Lately I have been doing a lot of pondering about identity and image. Pretty much everyone these days has some kind of cyber-image, whether it is a blog, Facebook, Twitter, a personal website, any number of other social networking sites, or all of the above. The neat thing about the internet is that you can craft your own image. You choose what pictures and information will represent you, and (to some degree) you choose who you will allow to see them. You have the ability to filter yourself so that only the best is presented to the world.
Going back to pictures, I also know I am a terrible judge of my own status when it comes to pictures. I can look at pictures from years ago, when I know I didn't feel thin, and be shocked at how ill I look. Please, can that girl has a cheezburger? Or I can see a shot from when I know my weight was low, and think I look completely normal. I honestly don't know what from what when it comes to assessing myself. By my stats, quantitatively I know that I can't be overweight, that I am in fact still significantly underweight. But in current pictures, I am the bulkiest I have been in years, and it freaks me the hell out. My face is fuller, my butt is bigger, my collarbones are less razor-like. I don't feel like it's me. As I discussed above, for image reasons I only let myself post "decent" pictures, and I am painfully aware of the ridiculousness of being embarrassed about looking healthy.
When ED thoughts are in the equation, it's kind of complicated. Take Facebook, for example. I have both personal and professional contacts on FB, so I make an effort to keep my profile as clean (not that I have a bunch of lewd party pictures to hide) and uncontroversial as possible. That means no crazy pictures (again, not that I have any), no obnoxiously political or trivial status updates, etc. Sometimes I leave books off my iRead list if the titles are very obviously related to eating disorders or atheism. In spite of moderate censorship, do feel like I am genuine, though. I never add anything that isn't true, or try to craft any kind of false image. I just exercise the right keep a few personal details to myself, things that are really no one else's business but my own. People I trust and am close to will know those things anyway, and people who don't, well, they don't need to. In the real world I do not go blaring my private thoughts and issues to the public, and the cyberworld is the same.
Then comes the issue of pictures. I make a very conscious effort not to post any even semi-sick looking pictures. I just can't afford for my contacts to look at my photos and think there is something wrong with me. I make sure that I am sufficiently healthy (or sufficiently clothed to pass as ok), no big deal. But at the same time, there is always that disordered voice that wants the Skinny Pics on there. Especially since I have a lot of friends from high school and other people who know about my ED. Every time I add a picture, I wonder what they'll think when they see it. I weigh more than I did in high school, so does Friend X see the photo and think "Wow, she's porking up nicely, must have outgrown that ED thing"? And why does the it bother me that people might actually think I am well? I am friends with a few people I know through ED blogs, but to be quite honest that gives me occasional waves of anxiety (no offense to y'all! I promise the issue is me, not you), because I always feel like they will look at my pictures and think I am a fake, that there is no way I "really" have an ED, not if I look like that. I refuse to use numbers in blog posts, because I am terrified of triggering people, but part of me wants to scream "I promise I am underweight! This is legitimate, and I am dying to be taken seriously!"
Of course, that is bullshit. Apologies for sounding incredibly shallow, just being honest about those default thoughts that run through my mind. Objectivity, which I touched on in my last post, seems ever elusive. I know, know, know that you can't judge someone's ED status by her weight. Disordered thoughts are every bit as painful no matter where you are on the BMI charts. The body is not the issue, the mind is. Would I ever doubt that someone had a "legitimate" disorder based on their weight, or a picture that I saw online? No way in hell, and that is the absolute truth.
Double standards seem to be such a big part of EDs. Other people deserve nurturing, other people can indulge sometimes, other people can take time to give their wellness priority. Other people are allowed to be unique, and to be proud of their individual brand of "normal." Other people are beautiful when they are healthy. Other people don't need a number tacked to their pain in order to validate it.
When I grow up, I want to be an Other People.
10 comments:
myself to lingere models. Do not apologize for being shallow.
I'm a chimp on facebook - immature, but I really like the non-human primates.
Also, I don't know that our friend request ever went through - I can't find you!
That is actually good news, because if I was traceable from this blog I'd have to close it immediately, if I survived the heart attack from stress over being identified. Pseudonymity is pretty crucial for me, publicly at least.
I grapple with the picture issue, too. I have a lot of pictures from when I was really ill that I don't want other people to see. But at the same time, Ed wants other people to see them. I'm scared that people will think, "Oh, she's not anorexic anymore because she's not that skinny."
Every time Victoria's Secret catalogue comes in the mail, my sister yells, "The bad body image magazine is here!" It always makes me laugh, and then I recycle it immediately.
That's a pretty good strategy. I left mine in the living room because my roommates are prudes and I just can't resist.
hi Cammy, I love reading your blog. I'm writing a speech to give at a benefit concert I organized/am presenting next weekend and was wondering if I could quote you? I have to write it, to figure out exactly what and how I'll say things... but I love so many things you say here that I feel like I would say but you've worded them so well.. haha.. that I want to give credit. I could just say "in a blog.." or I could specify which blog.. depending on what you're comfortable with.
Here's an email you can reach me at... guiseofyouth at gmail dot com
Thanks!
I agree that one of the ironies of this disorder is wanting recovery for others without embracing it for ourselves. I would never judge friends with even one ounce of the harshness with which I judge myself.
This struck me as a very honest entry, maybe just because I identify with so much of what you said. Anyway, I hope that one day you can become "an other."
You got that right. Being forthright on my blog led me to be incarcerated against my will.
I'm ALL about privacy these days.
As you might imagine, your post has touched upon issues to which I (and many others, I'll warrant) can relate. When I do post pictures of myself to my blog, I admit to wondering whether I look "too ED" to be speaking positively about recovery or whether I don't look "ED enough" to be talking about struggling with recovery. As if it weren't enough to get caught up in those tortuous lines of thought, the truth is that I simply don't know how I look. I feel like I never know how I look.
Tangentially, for the past few years of massive weight loss, then gain, then something in between, I've felt remarkably alienated from my body. By that I mean, my body never feels mine, whether I'm loathing it or acknowledging it's beauty. In any case, it's something that I don't identify with anymore than I identify with a costume. Just like I have worn clothes that I've liked more or less and for a variety of reasons, I feel like I've had bodies that vary in that way. None of them ever feel like ME . . . which is admittedly strange on an intellectual level for someone who considers herself a materialist.
Not sure if that made any sense whatsoever. If not, all due apologies!
Even more tangentially still, did you ever read my blog post on interoception & proprioception and Anorexia, Cammy?
For what it's worth:
http://digestiondujour.blogspot.com/2007/10/bodies-brains-im-just-wondering-here.html
I agree, proprioception is FASCINATING, especially in the context of EDs. I wrote a post about it too last summer,Does This Outfit Make My Schema Look Fat?. Thanks for the link to your post! Have you read the book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own? It's got tons of great information, including discussion of EDs.
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