and the saddness, for that, we rejoice. Polly shared her life w/ us for 33 year, for that, we rejoice.

Faith can be a potent and powerful force, one with regenerative healing powers for both mind and body. And when I speak of faith, I don’t mean to always imply a god figure, although many do find comfort in God or Allah or Vishnu or Shiva. Faith can take many forms and while some may find solace in religion, others may choose to vest their faith in something more tangible. Personally, I credit Buddhism as one of the strongest forces leading me to recovery from my own eating disorder. Buddhism’s emphasis on self-analysis and introspect, combined with its insistence on the cultivation of the mind and body to be an instrument of goodwill encouraged me to examine what it is I truly believed in, to discover the inner me, and to treat my body as kindly and compassionately and I seek to treat others. I’m not Hindu, but I also found the Bhagavad Gita to be one of the most inspiring and beautiful things I’ve ever read, and I’m also fond of Khalil Gibran, whose writings I also classify as spiritual in nature. I hope Polly’s own faith provided some semblance of reassurance to her as she made her final decisions.

Polly’s family has made available commemorative bracelets in honor of Polly through the Gail R. Schoenbach Foundation for the Recovery and Elimination of Eating Disorders (F.R.E.E.D.) at a cost of $5. The non-profit organization provides financial support for individuals to seek out eating disorder treatment. To order or make a donation, visit here.

Has Polly’s life and death had an impact on you? Or, has your religious or spiritual faith helped you in eating disorder recovery or body size acceptance? Share your thoughts below.

“Voluptuous women needed… for student photography project (no worries, no nudity). If you’re in your 20’s, got real booty, boobs or hips, please help me out!”

So read an advertisement posted by communication graduate student Kristin ‘Lou’ Herout last fall throughout buildings on her Northern Illinois University campus.

The 23-year-old graduate student and professional photographer replicated advertisements from Cosmopolitan, Elle and other women’s fashion magazines using not industry standard size-zero models, but rather “curvy” and “realistic” women to accompany a scholarly paper on the subject. “Basically, I just want people to see what it would be like if plus-size models were represented similarly to slim models,” said Herout.

The Dekalb, Ill. native boasts her own photography company startup, K Lou Photography, and teaches courses as a teacher’s assistant at NIU on audio and production. She’s also a photographer for one of Chicago’s premiere wedding photography companies, Essence Photography and Video. I caught up with Herout as she prepares to move to San Francisco this summer to complete her master’s degree in photography at the Academy of Art University to talk about her provocative project.

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I’ve always liked Christina Ricci as an actress, and after reading a Blackbook interview with her, I like her as a woman, too. Says Christina:

“I think people are learning to actually aspire to be objectified. It’s like the highest form of flattery for teenage girls. The culture we live in right now seems to reward behavior that we used to frown upon. We used to teach our daughters not to be like this…

“We don’t really know what’s going to happen to this generation of children. I just know that things seem wrong to me. I mean, I just feel like sexism is alive and well, and misogyny. And we all like to pretend that it’s not. That makes me feel a little crazy.”

The husband and I walked last night around a popular outdoor air shopping/entertainment plaza. A kiosk sold t-shirts with phrases like “I’m a virgin - but this is an old t-shirt” and “Who says size doesn’t matter?” in girl sizes. My 14-year-old cousin - the one who idolizes Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera but blanks on Susan B. Anthony and Betty Friedan - looks and dresses older than I do and I’m teetering precariously close to 30. I once mentored a 13-year-old, average-weight biracial girl from my city’s projects who was extremely smart in math and science, and yet constantly downplayed her academic skills while lamenting how fat she was (because other kids told her so).

From body-baring bikinis for girls as young as 6, sexual dolls designed for girls ages 4 - 8, tweens posing in suggestive and provocative ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models, what kind of messages are young girls receiving today on how they ought feel and act? As a report released last year by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls reveals, those messages can be devastating.

Instead of collectively wringing our hands while bemoaning the sad state society has devolved to, I’m more interested in what we can do to fix the problems. The challenge seems daunting: how can one person or even a group of people tackle a mega-billion dollar media and entertainment industry? How can we work to change national opinions and culturally ingrained beliefs? I think the answer starts one girl at a time.

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Sixty-five percent of American women between the ages of 25 and 45 report having disordered eating behaviors, according to the results of a new survey by SELF Magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An additional 10 percent of women report symptoms consistent with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, meaning that a total of 75 percent of all American women endorse some unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food or their bodies.

The online survey garnered responses from 4,023 women who answered detailed questions about their eating habits. Results and analysis appear in the magazine’s May 2008 issue on newsstands through May 19. Click here to read the article online.

While I don’t doubt the high levels of unhealthy relationships with food amongst a national cross-section of women, I do have to point out that Self isn’t exactly a paragon of body size acceptance. Every edition touts some kind of diet and weight loss plan, along with some half-naked airbrushed woman on its glossy cover.

