**** Today is one of the happiest day of my life. Someone I care about accepted Christ, and if I didn’t have a mountain of work to do, I would be calling my friends to pop champagne and celebrate. That will have to wait, because tomorrow I’m taking a friend out for her first alcoholic drink because she turned 21 today. 
This weekend’s ED series is a bit different in that it’s kind of a backtrack, and a rehashing of my last two ED posts. It’s more like an interlude than a regular ED post. I’ve been musing about it for some time, but it’s not the kind of topic I want to talk about in my regular food posts.
If you can, please share your thoughts, because I’m really interested in other opinions or experiences, especially for this post. ****
One of the common questions I receive when I reveal my eating disordered past is: “How did you develop an eating disorder?”
It’s a question I don’t really know how to answer, even though I occasionally ask it myself to other eating disordered individuals.
I understand and appreciate the reason for that question though. Especially for people who don’t really understand what eating disorders mean, they want to know exactly what produces such a crazy disorder. Why would anyone want to starve themselves? Everyone understands why someone would want to go on a diet. But how could someone let himself or herself go so far to the point of death and illness?
It’s not an easy disorder to understand, and it’s not an easy disorder to explain either.
I’m currently working on a freelancing piece for the L.A. Times on Asian American women and eating disorders. The piece was inspired by fellow blogger Lynn from The Actors Diet, who co-started Thick Dumpling Skin, a public platform for all Asian Americans to speak out about their body image issues.
We’ve chatted many times about this issue of how Asian Americans have a bigger risk of developing disordered eating issues due to huge acculturation stress. Asian women are routinely stereotyped as petite and skinny with a super-fast metabolism, and that image is enforced into their mindsets by both their Asian and American sides. Not only do they feel pressured to live up to that “skinny Asian” image, they get constant negative weight comments by their Asian family and relatives.
I’ve interviewed about eight Asian American women, and they all basically told me the same thing: their eating disorders were instigated by a combination of weight comments from Asian mothers and aunts and an unrealistic image Americans have towards Asian women’s figures.
Since then I’ve interviewed four other people who are professionals in the psychology field, and they all attest to the fact that serious body image issues are prevalent among Asian Americans. Unfortunately, there is just little resources for them, nor do many Asian Americans want to speak out about this issue.
Okay, I’m a stereotypical Asian. My parents were both rail-thin until they hit their 40s. I have their high-speed metabolism genes. I’ve been underweight my whole life. But having been raised in Singapore, I also remember feeling big and unwieldy compared to my tiny South-east Asian friends, especially because I was always the tallest. My head stuck out above my petite friends, and I purposely slouched so that I would look shorter.
I remember when I was about 14 years old, my entire P.E. class was weighed individually (and publicly) during one of our P.E. sessions. When I got on the scale, a guy (whom I liked) gasped, “What? How can you be so heavy?” And then a friend hushed him saying, “Maybe she’s big-boned lah.”
I was 5’5 tall and 45 kg (99 lbs). I was hardly heavy.
But at the time I didn’t have the logical sense to figure out that compared to my under 5-feet-tall friends, of course I was going to weigh more than their 39 kgs. That incident bothered the hell out of me, and it stayed in my consciousness for a long time. It was also the first time I wondered if maybe I was too heavy.
Just half a year later I moved to America, where I routinely got told that I was lucky I was so skinny because I was Asian, blah blah blah.
I was one of the few Asians in my school at the time. I was already feeling super self-conscious as an Asian FOB with a strong Singaporean accent. But then I also suddenly developed some skin problems at the time because of the sudden climate change; my lips were permanently chapped and my arms had some kind of painful rash, which led me to be even more self-conscious about my appearance.
I felt ugly, I felt weird, I just felt like I was a slant-eyed, yellow-skinned outsider who didn’t belong in this world of beautiful, big-eyed, fair-skinned people. I thought the only thing I had going for me was that I apparently had the super Asian “eat all you want and not gain weight” genes. So gradually, it became very important for me to preserve that image.
As a typical female teenager, I was surrounded by friends who talked about weight constantly.
“Oh my God, look at that girl’s arms. She’s SO skinny!”
“Urgh, I wish my thighs were two inches narrower.”
“How can you eat that? So many calories.”
“Gargh, I ate so much! I can’t eat dinner now.”
From a person who didn’t even know what a calorie was, I soaked up all the habits and knowledge of diet and weight comparisons. I learned how to read nutrition facts, I learned (incorrectly) that dietary fat makes you fat, and I learned that the first thing you must do when you see another girl is to assess her figure.
That’s the kind of society we live in. We’re consciously and unconsciously trained to obsess about weight and appearances. I was a late boomer in the weight-obsessing culture. I’m saddened by the fact that I hear the same weight-conscious speech from girls as young as 9 years old.
