Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

Let's talk about racism

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:14:32 +0100

So. As some of you know, I co-facilitate a monthly feminist discussion group here in London. At our last meeting, one of our members suggested we focus our June discussion on racism and white privilege, and I thought it was a brilliant idea.

But here’s the thing. The majority of our group, as it stands, is white. And what at first seemed like a great idea for a challenging conversation now seems ripe with the potential for clueless white person-ness.

At the same time, I also feel like white people not discussing race is a bit of a cop out. A way of fencing off a huge and important political issue as something that is relevant only to “other” people (people of colour, and other, more racist whites). One of the things I love about the concept of white privilege is that it drags white people back into the conversation, serving as a reminder that a) they/we have a race, and b) whether you like it not, race and racism are issues that affect us all.

Ideally, I’d like the conversation to get our members engaging deeply and honestly with their experiences of race – whether as beneficiaries of white privilege/invisibility, victims of racism, or someone who has occupied both positions at different points in their lives.

The question is, how do you do this well? Without people clamming up, and deferring to one another (and thus denying their own engagement with race) and without tokenising anyone, or pushing our POC members into the unwilling role of teacher?

Thoughts?

And do you agree with my premise above: that the discomfort many white people seem to feel when it comes to discussing racism is a manifestation of white privilege in and of itself?

Photo via. And the Avenue Q song it references.

This photo is basically my life.

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:41:00 +0100

This photo is basically my life.

TEDxLoughborough: Understanding The Sex Myth A couple of months...

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:35:00 +0100

TEDxLoughborough: Understanding The Sex Myth

A couple of months ago, I gave a talk about my forthcoming book The Sex Myth at TEDxLoughborough, speaking about everything from my adolescent insecurities, to how many sexual partners the average college student has in any given year, to The Sex Myth itself: the idea that what you do in your sex life reveals the truth of who you really are.

The talk is online now, and I’d love it if you would give it a whirl (and please, share it with your friends if you like it). A couple of early reviews, which I think sum it up the good and the not-so-good pretty nicely (and amusingly, in the second case):

“A must watch for anyone who’s felt their sexual life questioned, criticized, or had themselves defined by their sex lives.” - Elizabeth, Facebook.

“A horrifying yet fascinating window into the world of insecure women with a shopping list of issues surrounding sex.” - Bokehpete, YouTube.

"The result is a false dichotomy: either you are “poor” and poised on the edge of bankruptcy, or you..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:48:13 +0100

“The result is a false dichotomy: either you are “poor” and poised on the edge of bankruptcy, or you are “comfortable” and you never have to think about money at all. But being middle-class doesn’t mean never needing to make a choice about what you spend your money on. It means having the wiggle room to choose in the first place.”

- I’m talking “privileged poverty” at Daily Life today.

Seeking UK girls (aged 10-16) and parents for newspaper story

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:16:00 +0100

I’m working on a UK newspaper piece on the sexualisation of children debate, and looking to speak to girls aged 10-16 and their parents. If you or anyone you know can help, please get in touch (my email is rachel.hills@gmail.com) or pass this post on to them.

I’d like to know your views on issues such as:

For Girls

Do you feel pressured to be hot or sexy? Pretty, cool or fashionable?
Are “hot,” “sexy,” “pretty,” and “fashionable” the same thing, or are they different? Are they more about pleasing boys or pleasing girls? Or pleasing yourself?
Where do you think those pressures come from?
At what age do you think it’s ok for a girl to start dating? Having sex? At what age do you think most girls start dating and/or having sex?
Do you think girls are pressured (by media, by boys, by each other) that they need to be sexual in particular ways? Or under pressure NOT to be sexual, even if they want to be?
What would you most like people to know about girls, beauty, body image and sex/dating?

For Parents

Are you familiar with the media debates around the sexualisation of girls? Is this something that concerns you?
If it does concern you, what concerns you most? Sexy/sexualised products? Girls’ being under pressure to fit a particular appearance/body mould? Girls having sex (or having sex they don’t want to have) at younger ages? Sexting? Pornography?
If you don’t think it’s an issue, why not?
What are you doing as a parent to help your kids (girls and boys) navigate popular culture, body image, and sex?

I’m looking to set up phone and in person interviews around the UK between May 6 and May 15. If you can help, please email me at rachel.hills@gmail.com or share your thoughts anonymously in the comments below.

