Molly Fischer describes Kelsey Osgood’s new book, How to Disappear Completely, as “an anorexia memoir that’s largely a critique of anorexia memoirs”:
In her telling, anorexia’s competitive mentality makes hearing anyone else’s story an invigorating opportunity for comparison. … And, alleges Osgood, the storytellers themselves tend to be complicit in this competitive fervor: They’re “getting something out of it,” she writes. Even for recovering anorexics, “the narrative toward rock bottom is more often than not a ‘war story’ told to impress the listener.” So [memoirist Marya] Hornbacher writes, “Line up four apples and think about how you’d feel after a few days of eating that and nothing else” with what sounds a lot like pride. “I can function fine on an apple a day,” writes Emma Woolf — whose 2012 memoir is, in fact, called An Apple a Day. You wouldn’t be mistaken to detect something like bragging in their confessions.
“Anorexia is often the sufferer’s loud declaration that he or she is different from other people,” Osgood explains. “It’s what makes me special is a sentence that can be found in almost any firsthand testimonial about an eating disorder.” Her astute move is to read that sense of specialness as a defining characteristic of the anorexic mind-set. One early therapist calls Osgood a “mild case,” and her response is a defiant determination to become severe. “To label an anorexic ‘not that bad’ is to call him or her ‘normal,’ which is to say not sick at all, which is to say fat,” she explains.
In an essay, Osgood considers ways to combat eating disorders:
I believe that so many young women want to be anorexic because our society has communicated not the horrible consequences of eating disorders, but what might seem to be the benefits of them, namely, that they make you skinny and special.
We need to change the vocabulary we use and the tone we invoke when we discuss anorexia, refusing to employ it as shorthand for “fragile and interesting.” We also need to staunchly refuse to include what could be interpreted as prescriptive materials in narrative accounts, namely daily calorie intake, exercise routines and lowest weights of active anorexics. Finally, we need to give more attention to studying the efficacy of home-based treatment programs like the Maudsley method, which trains parents and family members to oversee the care of anorexics, so that sufferers don’t wind up in an endless cycle of hospitalizations. It’s important that we begin to examine all these factors of suggestion and reinforcement and intervene with girls who are experimenting with disordered eating. If we don’t, they can easily end up like I once was: sick, miserable and desperate to recover from an illness that I once wanted so badly.
Amanda Marcotte zooms out:
Osgood’s essay raises for me the larger problem with the assumption that scolding young people is an effective way to discourage negative behavior. We may think we’re saying, “If you make these choices, scary things will happen to you,” but what younger audiences often hear is, “These choices are daring and rebellious—even romantic.” Need proof? Kids brought up in sex-negative religions have sex on average at younger ages than kids who get more sex-positive messages. One possible reason is that teaching that sex is the forbidden fruit tempts teenagers to get swept up in the moment, whereas sex-positive kids have a more nuanced understanding that allows them to plan their sexual debut carefully. Anti-drug education programs often end up leading kids to believe that all the cool kids use drugs. Research shows that anti-bullying programs, because they detail bullying behavior, often end up teaching kids how to be better bullies. Fat-shaming causes people to eat more, possibly because of stress, and gain weight.
The Dish 