Of course, there are so many complex and intersecting reasons leading to my eating disorder. It’s not just limited to society and acculturation, and I’m not as active in the Asian American community as Lynn is. But I agree with her and my interviewees that our culture does play a huge part in our identity, and when we cannot come in terms with that, there’s going to be a big problem.
And that doesn’t only have to do with culture. Any kind of odds and discomfort with our self identity is going to negatively affect our entire being.
We live in a society that puts way too much importance and priority on appearances. Perhaps because our appearance is the first thing we see, it’s all too easy to judge ourselves (and others) by the appearance first.
One of the biggest things that I gained back in my recovery was my true identity. I’m not just a Korean raised in Singapore now living in America. I am more than my skin tone and my weight. Of course I knew that all along in a logical sense, but it never really penetrated deep into my psyche.
It’s really ironic but it took my eating disorder stripping everything I thought I had going for me—my intelligence, my looks, my social life, my ambitions, my decency—to finally force me to get that.
In that way, my ED did a huge service for me by bringing me down to rock bottom and letting me realize that despite having lost everything, I am still an individual worthy of love with an ability to help and care for others.
I’m not just a material being who needs material things. An eating disorder might seem like a disorder with corporeal things like food and weight, but it has stems deeper and more devastating than that.
I think it’s caused by a spiritual blindness, an inability to see ourselves as spiritual beings as well, thus the preoccupation with the physical. That’s why treatment centers that just basically force-feed you calories and give you anti-anxiety pills don’t work. That’s why it can take so long to overcome this disorder…yet when you are hit with a genuine realization that you are more than this physical body, recovery can be surprisingly swift.
It took years of “recovery” for me to gain back my identity, but when I did, I made huge steps of progress that I never dreamed was possible.
In kind of a full circle, the turning point of my recovery was when I returned to Singapore and stayed there for 5 months. It was the place where the change in me was most prominent, but the series of events leading up to Singapore were what gave me the solid push forward to consequential recovery.
Questions to Ponder:
1) Since I started the post with that question, how do you think you developed your eating disorder? There’s probably many many reasons, so you don’t need to name all of them. But I also wonder: is it even important to know what developed our eating disorder? How does it help to dig up our history and background?
2) Obviously not all my readers are Asian Americans…but did you ever struggle with your culture? How has that affected you?
3) What are your thoughts on a weight-obsessed society? How much blame belongs to society’s superficiality?
Related posts:
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Once again, you have opened my mind to understanding a bit of culture that isn’t my own. Guilty, guilty, guilty of thinking that exact stereotype about Asian women. Always so skinny and tiny! It makes me wonder how much is genes and how much is underlying eating disorder? Both? I don’t know. Curious about your thoughts on this.
I’ve never struggled with an official disorder. I have dealt with disordered thinking in the past, though. I remember the first time I ever heard “fat” or skinny was in the 4th grade by a friend of mine whose own dad had flat out called her fat. :O I know. The second time I ever compared my body with others was probably 7th or 8th grade in ballet class. I was the girl with hips among those without. I realized I was different than them. I had to quit ballet some time later but sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had kept with it. Would I have gone to extreme measures? I don’t know.
I wonder if eating disorders are partially predisposed through genetics. All women are exposed to the expectations of society, pop culture worshiping skinny women, “fat” talk, disapproval of parents, friends, family. There’s an emphasis, fear even? on focusing on the obesity issues of the US, constant talk of living a healthy lifestyle. And yet– and YET, while I believe 99.9% of women have (some kind of) body issues, disordered thinking about healthy habits or exercise, not all develop a “real” eating disorder. Does that make any sense? It brings us back to the age old nature vs. nurture thing. I think there is some of both, and I think each person is affected by nature and nurture to different degrees.
p.s. sorry for the novel!
wow, meg. You put my thoughts on paper here. I love your response. And i question the same thing.
xxoo
p.s.
Sophia, I am so excited to hear about your friend knowing Jesus!
I’m really not sure about the ED genes…though I’m curious about it. I think largely it depends on the sequence of circumstances, in conjunction with personality and family/cultural background. Like you, I think 99.99% of women have body image issues, but if their issues are left unattended, they can easily descend into clinical eating disorders. Some women may just happen to have a lot of other stress during their lowest points of body image dissatisfaction which puts them at great risk, while some women are fortunate enough to have interventions before they sink deeper…or perhaps they find other forms of addictions.
I may not know you or your full story, but reading the weekend ED series always makes me feel incredibly happy for you!!
I had a brush with what I would call a “borderline ED” my freshman year of college. Looking back, I honestly don’t have a clear reason as to why it happened. I’m like you- I was always the ridiculously skinny girl and my parents were rail-thin too for most of their lives. Up until my senior year of high school my only weight issue was that I was too skinny and I longed for a curvier, fuller figure. So what happened when I got to college? My only explanation was that I suddenly became afraid of gaining the dreaded “freshman 15.” Completely irrational but that common worry that many freshman felt rubbed off on me. What started as a transformation towards healthier eating habits became an obsession with limiting the number of calories I consumed (I didn’t even know/understand calories before then…I’m dead serious!).