Consider a sampling of recent headlines: “New fixes for stubborn fat!,” “A Diet to Shed Pounds Fast!,” “The 10-Calorie Secret,” “Drop Weight, Look Great and Never Go to the Gym,” “Shortcut to your Best Body,” “A Super Simple Slim-Down!,” “The One-Month Total Body Makeover,” “Peel off the Pounds!,” “Lose Weight Every Day!,” “The Beauty Diet,” and so on.

The magazine even boasts an online section dedicated solely to dieting, with “healthy eating” thrown in almost as an afterthought. Members here can join the Self Diet Club complete with “powerful tools can track your progress, analyze your diet and even tell you exactly what to eat (and what to skip) to slim down.” Because eating according to software dictates is much better than intuitive eating, right? Readers can also read about how to jump start their diet to drop a size in 30 days, take the Self challenge to achieve a “dream body,” learn fitness moves designed to burn more calories, and get such helpful reminders like how calorie-laden beverages can make you fat.

In the article “Scale Stuck?” Self urges women to consider 10 reasons why they’re not losing weight and genetics isn’t one of them. Such sage recommendations include recommendations to grocery shop online, count calories and don’t celebrate workouts with M & Ms. Other stellar recommendations are to deliver messages in person instead of email so you can lose nearly a pound a month!, as well as the same kinds of advice distributed on pro-ana boards, like encouraging women to wear tight jeans on weekends so you don’t overeat and to give away clothes the moment you drop a size to “ensure you won’t drift into them again.”

While Self does include constructive articles on how to beat stress, healthy recipes and basic nutrition, health issues like breast cancer, and green fashion and living trends, its overall emphasis is that women need to change. Specifically, that women need become thinner and more beautiful and ergo better people. I have to wonder if there exists an audience of women who don’t accept themselves as they are and Self simply fills that need, or does magazines like Self help to create and perpetuate such audiences?

With its predominant emphasis on dieting, weight loss and unrealistic beauty standards, it comes as no wonder so many of Self’s readers have unhealthy relationships with food, weight and body image. Perhaps the magazine ought to see its study more as an indictment of itself and less as a reflection of a national trend.

EDIT: Claire of 5 Resolutions advised me the survey was a national survey, and not solely of Self readers. My comments about the magazine still stand.

I’ve got lots of blog post ideas and not enough time to write them. Here’s a few quick hits of related topics in the news.

A new study reveals the obvious: one’s social environment affects eating disorder development. A study of high school students showed a small, but significant clustering effect in eating disorder behaviors and symptoms. Researchers found that a pair of students from the same county was 4 percent to 10 percent more likely to share an eating-disordered behavior when compared to pairs in which each person came from a different county. While the study wasn’t designed to look at why these behaviors might be clustering in certain areas, the researchers suggest that peer pressure, information sharing or students modeling their behavior on one another are possible mechanisms.

“These findings confirm the strong social influences on female adolescents in the U.S. to be thin, sometimes using unhealthy behaviors to achieve this goal,” the researchers write in the current issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders. (h/t Mariellen)

An editorial in the Edmonton Sun nostalgically recalls the supermodels of the 1990s - Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell - compared to the skin-and-bones heroin chic cultural aesthetic of today. I think there is a tendency to overly romanticize these models as the pinnacle of a healthy body image when people in the 1990s were criticizing much the same things of models then, but there’s no denying that standards have changed to become higher, harsher. Writer Patrycja Romanowska opines:

There was one thing that the 1990s supermodels didn’t inspire us to do - starve.

We were not super skinny, nor were we fat. We grew breasts and hips, thinking that this was what teenage girls were supposed to do and didn’t obsess about weight.

How did bones and organs sticking out of skin ever become hot? Whatever happened to filling out a bra? To Marilyn Monroe? To Venus de Milo? …Let the Cindys and the Marilyns, the Venuses and Claudias come back and redefine feminity.

And let the rest of us eat our cake in peace.

Sage advice, indeed.

My husband let me know about British Ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s confession of suffering from bulimia, but Kate beat me to the punch with this excellent summation over at Broadsheet of the social implications of Prescott’s revelation. Eating disorders are still perceived to be an intrinsically female phenomenon, and there still exists stereotypes of who does and who doesn’t develop an eating disorder. Kate rightly busts these stereotypes and calls for a questioning of these assumptions. Alas, the Broadsheet commenters reflect the confusion and misunderstanding that still exists about eating disorders today.

Lots of news from the British presses today: The Telegraph reports that some fashion magazines are digitally manipulating images of emaciated models to be more full-figured, not less. Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured. This, of course, represents a dramatic departure from those magazines who photoshop even the thinnest of models into more of an airbrushed perfection. The move comes as fashion magazines try to deflect or preemptively avoid criticisms of contributing to eating disorders amongst young girls and women.