What's normal when it comes to sex?

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:58:00 +0100

What's normal when it comes to sex?:

You are. Probably. No seriously, you almost certainly are.

My latest at Daily Life.

Rachel, on Nancy Jo Sales' website there is an article about Gwyneth that was written in the mid 90s. It features quotes from Gwyneth's high school classmates. Please do read it!

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:40:39 +0100

It’s here (PDF), if anyone else wants to read it. And it turns out G and I have at least one thing in common: “I can get whiny because I have to express every emotion that I have the second that I’m having it.”

Not very calm and serene though, is it?

The Gwyneth in my head

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0100

Over the past few days, I’ve developed a minor obsession with Gwyneth Paltrow. I know, I know – the only kind of “obsession” it is acceptable to have with Gwyneth Paltrow is an obsession founded on loathing. And yet, here I am.

I blame her month-long PR assault, which started with her cook book, was followed by a string of premieres for the new Iron Man flick, and culminated last week with her being named People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman.” I also blame my favourite celebrity gossip blog, Lainey Gossip, which consistently depicts Paltrow as a Hollywood “queen bee,” who always sits at the best table, hobnobs with only her coolest fellow celebrities, and basically serves as an arbiter for what’s hot and what’s not, while being simultaneously beloved by all in her industry (if not by the general public).

All of which makes her sound like a high school Mean Girl, I am well aware, but work with me here. I have a point, and I’ll get to it.

Either way, the result is that I must have uttered the words “Gwyneth Paltrow” about fifty times in the past week, peaking with Mr Musings calling out to me from the living room as I lay in bed on Saturday morning, “Did I just hear you muttering the words, ‘Gwyneth, Gwyneth…’?” And indeed, he had. Although in my defence, I was muttering them because I was writing this post in my head, and I often quietly talk to myself when I write.

I am fascinated by Gwyneth not because I covet her film career, her body (actively flaunted – I think the word may be justified in this case? – in recent weeks to entice the masses to buy her book and hire her trainer), or her ascetic lifestyle (although I have long found people who lead highly regimented lives intriguing – see also Wintour, Anna, with whom I always associate the sound of a whip cracking whenever I read or hear her name). What I covet - and what I am so intrigued by - is her enormous self-confidence. That she appears to unreservedly like herself. Like best pal Beyonce, Gwyneth is a queen, and she makes no apologies for it.

As Kjerstin Gruys wrote in a post last week:

It wasn’t just her looks, but also her presence that so captured me. I was frantic, anxious, and insecure; high-achieving, yes, but never satisfied. I blurted out answers in class (very unladylike) and feared that my appetite for food was insatiable and out-of-control. Gwyneth, in contrast, seemed characterized by an aura of calm entitlement, i.e., the opposite of frantic insecurity.

As Kjerstin goes on to say, that “calm entitlement” is born of a multiplicity of privileges. Of having been born into a wealthy, influential family. Of inhabiting a tall, thin, blonde body that is computed as “beautiful” automatically and without thinking. Of “being privileged in every possible way that a woman can be, and feeling as though you deserve it.”

But that “calm entitlement” is also, I would argue, a product of Paltrow’s own doing. Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t “the most beautiful woman in the world,” and she knows it. She may have won an Oscar at 26, but she’s not exactly a leading actress of her generation, either – she’s no Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett. But she carries herself as though she is all these things - beautiful, supremely talented, sitting at the best lunch table (the “best lunch table” being, by definition, whichever lunch table Gwyneth is sitting at), and the world responds to her accordingly.

(Beyonce is remarkably similar in style, but is received differently because, let’s face it, she has established her as one of the leading performers of her generation, possibly the leading performer.)

Gwyneth, perhaps, takes this further than is socially desirable, edging over from confidence to sanctimony, but I still think there are lessons to be learned for those of us who, like Kjerstin (or me), err more towards anxiety and insecurity. Lessons which have nothing to do with working out for five hours a day, or going gluten, dairy, sugar and egg-free.