It was borderline anorexia for 3 months; completely and honestly unintentional. When I finally opened my eyes and came to my senses, my body had taken quite a beating. My self-curing then began. I believe I was lucky and I have my family to thank. What lasted 3 brief months resulted in over a year of recovery thanks to an uncontrolled binging habit that I developed and fought. Oye.
I’ve never fully told anyone that before…it feels kinda nice to “confess”
Once again, I’m incredibly happy for you. While I can only slightly empathize with what you were going through, what ultimately matters is that your life is back on track 
Everything happens for a reason.
-Irina
Aw, glad you got it off your chest. I’m glad that it didn’t go worse than it could have. Good thing you caught yourself beforehand! There’s the other myth about eating disorders: that it doesn’t happen to naturally skinny people. It really isn’t true at all.
It bothers me too when people talk about Asian women being “naturally skinny” all the time. I am Asian and I grew up in a predominantly Asian community in California. So I knew from a young age that “Asian” was a huge umbrella term, and there is no one image or example of an Asian woman’s body–Asian women are incredibly diverse. There are PLENTY of Asian women who aren’t built or born skinny, pale, and with stick-straight black hair. Asian women come in all shapes and sizes, yet society cannot understand this. People just see what they want to see, and they believe what they choose to see. We know that it isn’t true about us…but somehow we internalize it and suffer needlessly from EDs and other psychological issues as a result. Why do we do this to ourselves/each other!?
That’s true. Asian women are incredibly diverse. We don’t all look alike. I somehow think we Asians perpetuate that stereotype ourselves though, or at least aid it. I mean just take a look at our talents and singers…they all pretty much look the same, with the same plastic-surgery double-lidded eyes, the pale, pale skin and the blown-up dyed hair. I wish I had the strength to deny that media-imposed image and be proud of my own unique looks, but the power of media and role models is just incredibly strong! Even now, I dislike my tanned skin.
I think there is a self-perpetuating cycle with Asian women. They tend to be thin because they feel pressure to be thin and everyone assumes it is because of a gifted metabolism. It doesn’t “help” that I’ve seen tiny Japanese women vacuum an entire plate of donuts seemingly without a care in the world for what they’ve ingested. What people don’t see is that those women tend to eat next to nothing the following day (either because they aren’t hungry after such a feat of consumption or are worried about weight gain).
All of that being said, anyone can develop an eating disorder, as you said. The seed is planted when people emphasize their physicality to an extreme extent. Culture will play a role in that, but only so far as it permits your body to be a focus of scrutiny. People who are fat have exactly the same problem but the eating disorder they acquire leads in the opposite direction. It all comes from body image and food obsession after one has had ones body become a stronger identifier than anything else. Once your identity revolves around your body, it’s hard to find out who you otherwise are because you become absolutely mired in seeing yourself through the lens that has been foisted upon you by others.
The way to stop this is for society to get its nose out of the business of people’s bodies entirely. If no one had ever said you were “heavy” (those stupid, stupid boys) or fed you the Asian metabolic myth, you would have naturally developed according to your body’s actual needs. No more telling people to “put down the donut” or “eat a sandwich” for their health. People need to be left alone from the start so they don’t develop identity issues, but it is, unfortunately too late. So many seeds have already been planted and grown into strong trees bearing really rotten and self-destructive fruit.
I always like your questions
one thing which always strikes me is that there seems to be as many triggers for eating disorders as there are causes. Some people can grow up in a weight-obsessed society and remain untouched, whereas others grow up in societies where weight doesn’t matter and still develop anorexia – anorexia has around about the same prevalence in every country (1%), although disordered eating varies more according to culture. I’m interested in the genetic and biological components of eating disorders – they seem more like the underlying causes to me, because whereas the psychological and cultural stuff varies wildly, there are discernible patterns to the biology of people with anorexia. My anorexia had nothing to do with wanting to be thin or thinness being valued in our culture, it was more a way of self medicating anxiety. But I was born in the UK in 1984 and developed an ED in the 90s, so couldn’t know what things are like for Asian or Asian American women 
It’s difficult to pin-point one exact thing/person/incidence that started my eating disorder, nor do I believe it to be fair to point fingers. Regardless, there are a few things in my head that I believe to be pivotal points… well, for one, I have eating disordered genes. My mother was anorexic when she was my age. Even before my eating disorder began, I once wrote “I HATE MY THIGHS” on a scrap piece of paper, crumpled it up, and threw it away. I was six years old.
