[Deena52]

I'm 58....so I grew up in the 50's and 60's and was in high school in the late 60's and in college in the early 70's. And I did not grow up in a rural area...I grew up on the east coast, in the middle Atlantic region....not far from NYC and Philly. And honest to God.....I had NO idea that there even were eating disorders. And neither did anyone else I knew. They simply didn't exist as far as we seemed to know.

And as far as my peers at the time.....I don't remember ever seeing anyone who looked to be losing too much weight...or eating oddly....or anything like that. I don't remember ever hearing or having a friend whisper anything about what or how someone was eating, etc.

I do remember....I was already in college....and I heard about a girl I'd gone to high school with....who had become way too thin and she had been eating only an apple and a few crackers every day. And I remember I was stunned. I'd never heard of or contemplated such a thing. It was the first time I had the slightest clue that there even WAS a problem called eating disorders.

But then of course...that was the 50's and 60's and I'd never heard of homosexuality either, to be honest.

But....I read all sorts of posts here....people relating their histories and their family's histories and it seems that there have been people from way back who were engaging in all sorts of eating disorders. It's not like they didn't exist or didn't happen.

What I'm wondering is.....was it simply that we didn't talk about it back then? It was hidden in the closet?

I clearly see now that teens know all too well about this stuff....there are all these ANA and MIA sites.....worshiping of skeletal models (who we'd have thought looked horrible and way too thin). So I'm also wondering......is there a much higher incidence of these behaviors now because of the internet? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Because as far as I knew (and I was no little quiet gal or shrinking violet or anything)....all my friends and I were pretty normal when it came to body image and eating. It just never occurred to us to do any of the things that seem so prevalent now with teen girls. Sure, we worried about our weight and wanted to look okay....but it never involved disordered eating....at least that I knew of. And there seems to be SO many young women tortured with this issue....really suffering both emotionally and physically now due to this....and I'm curious about how and why this changed so much.

ARE these things happening more frequently now....or does it just look that way because they were kept hidden years ago...or that it just didn't really have a name?

deena

[beerab]

These things existed, it just hadn't been as recognized as it is now. And yes, part of it is probably that these things hadn't been formally diagnosed.

Take PCOS- most people have never even heard of it but it exists AND lately more and more people know about it. 5 years ago I hadn't met anyone with it, now I have friends AND coworkers who have it just like me. It's all about when science and society start recognizing and diagnosing and accepting these things exist IMO.

[dragonlady1978]

Well, if homosexuality was not something heard of back then that alone should be testimony as to how things can be hidden or ignored due to cultural bias at any given moment. You are speaking of a time when these things held shock value and people did their best to hide anything that would be considered abnormal or immoral by the general populace.

I think that eating disorders have probably been around to some degree almost as long as people have.

Granted, eating disorders are probably much more prevalent today because of media. We are bombarded every day with billboards, magazines, tv, etc that tell us what we should look like, gives the impression we should all either be "hot" like the people we see or hide in shame. That accelerator aside there has always been pressure for us to try to be one of the beautiful people. Beauty has been coveted forever, and being thin is a large part of that equation.

[Deena52]

Thanks for the input.

The more I think about this, the more complicated and multi-faceted I suspect it is. Take homosexuality, for instance. I believe in biology, not choice....but back in my day (as I wave my cane around )....not only was that very hidden....but it we would have never even considered fooling around with another girl sexually. It just wasn't done.....not that people might not have been ever doing this back then.....but I feel confident saying that it's much more acceptable now....even trendy. And the trendiness factor gives many more exposure to it. I'm sure the numbers of homosexuals has remained the same.....but some of the behaviors may have increased due to bi-sexuality almost becoming trendy for a certain generation. The thing is....sexual orientation is not an addiction per se........whereas eating disorders are....so in the end the actual numbers of those who truly are and aren't (homosexual) remain the same. It's just the acceptability and trendiness factors that change.

With eating disorders (and also, I'm noticing, psychiatric issues)...they've become quite trendy with teens and young adults (esp. women...insofar as eating disorders go). And I'm thinking that when something becomes not only more widely known about but also trendy, people get exposed to it (and teens tend to be quite filled with angst anyway).....and if the ground is fertile enough...an addiction is born. Addicts never intend to get addicted.

I read these Xanga journals of these eating disordered teens....mainly female...and it's really painful to see all the suffering. Just in my one niece's dormitory, two gals had to drop-out for a time due to illness from anorexia. I lived in the dorm...ate in the dining hall 3 times a day.....never once saw anything remotely like this back in the early 70's....or even anything suspicious. We confided secrets, etc....never once even had a clue this even existed. Heck....we all shared a common bathroom with multiple stalls back in those days....surely I'd have seen something...anything.