While this certainly represents a turning of the tide for the better, I can’t help but think that if fashion magazines now want to feature women representing the vision of good health, why not use such women in the first place and not super-skinny models who require airbrushing?

And lastly, some sad news to share. Internationally-acclaimed British professor Rosemary Pope has died from complications of anorexia. Pope, a highly educated, 49-year-old health educator who suffered from anorexia since childhood, reportedly subsisted on Weight Watchers sweets and coffee. She was described by colleagues as a “shining light.”

Comments or questions on any of the above? Discuss your thoughts below.

Hoorah to Miss Plus Size Elite Jenna Vaught! The blonde bombshell dropped a bombshell of her own on reining anti-obesity zealot MeMe Roth on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (h/t to Joy Nash).

Vaught appeared with the same guests I appeared with back in January, Roth and Dr. Jennifer Ashton. I thought it was very telling when Juliet asked the good doctor: “Can obese people be healthy?” Ashton responded with “For someone who is morbidly obese, I don’t care if they’re exercising and eating carrots and not smoking, by definition they have set themselves up for risk factors down the road…”

Once again, it’s an artful dodging of the question and a gross exaggeration of fatness. I would agree that someone who is morbidly obese - read a BMI of 40 or more - may be at risk for weight-related health problems, but that was not the question posed. Juliet pointedly asked if obese people can be healthy - obese is usually signified by a BMI of 30 to 39.9 - not if morbidly obese people can be healthy.

Roth, with her usual blind fanaticism, insisted that “plus size is no reason to celebrate” and compared obesity to yellow teeth stains from smoking cigarettes. But the real highlight of the show comes at the segment’s end. Vaught, a training physician-to-be, took Roth to task by pointing out Roth’s complete lack of medical expertise:

I don’t see why I shouldn’t celebrate my life. I am a single mother. I have come from nothing. I am a future physician.

Guess what? This morning, I’ve already run four miles. And I eat 1,800 calories a day. So dont judge me because I still carry a little extra baggage. As far as I know, I’m the only - along with this doctor here - future physician. So stick with your social judgments.

Watch the video here

As for Vaught, she’s a Weight Watcherer, but it also sounds like she subscribes to the Health at Every Size Approach. She also plans to launch a plus-size fitness series sometime during spring. Taken from her website:

As Miss Plus America Elite and a future physician, I know the crisis our country is having today concerning the obesity epidemic. Many people have asked me about my stance on obesity and weight. Although I believe that every person should find joy and happiness within themselves, at any stage in life. I also believe in fitness and healthy eating at any stage in life. For me, it is not so much your weight or jean size.

Let me say from personal experience, it’s very difficult keeping your cool in such a situation and especially with someone who is quite vocal in her opposition to your very existence. Vaught acted and reacted quite regally in the face of such hatred - just as a queen ought to.

I admit it – I like to read the gossip scoops on MSNBC brimming with the latest Britney Spears debacle or rumor of an impending George Clooney marriage. But in reading about the recent lunch of pals Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham, I have to wonder if sharing the details of their food choices – they shared a green salad sans dressing, one piece of fish, a side of steamed spinach and one regular Coke – is really all that fascinating to folks.

Then several days ago, several other bloggers and I were discussing this recent post on the blog Every Woman Has an Eating Disorder. The blog author instinctively knew a coworker was pregnant long before she told her. How? She noticed she had gained weight. Her male coworker, however, remained completely oblivious. Women are socially conditioned to *notice* these sorts of things… the slightest bit of weight gain, a new hairstyle, new outfit, etc… Women are not only cognizant of the bodies of others’, they also tend to scrutinize them more closely. It’s understandable why this phenomenon exists amongst women: When you’re groomed since birth to fit a specific cultural mold, you tend to unwittingly internalize it.

I’ve never had many “girl” friends – most of my friends have either been guys or women like me, who tend to buck feminine stereotypes. Maybe this is why I’ve never engaged in the kind of competitive ordering highlighted in this Allure article.

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Readers here are probably familiar with the awful and scary Faith Hill photoshopping controversy that circulated the blogosphere recently. And of course, many of us have seen Dove’s Evolution video, which chronicles the transformation of an ordinarily pretty woman to billboard supermodel in under 60 seconds.

But you’d think a celebrity like Keira Knightly, who already fits a cultural mold unattainable for 98 percent of American woman, would need no additional digital manipulation to airbrush her into even more of an unrealistic perfection. Apparently not, according to This is London’s Evening Standard news.

The news organization reports that editors from top-selling “glossies” are to hold a summit to discuss a voluntary code on digital manipulation. The concern comes as the British Fashion Council demands magazines act after last fall’s Model Health Inquiry gave a “stinging” critique of the industry’s unhealthy size-zero culture. The move also comes at a time when eating disorder specialists issue cautions that cultural obsessions with extreme slimness are pushing more and more people into dangerous diet-binge cycles and even eating disorders.