Some more solid points are going into an enhanced program at a renowned high school where everyone was gifted and very intelligent, which subsequently made me feel like that did not set me apart from anyone anymore. I used to be the one that got good grades, was well-rounded, etc., but now that I was at this school, everyone was all of those things and more. I also didn’t know anyone going into that school, either, and I thought that losing some weight would be good since I’d always had it in the back of my mind, but never had the time to act on it. Now that I was in a school where I hadn’t yet made any friends, I decided no one would really care if I didn’t eat lunch with them, sit in the cafeteria, etc., so I kept myself company by going on long walks the entire lunch period or studying in the library.
Backtracking a little, I remember coming from my 8th grade-year doctors’ checkup and my mom saying to me in the car that now that I was done growing, I should probably start watching what I eat (not to mention that I was a healthy weight, and the doctors’ presumption of me not growing anymore was B.S… by the time tenth grade and recovery rolled around, I was three inches taller than I was at that checkup).
Those are just some major things that I think of when someone asks “what started your eating disorder?”. I have never felt much pressure by society, but I can certainly see how some cultures feel the need to live up to certain stereotypes. It’s very sad.
I don’t think I have the ED genes, though my dad was a picky eater when he was younger (he refused to eat meat). I’m curious about the possibility of ED being genetic though…I wonder if it’s really genes, or maybe the kid unconsciously picks up anorexic tendencies from the parent. But wow, no 6-year-old should ever have to worry about fat thighs…
I’m not sure if I’d call it “eating disordered” genes, ’cause to me it seems like it’s more of an OCD, anxiety type thing inherited. I know practically for a fact that I got all of my issues from my dad. The few months I lived with him (before his OCD, and paranoid anxiety got a hold of him and made him go crazy) I talked to him about it and he was bulimic and restricted his food as well (he wasn’t anorexic, but that was because he was more obsessed with being muscular) and compulsively exercised. Alot of the stuff he said was unnervingly similar. I could almost see guilt in him though when he said “I’m pretty sure you got it from me, becuase your little sister is 4 and already shows the anxiety and obsessive traits” I was a super quiet kid so no one knew how obsessive I was while my little sister just lets everything out. His mom also had a history of Yo yo dieting and being obsessed with “health” as in she took a million different supplements. I can’t say I got this from being around them though because as a kid I was only went to my dads once a week and I was utterly clueless to my dad’s eating disorder until he told me a year ago.
This was a really well written post!
I think my eating disorder happened when I was losing weight, and then when I got to my goal I still wasn’t happy with what I saw. Even though I ate well, and was an active person something was still there that triggered it. The thing is, nobody made me feel fat or that I ever looked bad but I wanted to make a change so I could be happy with myself. Friends and family told me how skinny I was whenever I saw them, but in the mirror I didn’t see that at all. It was all in my head, the whole time because I had such negative thoughts towards my body and never saw the positive sides.
I counted calories ridiculously and if I got to a thousand calories per day I would feel extremely guilty. After a while I started to get really sick, and I had realized what I was doing to myself. So, I told my mom and I started reading a whole bunch of blogs. Blogs that helped and blogs that promoted healthy foods. When I gave up the whole calorie counting, a huge relief came off of me. No worries, no guilt. After that I cleared my mind of all negativity and thought only positive things about my body. It wasn’t easy at all though. There were nights I cried to God, asking him to please heal me and for me to see more positive than negative. He answered my prayers, and I started to see positivity everywhere.
This might sound a bit weird to say, but I think if I haven’t had an eating disorder I might not have ever known the wonders of healthy foods. I think it may have brought me closer to God too because now I feel so much love from him. So much that it makes me cry tears of joy.
Aw Amy, this comment touched me. God’s wonderful. So glad He heard your prayer! I give thanks for my ED too; it gave me tons of blessings although the process was definitely painful.
thanks for the shootouts to both blogs, and for doing this article, sophia!
What an interesting post! It did always strike me as odd that naturally skinny people also develop eating disorders – you’d think they wouldn’t, since they’re skinny anyway! But that makes sense, I suppose…as much as any ED thing can. :/
I think it’s awesome that you raise these issues and get people thinking – it’s really important to raise awareness for mental health, as mental illnesses are not only killers, but also devalue their victims’ qualities of life. Go, Sophia!
I developed my eating disorder by the time I was 13 and yet if I look back I can remember having various signs of my eating disorder as far back as kindergarden; I remember them pretty well because they stood out so much when I had such weird thoughts about food that a little child shouldn’t have, for example when my guy friends would want to immediately play basketball all lunch I thought “Okay, good so that way I have an EXCUSE to not eat lunch, it won’t look weird, it’ll just look like I really want to play basketball.” Yeah, I wanted to play basketball, but I could eaten lunch first then played..and that was maybe..1st or 2nd grade. But my disorder exploded when I moved to another state; from Los Angeles, to Arizona where it is much less diverse; to those 8th graders I was the first “asian” girl they’d ever met. It made me feel very out of place, as did the ignorance “Where are you from?” I’d say “California” and they’d get confused and try to figure out ways of asking me, but they meant “what country?” “AMERICA!!” yeah -.-” the air around there was..strange too, it was like they hinted that you should be like them, but not outrightly. I was asian as far as they knew, but I’m really not..I’m American..but they didn’t see it like that.