I have several nieces....and you can't find a teen girl these days who doesn't know about this or know others who suffer from it.

I believe that sexual orientation is something we are born with....but that with ED's it's somewhat different. We are probably born with a certain degree of an underlying potential (physiologically and/or emotionally) to be susceptible to certain things....and without exposure to it or knowledge of it...it's very possible that the numbers would go down substantially.

If they suddenly eliminated alcohol from the entire planet....there would have to be way less alcoholics. One doesn't start seeking alcohol from birth....but becomes exposed to it at some point....and the illness is born. Of course, with food....total elimination would be ridiculous. What is it Fran Liebowitz said....part of a balanced diet is food? One must be exposed to food in order to survive. But one does not need to develop addictive behaviors from birth.

I don't know....I'm just talking in circles. All I can say is that I read these Xanga journals of these teens and young adults and it's like an entirely different world. I simply never saw all these bi-polar and suicidal teens growing up....nor the serious eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia) growing up. I'm almost stunned when I read these....and there are not just a few....there are literally thousands of different ones.
To me....it looks like just like the ADHD that became so popular when my sons were young.......bi-polar disorder and eating disorders have become "diagnoses du jour". And this can be very dangerous with teens especially.

When I was a kid it was trendy to have these little troll dolls...that had this iridescent hair sticking straight up that came in all sorts of different colors.....and you simply HAD to have one of these. You just couldn't go to school without one. We'd become desperate if we couldn't get our parents to buy us at least one of them. The really cool kids had several of them...with hair of all different colors.
But...a few years later....they were left in the dust. We were on to the new trend....suede jackets.

But with ED's, it's not so easy for many of these teens to leave behind. They get devastating physical damage, much of it permanent....and the obsession never goes away. It's like playing with fire, IMO.
I just don't think it's like homosexuality when it comes to numbers. I think there was much less of these ED behaviors when I was growing up. I'm sure they were there...just hidden....but not in the numbers there are now.

deena

[serendipity907]

I'm not really of the opinion the media as a whole is directly linked to people developing ED's, but I do think it 100% enables people and triggers them and also helps to create misunderstandings about eating disorders. To an extent I get somewhat annoyed when I see something which goes like "Don't say X girl is ugly/fat, she'll get an eating disorder". I'm not saying people should call names of any kind or that it is okay, but to say that is how a really serious mental illness always starts makes the whole thing seem really superficial and silly. I guess the problem is that unless you've had an ED or been very close to someone who has, you can't fully understand what it's really about in my opinion, so there's a lot of room to breed misinformation.

I'd like to think I'm not too easily influenced and I don't read womens('diet') magazines etc because I don't agree with the message they send, but the constant advertisements you flick through on TV, the massive billboards of photo shopped people, radio stations, TV's playing in shop windows and advertising are always subconsciously being taken in.

There seems to have been a time when the 'standards' for what is considered an attractive woman were somewhat physically attainable (When models looked healthier, they didn't have the editing software for photos/vid), now they are just a pipe dream.

I can't really say much about how it was in past times since I'm 20, but I'd guess it all still very much existed but it wasn't being splashed across the magazines because it wasn't perceived as a girl trying to imitate *X skeletal celebrity*, rather someone with a mental illness.
It has become somewhat glamorized, after all how often are other mental illness's like Bi-Polar/Multiple personality disorder etc scrawled across the front of girls magazines.

[saef]

If you're interested in the history of eating disorders, you might want to look up this book: "Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa," which traces it all the way back to the medieval practice of not eating to demonstrate religious devotion:

http://www.amazon.com/Fasting-Girls-.../dp/0375724486

It's particularly illuminating on Victorian girls' behaviors, which is why I ended up hearing about it & later buying it. (Basically, it hits my sweet spots: I'm in recovery from an eating disorder and I'm very interested in 19th century American life.)

ETA: Here's a book report on it that covers the time period I'm interested in & talks a little about observations of anorexia nervosa made in the 1870s.
http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/0375724486.asp

[bellaella]

I think a major factor is just exposure. Similar to shopping, if you avoid the malls and online shopping and magazines, you don't get exposed to possible purchases and new trends you feel that you have to have. Like eating disorders, I think girls these days hear it all over the media. They then want to know what it is and before you know it, they start to adjust their lifestyle. Although it is looked at negatively, just knowing that someone else is doing it as well may make the human mind think that it is also somewhat ok. B/c "so and so are doing it too".