EATING DISORDERS

I’ve been on Instagram since I was in fifth grade. It’s not a big deal for kids nowadays to be on social media, but back in 2012, it was the biggest deal. Only the super cool and trendy kids had Instagram, so of course I immediately thought I was the top dog with my dancequeen handle. At first, the app was a way for me to post about all of the small things that happened to me throughout the day or post dumb quotes that “just described me so well.” It was entertaining and I was allowed to like every single one of my followers’ posts to show how great of an Instagrammer I was. 

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As I got older, though, Instagram began to change and I did as well. Once I got to middle school, specifically in eighth grade, I noticed my Explore page on Instagram shifted from “Just Girly Things” quotes that centered around taking silly pictures with friends and loving Disney movies to depressing quotes that were dark and made me feel empty. These girls who went by “Ana”, “Mia”, “Sue”, and other names were posting about how they had to reach their goal weight and how they couldn’t continue living if they couldn’t reach their goal. Typically, the weights were obscurely low numbers; usually they were in the double-digits. As a young, growing girl, I didn’t know how to interpret this information. I knew it wasn’t right for these young women to starve themselves to the point of losing multiple pounds in a week and didn’t see why they wanted to do it. Later on in that eighth grade year, I was able to understand why. Instagram became a place not to connect but to compare. Social media stars began to rise, and all of the girls were thin and gorgeous--I was jealous. More of the depression and eating disorder posts were popping up, Ana and Mia and Sue and Deb and Ed all wanting me to join them. And I did. And it was the worst year of my life. I struggled with my mental health and my weight so much that year and no one noticed. I deemed losing an obscene amount of weight to be a normal occurrence, since my Instagram Explore page supported my decision to do so.

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Years passed by and, while I still struggled with my body image, I didn’t think too much about my weight. The harmful posts stopped showing up on my social media and I thought I was safe. That was until I went into my freshman year of college. By no means was I overweight or needed to lose weight; I am an ex-ballerina, so I had a lot of lean muscle on me. When I got to school, though, my appetite significantly decreased as I did not find the dining hall food to be appetizing and I felt as though I did not have enough time to eat all three meals in a day. I lost a lot of weight fast but didn’t notice until I went home and everyone said something about it. No joke, everyone: my friends, my parents, my grandmother, even my old dance teacher. I was becoming more conscious of my weight again. Then quarantine hit and, for some reason, I lost my appetite completely. I was eating around 600 calories a day which is a very small amount for a 5’9” 19-year-old girl. I hated losing weight because none of my clothes fit me and it was the only thing people said about me, but the thought of gaining the weight back made me sick to my stomach. When my family and my doctor asked if I was doing it purposely, I couldn’t say no faster, but I knew that deep down, I couldn’t stop myself. I was losing my hair, I had no energy, I was constantly tired, I bruised easily, but I thought I physically looked good and that’s all that mattered.

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When this semester began, my parents sat me down and told me that if I lost more weight, they’d pull me out of school. That snapped me back into reality and I slowly started eating more as well as started therapy. I’m doing better now, but recently, my Instagram Explore page has been acting up again. The posts that you see above are all posts that I have seen within the past few weeks. Those posts and posts similar to those are quite triggering for those who suffer from eating disorders, as they solidify the idea that being skinny is the only way to happiness and that food is inherently not good. They reminded me that getting Starbucks lattes is not healthy, eating cereal in the morning isn’t the best thing to eat, gaining fat is easy, and one single cheat day can make you fat. 

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Sadly, it’s not just Instagram posts that reinforce this idea. I have friends and family members that constantly talk about how happy they would be just losing ten pounds or how they need to starve themselves after the holidays. Phrases like those harm my thought process a lot, as they make me question if I should as well. Realistically, I know that they are overexaggerating, but the shared vocabulary here makes it difficult to differentiate between what is actually an eating disorder and what is just a casual phrase.