When my two friends moved out there on the first day of school I remember people staring…T_T. I felt out of place and I couldn’t change who I was, and then I felt even more compelled for what ever reason to try and fit the stereotype they thought I was (worst idea ever). I’m already short, and they’d make comments about it, and about how asians were skinny, and it made me more terrified to be fat (because that’d not be normal, especially for an asian..)…It was just something about the enviroment…that being said if I had stayes here in Los Angeles I don’t think I would have developed an eating disorder as a TEENAGER. but I know I probably would have at least by or after college (I’d already premeditated something like that in 7th grade “Right now I’m focused on school, but later when it’s done all I’m going to do is focus on my body, diet and exercise”..scary to think how I knew it deep down in a way)
I think I would have preferred that and saved my childhood/ youth/ teenage experiences and intelligence and gotten into a good school (I was going to go to USC also).. there’s more that added to it I believe, and while I do feel it is important to find the cause, it does us no good if we can’t let go and move forward; to change and move on..but sometimes we (I) get stuck and can’t let it go..Find out why, learn from it, move on…don’t hold onto it and play the victim..
As for the weight obsessed society I hate it…but how much is to blame? as much as we let them effect us…Did cavemen and women worry about their appearence and weight? I doubt it unless they were worried they didn’t get fat enough for the winter..I’m sure if any of them were preoccupied with being skinny or cared about vanity in that way died out over the starvation periods…
I went to a Chinese church while I was in America, so although my school was mostly white kids, I also had a bunch of Asian friends…and I think they influenced me to think about weight a lot too, but in a different kind of pressure. Some Asians can be really obsessed with weight, maybe more so because I would always hear all my Asian friends’ mother tell them to lose weight, stop eating, etc., which made my friends either eat more and complain about it, or verbally abuse themselves. Also, we watched Korean dramas, which really doesn’t help; all the actresses are painfully skinny and that’s the only Asian role models we have. :-/
A weight-obsessed society = a privileged modern society. You won’t see such obsession with weight and diet in a third world country, nor the ancient cavemen and women. Sigh.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a cultural thing in terms of race, it’s a privleged modern society culture think..I know some asian families that’re obsessed with weight; I know one girl who said that before and after they eat dinner the adults get on the scale to see how their weight changed. O_O” Of course I know one girl whose mom would say to stop eating- not because she eats too much and they were afraid of her being fat but because food costs money! I understand the Korean Dramas- I watch Japanese Dramas, and though I don’t find all the women to be painfully skinny the guys are really skinny and that made/ makes me insecure at times because I’m thinking; holy crap what if I weight almost as much as him! My mom’s friend from high school used to be Miss Hong Kong, and she lived out here in LA, she had to go on bedrest after some sort of medical problem/ surgery and she gained a lot of weight. All the tabloids in Hong Kong and China were apparently saying how she “blew up” so some Diet Supplement Company contacted her and payed her to use the product. She lost more weight then she’d put on, my mom said she said she felt and looked way too skinny, but she did the ads in China and then came back to the US and gained a few pounds back after. I was really young but I remember my mom saying “but you know, they’re like all anorexic over there.”
I’ve agreed with almost everything else you’ve written in your ED series, but it’s not true that eating disorders are only present in privileged societies. They are present in third world countries as well. Disordered eating is more of a Western thing, but anorexia and bulimia have very similar prevalence rates all over the world. It’s really important to make the distinction between disordered eating and eating disorders. Anorexia isn’t a diet gone wrong or an extreme case of vanity, and the symptoms are pretty much the same regardless of the part of the world you’re looking at – with the exception of the obsession with thinness. In non-Western countries non-fat phobic anorexia tends to be more common, so people with the disorder will say they are starving to be closer to God, or for control, or for some other reason not related to appearance. The disorder itself exists all over the place – the only thing which changes is the meaning people ascribe to their symptoms. It’s a damaging myth that only privileged Westerners get eating disorders, it makes the disorder sound like a choice rather than a deadly mental illness.
Wow. Seriously? I had no idea that ED prevalence rate is the same in third world countries. This is interesting…Has there been statistics? By third world I’m thinking of places where people struggle to meet the basic human survival necessities, not just non-Western countries.
I agree that ED isn’t a choice; I don’t think ED is a privileged disease, though I think the obsession with weight/beauty is.
I like your story of successfully navigating ED, but I really enjoyed this interlude.