Which is the reason for my Gwyneth obsession over the past few days. Whenever those petty insecurities rear their head - as they do several times a day - I ask myself, how would the Gwyneth in my head deal with this? And every time (this being an imaginary Gwyneth and all), the answer is that she wouldn’t give a toss. She would feel secure in the quality of her work. She wouldn’t complain about looking “fat.” She wouldn’t worry that “everyone was hanging out without her,” because she would be confident that wherever she was was the best place to be.

And imaginary or not, it has made me approach the world rather more calmly.

Related: How to be fabulous in three easy(ish) steps.

Elsewhere: Why I’m Breaking Up With The World’s Most Beautiful Woman: Gwyneth Was My Thinspo. (Mirror Mirror Off the Wall)

Hi Rachel! I just started following your blog and I love your take on life. If there was one thing that you think we should do as women what would it be?

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:32:00 +0100

My hope for women is the same as my hope for all people. Find something that matters to you and pursue it wholeheartedly.

Hi Rachel, I wanted to get your opinions on crossdressing and guys who want to act feminine.

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:29:00 +0100

Go for it, if it floats your boat. I don’t think that guys have to be “masculine” all the time, or that women have to be “feminine.” Most of us are an idiosyncratic mix of both. Gender is a construct, etc etc.

Hey, I wanted to ask you a question since I know you're living in London now. I'm moving back to London in 35 days (knock on wood - as long as I get my visa in time!) and hope to join feminist societies/groups in London over the summer so my summertime before I begin my MA studies at King's in the fall is productive and not just all about being lazy and forgetting how to think! I wondered if you knew of any good feminist groups or events or programs happening in London over the summer! Thanks :)

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:23:00 +0100

Hi Gabrielle. Moving to London - how exciting! What will you be studying? Re: feminist events, UK Feminista runs an activist training camp each summer, this year to be held in Birmingham on 17-18 August (not London, I know, but the UK is tiny compared to the US or Oz, and pretty cheap/easy to get around by train).

The London Feminist Network is a bit more radfem than, say, I am, but is an excellent source of feminist news and events. And you should definitely follow Feminist Events (@feministlondon) on Twitter. The Feminism In London conference, which I attended when I first moved here in 2010, is scheduled for 26 October. @Sarcastathon on Twitter has just launched a feminist group, too, focussed on taking feminism “out of the tweets and into the streets.”

And of course, I run a feminist discussion group of my own, which you can get on the list for either by clicking here, or emailing us at londonfeministdiscussion@gmail.com. We meet on the first Monday of every month.

Anything I’ve missed?

London Feminist Discussion Group: Dove 'Real Beauty' Sketches Campaign edition

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0100

Just a quick note to let you know that the next London Feminist Discussion Group, hosted by Sarah Graham and I, will be held on Tuesday May 7 at 7pm, at LEON on Old Compton Street in Soho. We’ll be talking about the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ Sketches Campaign.

All women (and interested men) welcome. We are a trans-inclusive group. Just RSVP to londonfeministdiscussion@gmail.com (or join our Facebook group) by Thursday May 2 so we can book an appropriately sized space.

A few articles you might want to take a look at before the meeting:

Dove vs Science: Thanks, But We Are NOT Our Own Worst Beauty Critics (Mirror, Mirror… Off The Wall)
Why Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry (little drops)
The problem with the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign (Eat The Damn Cake)
One Narrative Fits All: Dove and “Real Beauty” (The Beheld)
Dove’s ‘real beauty’ sketches ad deserves some praise (The Guardian)

And there are plenty more where that came from if you care to Google.

Hope to see you there!

I’m sure there is an image floating around somewhere of...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:43:00 +0100

I’m sure there is an image floating around somewhere of me, age 7, dressed as Alice, and my second grade bestie dressed at Dorothy.

Image by dollychops.

Hey Rachel, any books that have influenced your thinking and philosophy? I'd love to do some summer reading.

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:44:00 +0100

Great question. The funny thing about non-fiction writing (and any writing really, and possibly even anything) is that the more you do of it, the more critical you become of other people’s attempts. So while something like, say, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth inspired me to want to write a mainstream feminist book, when I returned to it after writing most of said book, all I could think was, “Naomi, your analysis of power is all wrong.”

