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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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A Glamour magazine story featured on MSNBC has raised a question not often discussed here: How do you best support someone who has an eating disorder?

When Tom Cramer’s wife Meg developed anorexia nervosa as an adult mother of two young sons, Cramer admits he didn’t know how to handle her illness.

My arrogance also made me think that I could fix things. As an engineer, I identify an issue and find a solution. “I can handle this,” I told myself. There was, after all, a simple answer: Meg needed to eat more, and I thought I could persuade her to do that.

But as Tom finds, “anorexia does not have an on/off switch.” The more he pushed his wife to change, the more she pushed back, he writes. It would take his wife’s hospitalization before Tom realized the problem was about much more than food. And in order to understand his wife’s illness more, Tom embarked on a week-long experiment to starve himself, with some surprising results.

I was exhausted and irritable; my head ached constantly. I’d lie in bed at night and think, I am so hungry! How does she do it? How can the voice Meg hears be so powerful?

But by day three, I began hearing the voice too: “Come on, you can do it. Don’t give in. You’re better than that.” When I refused food, I had a sense of victory. The longer I resisted, the more powerful I felt. When Meg was admitted to the hospital, I thought that she had failed and allowed this to happen. Now I understood the seduction of the words in her head, how they could override the most basic human survival instincts.

Luckily, Meg Cramer recovered and is now at a healthy weight today, although she says she still struggles with vestiges of anorexia. As Tom aptly sums up, “We don’t say we’re over anorexia, we say we live with it.” In the world of eating disorder recovery, this is a milestone, indeed.

In an article sidebar, Tom Cramer gives some helpful advice (below) for friends and families of loved ones battling an eating disorder:

1. Express your concern without blame. “I must have told Meg a million times, ‘This would all go away if you would just eat,’ ” says Tom. Instead, the Cramers’ therapist, Anita Sinicrope Maier, advises using “I” and not “you” language: “Say, ‘I love you and I am scared I will lose you.’ ”

2. Seek professional help. “I wish I’d called a doctor before Meg wound up in the E.R.,” Tom says. “With the support of an expert, maybe I could have gotten through to her sooner.” Ask your own doctor for a referral or contact The National Eating Disorders Association at 800-931-2237.

3. Show unconditional love and support. Nagging, criticizing, threatening — all of these may just push someone with an eating disorder away. Provide consistent support and understanding, experts agree, and she’ll be more likely to turn to you when she’s ready.

The blog Hungry for Hunger (now accessible by invitation only) posted some stellar advice last November. Read Charlynn’s take on some of the recommendations at Disordered Times. ANRED also has posted helpful do’s and don’ts here.

To this list I would add (from my own experiences):

1. Respect privacy. Be aware of the eating disordered person’s condition and progress, but don’t make it seem as if you’re watching them like a hawk.

2. No one needs a food monitor. Don’t be “helpful” by pointing out which foods are healthier and which aren’t - there are no good foods and bad foods. In fact, don’t make any comments period on what your loved one does or does not eat at all. And never try to force someone to eat. While you may be successful, it may lead the eating disordered person to embark on dangerous compensatory measures to rid themselves of the food.

3. Talk about other things. We are much more their our illnesses, and discussing other things not only helps remind the disordered person that life is more than food and weight, it probably comes as a welcome respite for someone who spends an inordinate amount of time obsessing on these things already.

4. Research the disease and arm yourself with knowledge - it shows the disordered person that you’re genuinely interested and helps you understand their struggles. Join a support group of others struggling with the same issues you are or if one doesn’t exist, start one up.

5. Don’t be patronizing. While people with an eating disorder may not be making rational and healthy decisions due to malnutrition and the disease, they are not stupid or ignorant. Treat them as active participants in their recovery.

6. And most importantly, provide a good role model. Examine your own eating habits - Do you diet constantly? Do you make self-deprecating comments about your body, even in jest? Do you make judgments about others based on how they look or what they eat? None of this is even remotely healthy or encouraging for either yourself or your loved one trying to recover from an eating disorder.

What would you add to this list? How do you best support a loved one struggling with an eating disorder?

From the Houston Chronicle comes a disturbing three-part series, which illustrates the sad, depressing consequences the anti-obesity hysteria has on our children.

Isabel Hernandez didn’t want to start her freshman year at Katy’s Morton Ranch High School the same way she had left middle school: barely 5 feet tall and nearly 180 pounds, begins the article. The series that follows chronicles Isabel’s experiences at a fat camp and her efforts to lose weight.