You know my story, Sophia, so I won’t go into the details. But I do think it’s important to know why we develop the disorder, and it all boils down to this: we want to feel validated in something. Maybe it’s vanity in looks. Or maybe it’s – like in my case – a sense of wanting to feel in control of something,in your own life when the world becomes to crazy and unpredictable to face up to. Eventually it just gets down to wanting to avoid pain and the unknown, and once the pattern is set, the eating disorder becomes the known, and it becomes the safe and release despite also giving you so much pain.
I hate that we are so weight obsessed as a society. It has become one of the only acceptable points to judge people on, and it robs our kids of their youth, and too often tempts young and old alike with a false sense of working towards something and of improving ourselves. We’d all do better just to try to embrace each other and become better people, and, in my opinion, Christians or people of faith.
Have you heard of the diathesis-stress model? It’s a psychological theory that posits that certain individuals have predispositions to certain disorders, but it takes an environmental stress (or multiple stresses) acting on that predisposition to actually trigger the disorder. This means that neither genetics nor environment are determinants of health outcomes alone: it’s one acting on the other. I’ve always accepted that holistic view, and I think that’s kind of what you are getting at here. Just in terms of culture alone, I believe there is a genetic and environmental component that makes up our brains and body!
Hi Sophia,
I came across your blog the other day and I can’t say how encouraging it is to read your blogs. I’m half Korean and half guatemalan. I’m not saying that my anorexia was caused from being pressured to be the thin smart Asian girl but it certainly contributed. It was hard growingng up and being only half Asian. I didn’t quite fit in with either side of my family. I wasn’t rail thin nor was a curvacious. I’ve struggled all my life with trying to be the perfect person to everyone and also trying to hide. I think this world will forever be weight obsessed but its up to each individual to go with the flow or to fight it and be who they are.
The points you make about pressures for Asian American women are so important. I think it’s something more Americans need to be aware of. (I’m not Asian American but I’m very grateful that you’ve made ME aware of them.)
As for your questions:
1) Since I started the post with that question, how do you think you developed your eating disorder? There’s probably many many reasons, so you don’t need to name all of them. But I also wonder: is it even important to know what developed our eating disorder? How does it help to dig up our history and background?
My eating disorder developed when I was just ten years old, and it had very much to do with family problems which were complex so I won’t go into them here. I lost a ton of weight, was hospitalized for a month, put on a heavy dose of antidepressants and a strict meal plan, and supposedly “recovered”. But I never stopped wanting to be thinner and in high school problems started coming up again. Usually I just assume that all the eating/weight/etc problems I’ve had since then are just a continuation of my first “bout” of anorexia, but honestly there’s no way I can say. Maybe even if I hadn’t been anorexic then I would have developed eating problems in high school or after.
I think it can be helpful to understand the roots of an eating disorder, but not necessarily helpful to dwell on them too much. I spend a lot of time agonizing over the past, but I truly believe that what’s most important for me is focusing on the future, my dreams, what I want to do, who I want to be, etc. I think it’s partly because I’ve spent so much time living in the past that it’s been so hard for me to recover.
2) Obviously not all my readers are Asian Americans…but did you ever struggle with your culture? How has that affected you?
I’ve lived in Japan for a total of about two years out of the past four, and I always felt massive there. I am only 5’4″-5’5″, but I felt incredibly tall and big-boned. Japanese women are obsessed with dieting and so I figured it was only normal for me to be as well. I definitely felt pressure to be more like Japanese women, I bought diet books and fashion magazines and diet supplements…I think it was one way I tried to adapt to the culture there, sick as that may be. I tried very hard to maintain a weight of 46 kg (not realistic on my frame!)
Also, more related to what you were saying, once I aquired a certain level of thinness (back to my time among Americans here–I was never small by Japanese standards) I became addicted to it. People would comment on how skinny I was and how I must have an insane metabolism and I loved it. But it was also a huge amount of pressure to maintain the illusion that I was naturally thin–if I gained weight, people would realize I was a phony…just a normal fat person like everybody else. I know that sounds horrible but that was how I felt/feel.
3) What are your thoughts on a weight-obsessed society? How much blame belongs to society’s superficiality?
Sometimes, I think weight and dieting and food and all that stuff is just a distraction from all of the severe problems that exist in the world. I think the sheer quanitity of “food”, both “whole foods” and processed food, in American society is just ridiculous. With so much excess, I think it’s hard for anyone to have a healthy relationship with food. I don’t want to get political, especially since I’m not particularly knowledgeable…but I think that the obsession with weight is only one thread in the web of bizarreness that makes up American society.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the incredibly long comment, but I truly love your blog and I’m always moved by your ED posts.
It makes me so sad when I think about how weight obsessed society is. I think a lot of eating disorders are based off of unrealistic images and goals.