Professor Janet Treasure, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said such disordered behavior may permanently alter the way people’s brains react to “rewards,” making them susceptible to other addictions, such as drugs and alcohol.

And finally! Someone with a degree makes the connection between the promotion of a thin ideal and the so-called obesity epidemic. Whenever I’m interviewed by reporters about issues related to obesity, I’m inevitably asked for my thoughts on why America is fatter. I always respond by asking, “What came first? The so-called obesity epidemic or dieting?” Treasure also makes this chicken-and-egg connection in the British Journal of Psychiatry, where she also urges the British government to tackle society’s obsessive eating habits.

“Although it may take time to change the ‘thin ideal’ we should remember what has been achieved with cigarette smoking. People are just beginning to listen to the wealth of scientific evidence about the harm that fashion industry images cause.”

Treasure isn’t the only one speaking out. The anti-obesity scourge has attracted the concern of the American Medical Association and most recently, this Canberra Times editorial for the potential harm such zealousness may have on young, impressionable children. As editors there opined:

Education about healthy eating and exercise is an important tool for any young mind, but how much of it now veers to scare tactic? And how much of it takes into account the rising levels of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia?

Regular blog readers may remember a September posting on a publication of the Women’s Forum Australia titled “Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women’s Magazines.” The report found that thin, sexualized and digitally enhanced images of women are linked to poor body image, depression, anxiety and eating disorders amongst girls and women and contributes to self-harming behaviors and poor academic performances. For young teenage girls, such images inspires desires to lose weight and the initiation of dieting, regardless of current body weight. Finally, the five year study found that reading dieting advice in magazines was associated with eating disordered behaviors in teenage girls.

As for the British magazine summit, eating disorders activist Susan Greenwood isn’t holding her breath. The chief executive of the eating disorder charity Beat warned that the industry - much like the Council of Fashion Designers of America - has a history of paying lip service to the issue. As she noted:

“There was a summit at Downing Street back in 2000 on digital manipulation and body image issues with fashion magazine editors and what’s changed since then? Nothing.”

Change is glacial, for sure, but for our sake and the sake of future generations, I prefer Treasure’s more positive outlook.

While looking for an old paper yesterday, I stumbled across some notes I made while researching women’s magazines in the 1950s for articles and advertisements related to women, food and body image. I thought I’d share a few snippets here from the notes I made. Many of these would be hilariously funny if they weren’t the same kinds of things we still see in magazines and the media today.

Ladies Home Journal Jan. 1957
“The Diet That Turned Me into a Model”
As told to Dawn Crowell Norman

“Every time I see a young girl who is overweight, I want to tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘Let me tell you about my own life as a fatty – let me help! …Roy, my husband, would never have looked twice at the old 175-pound Linda… When I am occasionally tempted to eat more than I should, it’s Roy who puts his foot down! ‘Don’t forget,’ he teases, ‘you were once a fatty!’”

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Ladies Home Journal May, 1957
“Is College Education Wasted on Women?”
Dr.Nevitt Sanford

“Psychology and psychiatry have contributed their share to the notion that the best way for a girl to show that she is healthy, wholesome, mature, well-adjusted and the like is to get married and have children.”

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Good Housekeeping Aug., 1958
“How to Bring Up Perfect Little Ladies with the help of Wash and Wear”
Janet Livingstone

“Being a lady is a life’s work, and the sooner your daughter begins mastering the tricks of the trade, the better. Once she has discovered the sorcery of a smile and the magic of ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ she’s ready to go on to the next lesson: the gentle art of looking like a million bucks.

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Good Housekeeping Aug, 1958
“The Date Line: Facts and Fancies for the Girl in School”
Jan Landon

“’Calorie wisors’ are new defense weapons developed by some N. Carolina boys to protect their wallets at drive-in restaurants… the boys attach a mirror to the back of the car’s right-hand sun visor; put next to it a list of calorie values of typical items on the menu - hamburger with ten french fries, 450; banana split, 530; Coke, 75; etc. - and slyly suggest girls check their makeup before ordering!”

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In his Husband and Wife Diet Cookbook (1955), Dr. P.W. Punnett suggests one way for women to shed pounds is to simply stop “constantly nibbling candy and nuts and cake and cookies between meals and in addition to their regular meals.” Whereas, he continued, a woman most often gains weight simply because she eats “twice as much as she really needs” – primarily, “foods like pie, cake, ice cream, candy, nuts, mayonnaise, and sweet desserts” – overweight husbands ought not to “be ashamed if the pounds have sneaked up on you.” He attributed men’s weight gain to extra-fatty meats, gravies, alcohol and inactivity due to work-related advancements.