Anyway, books that have shaped my thinking in writing my own include (listed in order of most to least accessible) Leonore Tiefer’s Sex Is Not a Natural Act (very readable), Gail Hawkes’sA Sociology of Sex and Sexuality (a bit dense and academic), and Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, which took me three attempts over as many years to understand, but when I finally did, I was like, “Awesome. So you’re basically arguing the same things I am.” I also liked Annie Pott’s The Science/Fiction of Sex which, while a bit academic and from a different perspective to my own, is a fun and smart read.

For non-sex related books, Brigid Delaney’s This Restless Life felt like life wrapped up in a(n admittedly complicated) bow to me when I first read it, and I have recommended it to countless people since. It is smart and ambitious, but very readable and not at all academic. Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption makes climate change so compelling and easy to understand that I texted my friends in excitement as I read it. Hazel Rowley’s biography of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre is an inspiration, and while I wouldn’t say it has particularly influenced my philosophy per se, Catherine Mayer’s Amortality is an excellent piece of non-fiction work.

Finally, on the fiction side of the fence, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin (much better than the film, IMO), and Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach are all outstanding. If you haven’t yet read them, you are very lucky, because it means you still have the chance to enjoy them for the first time!

Hey Rachel, facing eating disorders myself. And having regained some of the weight I lost. I was wondering what your darkest moment was that helped you get to being a better you? I myself had the encouragement of my father to get healthy, when he died. I feel off the wagon some. So right now I am trying to get back to what was making me feel good. And I thought maybe something you share can help me with that focus.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:45:00 +0100

Hey Michael. I’m sorry to hear you’re going through this. I have to admit, I feel a little (a lot) out of my depth answering your question: each person’s experience of eating disorders is different, and I’m not a qualified psychologist or therapist. But I can tell you a bit about what has worked for me.

I never actually hit rock bottom, in any dramatic, Lifetime movie sense. I never went to hospital (although having an eating disorder did have deleterious impacts on my body, and arguably still does to this day) and my “darkest moments” were mostly in my head, in the way that I felt about myself and my life.

But it wasn’t my darkest moments that helped me get to being “a better me.” It was getting to a point where I didn’t feel quite so shit about myself, and where I no longer felt compelled to control my food intake and body shape in order to feel okay. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t slip up along the way (or, to be 100% truthful, that I don’t still slip up on occasion), but I don’t think you can get better until you want to get better.

So if there was one piece of advice I would give you, it would be to focus your energies on how you feel, and trust that eventually, treating yourself better will follow from that. Throw yourself into things that you’re good at, and that make you happy. Spend time with people that make you feel loved. Do things that make you feel worthy and valuable and excited about life, that have nothing to do with what you eat or how much you exercise.

Another thing that has helped me is to be honest about what I’m doing. Whenever I engage in self-harming behaviour, I tell someone I trust – not because they will judge me or tell me to stop doing it, but because the simple fact of telling them means I am less likely to do it in the future. As I wrote in my post a couple of weeks ago, eating disorders thrive on secrecy. Being honest about your behaviours a) makes it harder to continue with them, and b) makes it more obvious when they become a habit.

Finally, if you’re having trouble coping right now, it would be a good idea to seek professional help: whether in the form of a counsellor, a self-help group or something else. Personally, I found the Something Fishy website a great resource when I was in the early stages of recovery. In fact, I think it was that website that gave me to motivation to start getting better.

Pics or It Didn't Happen

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:04:00 +0100

L-R: Conventional Selfie; “Ugly” Selfie; Totes Fug Selfie.

“Why aren’t you on Instagram, Hachel Rills?” a friend asked me over dinner on Saturday night.

“I’m on enough social media platforms as it is,” I replied. “And I don’t want to have to always be photo-ready. Besides, I’m not a very good photographer.”* But you don’t have to take photographs of yourself, my friend retorted. You can take photographs of your life.

But the truth is, I don’t want my life to always have to be “photo-ready,” either.

It’s a funny thing, this life on camera. When I’m out interacting with people and getting on with life, I generally feel confident and attractive, like the world is smiling upon me. It’s only when somebody whips a camera out that I become suddenly conscious that my body could be more willowy, my face more beautiful, my outfits more exactingly put together.