I was used to always being the smallest/shortest child growing up, in fact that was often why I was teased, for being so small/short/etc that it became engraved in me that I had to stay that way- I started to become self conscious about my body in middle school, during puberty, and especially PE class where we were regularly weighed. There were a few comments however I received which helped pull the trigger on my anorexia:
1) A PE teacher seeing my change in weight between 7th and 8th grade; saying maybe I should ‘cut down on the sweets’…in truth I gained the most weight in that time period due to going through PUBERTY, plus I was still on the lower end of a healthy weight for my age/height/etc so what the hell?
2) In PE class in high school, I was in the locker room and a girl made a comment about how I really should work on my thighs…again, I was a normal weight at the time
3) My mother, being rather small herself, 5′ tall and known to have been about 89 lbs when she married my dad (she never has had an ED…she’s just a tiny person) had made some comments about my eating habits/how i ate too fast/how my butt was bigger than hers, etc not knowing how sensitive I was to such comments/observations. Of course, she has made a complete 180 since then and would never ever say or do anything with the potential to cause the wrong thoughts/perceptions, but at the time it was hard for me to handle
I had actually tried to lose weight multiple times with failed uneducated attempts until I “became serious” about it my junior/senior year of high school and dropped over the edge. Culture has certainly affected me as well; most of my extended family on my mom’s side is overweight/obese (and thus always trying to lose weight) but very insensitive about commenting on weight and such and a part of me always needed to be that token skinny cousin.
BTW: I am eating to gain right now and am posting a WIAW (WIAM, actually, as it’s Monday) on my site ( http://livinglearningeating.wordpress.com ) within the next four hours.
I’m hoping that at least some people will check it out – and realize just how *much* food and how *rich* (none of this low-cal/high-volume rubbish) the food in a weight gain plan needs to be.
I think people are too scared by big portions and ‘unhealthy’ food and get too locked into ‘healthiness’ to be able to gain properly. If you’re not gaining and all you’re eating is oatmeal, steamed veggies/salad, apples, and peanut flour (aka low-fat PB) it’s *not* because you have a high metabolism. It’s because some reevaluation is in order!
Good luck to everyone!
Honestly, if someone asked me pinpoint why I developed an ED, I’d have to say that it was everything and that it was nothing. It was my entire life up to that point and then it was also just kind of random. My neurons fired in a certain way and my personality was such that I needed and thrived on control. The irony, of course, being that I had absolutely zero control but it doesn’t feel that way at the time.
(1) Honestly, I developed anorexia because of my overwhelming need to control some aspect in my life. I was in high school right next to the Pentagon on 9/11, then we had to deal with the crazy sniper, a crazy gunman shot up my college campus during my junior year killing 32 students including one of my sorority sisters, and another personal incident the beginning of my senior year. So when I graduated from college, everything felt so out of control even though I had a fulltime job and had moved out of my parent’s house. Since I felt so out of control, one thing I knew I could control was my diet and exercise. I could control my body. Then I think I developed BED because my body was starving and decided no way in hell would it ever be that thin again. It’s a vicious battle.
(2) I’ve never considered the stereotype of the petite and thin Asian American woman. I have to admitt that’s generally what I’ve believed. I’m your stereotypical white, preppy, blonde sorority chick (with a slow metabolism) who feels that overwhelming pressure to be thin. My entire father’s side of the family is overweight/struggles with his/her weight (good ole German genes) whereas my mother’s side has always been concious of doing whatever it takes to be thin. I feel like a disapointment to my mother when I’m overweight.
(3) I think that societies (unconciously) always need a prejudice that establishes the right/wrong type of person. For example in the Middle Ages in Europe, the Catholics pretty much hated anyone who wasn’t Catholic especially the Jews. For a long time in the United States, race was the accepted prejudice (I’m not saying there isn’t racism now but it’s not as accepted as it was 50 years ago) and now fat is the new prejudice. We as humans like to judge people for being different and judging someone who is overweight is an ideal prejudice because unlike your race or sex, you can “control” your weight.
Hi love! First, just a note of levity =) ever since trying these in Taiwan and Japan, I have been sad to not find them anywhere here in the US. But with your culinary genius surely you can conjure the perfect recipe for them? Have you had these before? I bet you have a ton in your Sinapore homeland! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagawayaki
I am enthralled and excitedly await this piece you are writing. Of course, ED is not only present in Asian girls but there is something about Asian culture perhaps that can really set off the disordered eating in girls, it’s tragic and horrible.