Part One: Weight-loss camp brings hope of a new life for Katy teen
Part Two: Katy teen inching toward weight-loss goal
Part Three: Transformed teen has a new challenge — high school

The series is laden with heartbreaking and arresting consequences wrought by this anti-obesity pinnacle. I’ve tried to pinpoint each in detail below:

We want your money, but not your fat self.

The first article begins with a shopping trip Isabel’s mother credits as the impetus for Isabel’s ensuing weight loss. It’s an experience which might sound all-too-familiar to those who are or have ever been overweight.

Shopping at The Gap brought 14-year-old Isabel to tears, because the store carried no sizes above a size 12. Isabel’s mother said she had to start ordering her daughter’s clothes over the internet – where The Gap and other name brands do offer plus-size clothing.

Stores like The Gap, and most recently Old Navy, relegate plus-size clothing to the hinterlands of the internet because, while they don’t necessarily want fat people in their stores, they still want our money. It’s all about image for these yuppie brands – fatness connotes both a lower class status and is socially unfashionable.

But perhaps because 60 percent of Americans are obese, the stores’ bottom line demands they still offer plus-size lines. So they do – only they offer it online, where fat people can’t be seen disgracing and degrading the carefully-crafted image of their stores.

What’s the cost of this blatant exclusion? It’s teenagers like Isabel, who are to feel like social pariahs because of their double-digit size.

Thinness has no cost

The first series shows a reluctant Isabel, who despite her mother’s urging, clearly does not want to go to fat camp. In fact, when a camp representative e-mailed her encouraging her to reconsider her decision, she responded in 36-point, red font: “Stop Sending My Mom This Crap.”

“I just didn’t want to go,” Isabel explained later. “I was just tired of everyone talking about my weight and stuff and I was like ‘OK, shut up. I have heard you enough.’ ”

Despite Isabel’s plaintive pleas to stop putting the focus on her weight, both her mother and grandmother resorted to another tactic: bribery. Her grandmother offered to pay her $100 if she would lose 20 pounds and her mother promised a $1,000 shopping spree. And after she finally agreed to go, Isabel’s mother had to work overtime for six months to pay the eight-week fat camp’s hefty $8,650 price tag (cost for 4 weeks attendance is a measly $6,350).

I’m sure both the mother and grandmother acted well-intentionally and that they love Isabel. But the underlying message received by Isabel is that her body is abnormal and that not only is weight loss necessary, it’s imperative. So much so, in fact, that her family is willing to go to any length – no matter the cost - to ensure she becomes thin.

“Healthy” obsessions

The third article in the series details Isabel’s final days at Camp Wellspring, part of a franchise of weight-loss programs marketed under the name Healthy Living Academies. Just four weeks into her weight-week stint at camp, Isabel was nearly kicked out, reports the article.

Her devastating crime? Kissing a boy.

Apparently, both violence and romance are forbidden at the camp. Either offense are considered distractions from the task at hand – losing weight. It’s all part of what camp leaders say is the camp’s goal in installing a “healthy obsession” in teenagers like Isabel.

The constant measuring, weighing, counting and account for food. Keeping a food journal detailing your every thought and mood that accompanies each morsel of food. Daily weigh-ins with victories marked by the downward slide of the scale. The basing of one’s self-worth on who they might become, instead of who they actually are. Weight loss before friendships, before love, before all else.

And they call this a “healthy” obsession? It sounds a lot like my life when I had an eating disorder. What happens when the “healthy obsession” the camp instills in these teens turns into an “unhealthy obsession,” as such an inordinate focus on food and weight-loss is bound to do?

Happiness isn’t found in The Gap

The title of the first article in the series - Weight-loss camp brings hope of a new life for Katy teen - seems to belie the reality Isabel faces upon her home return. Sure Isabel now has a new life as a thin person, but what kind of quality life is it?

Because she can’t find low-fat mayonnaise, Isabel “ditched lunch entirely and, annoyed, went to bed. At the movies with her friends the next weekend, she’d passed the Blue Bell ice cream store and flinched.”

The friends she saw said little about her physical change. One girl gushed. But others, Isabel had to remind. …But they noticed when she declined free Skittles from the upperclassmen and, later, when she skipped the pizza lunch.

Walking with friends toward the boxes of Pizza Inn pepperoni and cheese, Isabel hesitated, clutching the Strawberry Shortcake lunch bag she’d packed.

“I’ll just sit over here and wait for you,” she told a group of her mostly gangly friends.

“You can’t just eat pizza?” one of the girls asked.

Isabel shook her head — and headed off alone to find a seat.

Alone. Isolated. Different. But at least Isabel can shop at The Gap.

From the British Times Online comes a rather interesting interview with Professor Janet Treasure, director of the Eating Disorder Unit at the South London Maudsley Hospital NHS Trust.