The same principle can be applied to my life in general. When I’m living it, it seems beautiful, exciting, something that I’d like to share with the world. When I whip out a camera to actually record it, the colours seem duller and framing all wrong. My life may be awesome, but like most people’s, it lacks the aesthetics of a popular lifestyle blog (or perhaps more accurately, I lack both the will and the investment to make it look like a popular lifestyle blog). And if I was on Instagram, I would free pressure to present it that way 24/7.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about over the past few months. The extent to which the photograph has infiltrated our lives, and how easily self-documentation can turn into self-surveillance. As I wrote in my Cosmo article on iNarcissism a few months back:

The internet allows us to control the way the rest of the world sees us like never before: you can be a model, an up-and-coming author, or a celebrity fashionista with a few strategically angled photographs and a well-written Twitter bio. But the ability to control our image comes with a price of increased self-consciousness. We don’t just play at being “celebrities” on the internet; our lifestyles increasingly resemble theirs, whether we like it or not, as anyone who has ever been tagged in an unflattering Facebook photo can vouch.

We document ourselves – and each other – in this way not just because we want to share our experiences with our friends, or because we enjoy the attention of a good Facebook “like” or Instagram “heart,” but because documenting our lives gives our experiences meaning. It makes them more real. The adage “pics or it didn’t happen” doesn’t just apply to the strange and improbable, but to the details of our lives themselves. Pics, or maybe that party wasn’t so great after all. Pics, or you’re not really in love. Pics, or no one will ever know how awesome your hair looked on that particular Wednesday afternoon.

But as my Cosmo quote states, self-documentation comes with increased self-consciousness. We are compelled to record our lives to prove they happened, but we also need to shape their presentation in order to make them worth recording. To make them worth looking at.

Enter the Ugly Selfie, which I wrote about for NYMag.com’s The Cut last week, and about which I think (but cannot be sure, since I am on the wrong continent to track down a copy) I have a story in Australian Cosmopolitan this month.

I first stumbled across the Ugly Selfie through Clementine Ford, who features in both stories. Clem started taking ugly selfies last year, following a text message exchange with a couple of friends in which she admitted “that any photo [she] uploaded online was usually the best of about 40 different options,” and then sent them through an “ugly” version as a joke. They thought it was so funny that she decided to keep doing it, taking an intentionally grotesque photo of herself whenever she uploaded a conventionally attractive selfie.

It struck me as both a brilliant act of satire, drawing attention to the constructed nature of the self-taken photograph, and a clever rebellion against the idea that our lives and faces should always be enviable and appealing. So naturally, I wanted to write about it.

In the middle of researching the story – days after I had submitted the Cosmo version and as I was getting ready to pitch the NYMag version – the Ugly Selfie went viral, mostly a product of the Reddit thread Pretty Girls, Ugly Faces, which was the subject of a sudden flood of coverage across Buzzfeed, xoJane, The Daily Mail et al.

But something about the tone of the coverage – and about the Reddit site itself – rubbed me the wrong way. Where Clementine’s “uglies” had struck me as a form of satire and rebellion, the joke here seemed to rely on the “ugly” photo being accompanied by a more conventionally “pretty” photo. Indeed, the focus of much of the press was: “Look at these hot women who can also pull ugly faces!” (As this Daily Mail headline, and the accompanying article, illustrate well.)

The “pretty” photos were positioned as the normal images – the ones which accurately represented what the women on the website “really” looked like – while the “ugly” photos were just the strange distortions. Things their normally beautiful faces could do, if they really, really wanted them to.

But as I argue in my piece for The Cut, the truth is that neither conventional “selfies” nor their “ugly” counterparts represent what most of us “really” look like. They are both distortions, both constructions. Or perhaps more accurately, they represent the visual extremities of the multitude of faces any one of us have. (See this excellent post by Kate Fridkis at Eat The Damn Cake.)

More confronting than the intentionally “ugly” selfie is the unintentionally ugly candid. If I take a picture of myself poking my tongue out, scrunching up my face, or pulling my neck in to create a double chin, it does little to threaten my sense of self or attractiveness. In some respects, it is even less threatening than a conventionally attractive “selfie,” in which I am declaring, without explicitly saying so, that this is a photo in which I think I look good (but perhaps not good enough).

But in a photo that is taken unawares, in which I am staring blankly at my computer, or standing at an unflattering angle, or just caught making a less-than-flattering expression. there is the suggestion that perhaps that is what I “really” look like – if not definitively, then at least on those occasions where I haven’t artfully arranged my face for your viewing pleasure.