I definitely started my restriction because of comments people made. All my life I was a petite Indian girl and people would comment, saying ‘you are too thin, you don’t look nice.’ Indians are blunt that way. It’s a hard thing because the irony is, many Indian girls are very thin, however the culture I think values more of a figure because in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh there are still so many poverty-stricken individuals who uphold more robust figure as beauty. So I was naturally petite and fine for my height/weight, then I get to college and all these people tell me how ugly I am because I’m too thin. Then everyone in the world was finding their true love, soul mates, and I was like, what is wrong with me! Then began the emotional eating and binges. I’m still struggling more with that aspect right now, it’s the awful cycle of binge – restrict – binge. I know enough by now to realize that not abiding to a structured eating plan (and I’m not even so strict about these rules and things anymore, basically I eat whatever all day, even if its every one hour or two) I HAVE to do that for myself if I want to avoid this cycle, which is no way to live!!
So in short, I never learned how to be love-worthy and used the eating as the only way to control and find a means of self-love. Isn’t that awful
It’s even more sad that family and friends don’t realize how hurtful their comments can be. I still have friends you know, who don’t get ED and tell me to stop eating something or why can’t I just stop binge-eating, don’t I realize how I am a pig or how fat I am/will be. maybe they are not really ‘friends’ after all!
I’ve been following your ED series and they are very inspirational. You should light on so many perspectives that I don’t think many people think about. Even sufferers of eating disorders themselves. Honestly, I am in the same boat as you. Going through those struggles that I inflicted upon myself really made me realize so many things. I honesty love everything about life. Not necessarily in a cheerleader rah-rah way lol, but more in the … I am at peace with things kind of way. Even the hard times because I’m glad to be alive
1) I think it’d be helpful to know some of the reasons in general, but I don’t think it’s important to keep beating over the reasons though. You know what I mean? An acknowledgment is simple enough. Because you never know how you may handle a similar situation that may have affected you later in life. Like when those kids said that to you when you were younger, your response would be different today. It’s all on who you are as a person. How you perceive things in the now. So sometimes reasons some irrelevant in that sense
I think my parents blame themselves sometimes for me having gone through my mental illness, but honestly… I don’t blame them. Perhaps I had to go through that to help me figure out more about life. What is meaningful, what is possible, what is strength and spirit, what is love.
2) It’s interesting that you bring that up. I’m a mix between German and Colombian and both have different body types, and different “pressures”. I moved to the States when I was 6 so I also grew up in that culture as well. I think I was influenced by my mind connecting thinness with being better when my best friend from grade/middle school seemed to have the “perfect” life. I equated her body image to her life, and I see now that it was irrelevant. Especially because we were so young. Things are awkward, sometimes gangly, sometimes chubby lol. It’s interesting to think about
3) I think superficiality is a big play. I don’t mean just with magazines and such. I think the whole thing! From how diseases are handled in America, credit cards, to people not even waiting to hear what you have to say when they walk by and ask “how are you?” If people focused on the more universal things like love and what comes from within, respect, things like that… things would be different.
XOXO, thank you for sharing your insight!
you are SUCH a great writer, i’m so glad to hear that you are writing for the LA Times, great job! because you eloquently articulate everything that i am feeling so well.
and i am also asian american.
Wow.
I had no idea there was pressure on Asian women to stay thin outside the normal way every woman is pressured.
Wow. So glad you shared this, it is very interesting (and unfortunate).
For me…I choose not to ponder the why and the how I got here, I choose to focus on…what now?
Like you, I believe there is a serious spiritual dilemma going on. I see EDS as evil, a sin, the devil’s stronghold. Like any vice or weakness, really. I believe God can and will heal me if I could only get out of my way and cling to His path.
Analyzing why I got here will not help me to do that so …I just don’t. And honestly? I have no idea the answer anyway.
I think that society is weight obsessed on one hand, but also not concerned enough on the other … for instance, people are getting bigger and bigger and it is not healthy. A majority of people in Canada and USA are overweight or dangerously obese. I think a healthy balance needs to be found, and there should be more of a focus on eating nutritious food and exercising, rather than diet, weight, calories, etc..
What a unique story. Even having been underweight and borderline-disordered at one point myself, I am ignorant enough that I never realized someone who was already very thin (underweight even) could develop an eating disorder.
My destructive eating started when I left home for college. In my mind, it was an effort to impress people when I came back home for xmas break (I had gained about 10 pounds my senior year of high school from a lot of…beer). Of course, it was more complicated than that. I was grasping for a sense of control, after years of being smothered by a strict father. I took my “freedom” in college as far as I could take it, and took total control of my body.
I am asian living nyc and I can understand the pressure the asian americans live under.
I didn’t grow up in nyc , I grew up with alot of athletic people around me and they came in all sizes. Some were really tall and big, some short and stocky, some skinny and narrow, etc. but they were healthy and didn’t pass judgements on people, even if they didn’t fit in to a mold.
I’ve been living in nyc for awhile and I can understand why girls are so vulnerable to ED. When I read some of the comments on my friend’s facebook comments it is shocking how negative the women and men are towards the women’s body. These people are adults , not kids. Even as an adult you are affected by these comments , I can’t imagine growing up with it for years.
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