In the lab where I trained long ago, I met a woman who started working there as an undergrad and stayed on as a master's student. We've stayed in touch in a small way through social media, and over the years she has shrunk. Her face has become angular; her clavicles stand out in sharp relief in the photos she shares.
Other people's bodies are not my business, I tell myself. Changes in other people's bodies are not my business either.
But I wonder if she is okay.
She was always a dancer, and after taking some time away from ballet in college she got more serious about it again. She became a distance runner: half-marathons first, and then a marathon. She posts pictures of herself in running gear and ballet costumes, and they worry me: her ribs are visible, her arms look to be sinew and bone. "You look great!" the comments always say. "I don't know how you do it!" they say.
Tonight our former advisor shared a publicity video from the dance studio where she teaches, and from there I clicked a second link that pulled up a ten-year-old photo. She was an average-sized person then; now she is not.
I don't know enough about eating disorders to opine about what might be going on here. I haven't seen her in person in years. I cannot make any reliable guesses about her current body fat percentage, or about how much body fat she might need to protect her bone health and support healthy immune function. It's not as if I want her friends and family to be criticizing her in those photos she posts. It's not as if a person or two saying, "Hey, are you eating enough?" is likely to make a meaningful difference to a person with an eating disorder-- if she even is a person with an eating disorder.
It is weird and sad, though, that we live in a world where thinner is always regarded as better for women. It is weird and sad that women learn it is somehow virtuous to disregard their hunger cues. It is weird and sad that female "fitness influencers" on social media tend to set unrealistic and sometimes frankly harmful examples. It is weird and sad that it is so hard for women (me included) to say happily, "This is my body; this is the way I am shaped."
I hope she's okay. I really hope she's okay.
Recent Comments