Of all the three photos at the beginning of this post: conventional selfie, “ugly” selfie, and self-taken candid (if such a thing is possible), it was the “ugly selfie” that took the least effort to put together. And it is the “ugly candid” that I fear most. (“Look how hideous she really is!”) I have untagged photos on Facebook for far, far less. But I share it here to illustrate my point that any of our faces can appear any number of ways: good, bad, and hideously ugly. And as Emma Froggatt, who rounds up the NYMag piece, puts it: “The ugliest photos are often the ones where you don’t mean to look ugly.”

* Although I would like to be. Monthly goal for later in the year?

Elsewhere: Ugly Is The New Pretty: How Unattractive Selfies Took Over The Internet. (NYMag)
The Photo is Lying (Eat The Damn Cake)

"[W]e see a lot of depictions that suggest once you are BFFs, you are always BFFs. But it’s one..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:03:01 +0100

“[W]e see a lot of depictions that suggest once you are BFFs, you are always BFFs. But it’s one of the most tough, volatile relationships you’ve ever had.”

- Lena Dunham

Ugly Is the New Pretty: How Unattractive Selfies Took Over the Internet

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:36:00 +0000

Ugly Is the New Pretty: How Unattractive Selfies Took Over the Internet:

I’ve got a story at NYMag.com’s The Cut today, on the significance of “ugly selfies.”

I’ve got more to say on this topic, but I’ll leave it until after Easter weekend. For now, the link!

Submitted

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:25:26 +0000

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks tearing my hair out over my manuscript as I prepared to send it to my editor this week, picking apart the holes and despairing over how I would ever fill them.

But last night, as I moved all the chapters out of their separate files and into one big one, I experienced a moment of awe.

I did it! I wrote a book! Sure, it’s not perfect and there are about a hundred things I’d like to change about it. But there are 70,000 words on the page, and they are mostly smart and interesting. And just as importantly, they reflect the vision I had when I began working on this project five years ago.

And in that moment at 3am that seemed pretty amazing. Hell, even now, 20 minutes after I sent it off, it seems pretty amazing.

One step closer.

Now for the months of edits and revisions.

"Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I ever committed" - Abra Fortune Chernick

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:28:00 +0000

Trigger alert: Eating disorders.

Chloe has a brave post at Feministing today, in which she admits that despite the fact that she was an Eating Concerns Advisor at her university, and despite the fact that she is a professional feminist… she has been starving herself.

The main focus of Chloe’s piece is the contradiction between her feminist beliefs and her bad-feminist behaviours, but as a friend of Chloe’s - and a fellow former eating disorder sufferer - the thing I found most striking about it was that once you tell people that you’re starving yourself, it’s much harder to continue starving.

One of the saddest things about our collective relationship with bodies and beauty is that while we pay lip service to the “badness” of eating disorders (so sad! so crazy! so gross!), we also celebrate their results.

Many (if not most) women and men who starve themselves or purge their meals look little like the hyper-thin anorexics and bulimics that are presented to us in after school specials, magazines, and even medical discourse. They just look a little bit thinner, and then a little bit thinner still; a little bit closer to the Hollywood ideal. They don’t just “pass,” they are praised: for their “bikini bodies,” their “Chanel girl” lines.

When I was dealing with an eating disorder, a decade ago now, I kept it a secret. Partly because I was painfully aware that it wasn’t “cool,” that girls with eating disorders (particularly my brand) were considered “headcases.” But also because I knew that if I admitted to it, I would have to stop doing it. I would no longer be “So thin! Such a diet role model!” but just plain old me.

Which is why I found Chloe’s post so brave. Once the people who care about you know what’s going on, it’s harder to get away with “Oh, I’m not hungry” or “I’ve already eaten.” It’s harder to chug half a bottle of water with your meals and then slip away to the bathroom. These acts, previously unnoticed, begin to take on a new significance.

And that you can no longer get away with it - or perhaps more importantly, that you choose to give people the information that means they no longer let you get away with it - is an important step in recovery.

Ask Rachel: On eating disorders and feminism(s). And a bit of Caitlin Moran.
Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner: How Karl de-fanged Lily Allen.

Elsewhere: Feminism, fat, feelings, forgiveness. (Feministing)
”We’re all watching starving people.” (MamaMia)