In the interview, Treasure asks the provocative question, “Is anorexia the female Asperger’s?”

To define: Asperger’s is a milder variant of Autism, differing in that non-social aspects of intellectual development generally proceed at a normal or accelerated rate, unlike Autism. Asperger’s is characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior, and may include repetitive behavior patterns and impairment in social interaction. A good film to watch to see Asperger’s in action is Mozart and the Whale.

Treasure cites a study conducted a few year ago which found the same kind of weak central coherence in people with anorexia as those with Autism and Asperger’s. More than 20 percent of the anorexic group could be described as having a disorder from within the autism spectrum, said Treasure.

Treasure is a big advocate of the Maudsley model as an effective approach in treatment. The family therapy-based approach is geared towards adolescents ages 18 and under who are living with their families and is designed to intervene aggressively in the first stages of illness.

The approach is generally short-term, as short as 20 sessions or six months in duration. Proponents of the therapy – like Harriet and Laura Collins - say that if used early, anorexia doesn’t have to become a chronic illness or a death sentence.

But Treasure doesn’t discount the great influence societal cues wield in the development of the disease, either, which is important to note. It’s precisely this point that I differ from advocates of the Maudsley approach.

While I do believe eating disorders to be organic in nature, there is no gene which pre-determines that one will develop an eating disorder. Genetics may predispose one to the patterns and behaviors, as is seen in eating disordered people, but eating disorder behaviors often mimic other addictions, including alcohol and drugs.

Author Marya Hornbacher asks this very question in her book, Wasted, which is considered to be one of the most brutally honest eating disorder memoirs to date. To paraphrase, Hornbacher wonders why the personality traits so typical of anorectics didn’t instead lead her positive obsessions instead of anorexia and bulimia. There has to be some sort of environmental trigger which steers one to use food as their vice of choice.

The genetic-based Maudsley approach denies families as being pathological in the etiology of an eating disorder. Parents are, in essence, exonerated from blame. But numerous studies show families, especially a child’s relationship with each of their parents, are often central to the development or maintenance of an eating disorder. While parents are encouraged to take a pro-active, advisory role in the treatment of a child with an eating disorder, family dynamics which might have contributed to the disorder can be overlooked.

And other environmental factors are key too, in the development of eating disorders. In her book A Hunger So Wide and So Deep, Becky Thompson explores the links between sexual and physical trauma and their relationships to eating disorders. Poverty and racial, sexual, religious and other forms of discrimination are also contributing factors.

Maudsley approach aside, Treasure’s research into the ways in which the brain functions and its relationship to anorexia is crucial to the understanding of the disease. On a side note, she’s seeking participants for research projects in all aspects of eating disorders, the article notes. I’m not sure if this is restricted to Brits, but here’s the contact info:

Frankie Bishopp, 020-7188 0186 or e-mail bishopp@iop.kcl.ac.uk. Further information from the KCL website: www.eatingresearch.com.

Some troubling statistics as reported by Ruth A. Peters, Ph.D. for MSNBC.com.

According to BodyImageHealth.org, “almost half of normal-weight third- to sixth-grade girls say they want to be thinner; a third have already restricted their eating to lose weight, and 78 percent say they are very afraid of becoming fat.” How children view themselves is strongly influenced by parental body image, and often this is set by the age of six.

Dissatisfaction with body image increases as girls progress to adolescence. While 75 percent of girls 8 to 9 years old say they like the way they look, only 56 percent of girls 12 to 13 years old feel that way. One-third of girls 14 to 17 years old think they are overweight, and 60 percent are trying to lose weight.

The statistics come as part of a larger admonition by Peters to parents to educate children about “looksism” — the tendency to perceive social acceptability based upon how a person looks. And of all the looksism that exist, nothing is more prevalent than fatism, reports Marius Griffin of the Body Image Task Force. She writes:

In a study done with six-year-old children, they were shown silhouettes of different people, then asked to talk about them. The children consistently labeled a silhouette of a fat child as ‘stupid, dirty, lazy, slow, etc.,’ regardless of the body size of the child identified in the picture.

And kids aren’t alone in their prejudices. In a study where teachers were given students files to review, including grades work habits and attitudinal information as well as a student photo, teachers erroneously assumed the physically cute boys and girls to be more intelligent and socially progressive than plan or less attractive kids.

Peters goes on to give solid advice to parents on how to avoid this sort of negative thinking: Avoid the D (diet) word, teach kids healthy nutritious eating habits, bring “normal” images of real people into focus and into your lives, watch your language and behavior, encourage a varied group of friends for your children, and for yourself, etc…

Weigh in with your suggestions here or on MSNBC’s discussion board.