No Thinspiration

Their views on food and body image could not be more different: Susannah Jowitt is the author of Fat, So?, which celebrates larger women. Candida Crewe wrote Eating Myself about her battle with anorexia and bulimia.

So what happened when they met?

Susannah Jowitt, 38, is 5ft 7in, weighs 14 stone and is a size 16 to 18.

She lives in West London with her husband Anthony and children Adelaide, five, and Winston, three. Susannah says: When I was 14, I nicked two pieces of bread from the middle of a new loaf of Hovis, then carefully re-sealed the bag with that fiddly piece of sticky yellow tape to escape detection.

Such extraordinary attention to detail was all in vain. My mother had counted the number of slices in the loaf and confronted me with my crime.

It was at that moment that I should have realised all was not well in our family’s Garden of Eating. How many parents count the slices in a loaf?

Such elaborate surveillance was necessary because I was, apparently, a Fat Child and needed to diet. My brother, on the other hand, was a Thin Child, so he was allowed sweets after tea (that’s how I remember it, anyway).

My parents yo-yoed between being people who loved their food (my mother was a truly great cook) and people who paid for their love of food by eating grapefruit. I inherited their greediness but, to my mother’s frustration, I missed out on the guilt gene.

Looking back at photos of myself as an adolescent, I wasn’t even particularly big - sturdy, yes, and with the same frame as my mum, who, by that time, was fat - but certainly nothing to worry about. But worry she did.
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Dec. 18, 2006 (Newsweek)
If a food craving strikes, try a manicure to “keep your hands occupied.”
This kind of tip is common fare on pro-”ana” (anorexia) and pro-”mia” (bulimia) Web sites. Well intended or not, they’re not “benign,” says Dr. Rebecka Peebles of Stanford University, coauthor of “Surfing for Thinness,” published in Pediatrics last week. Stanford researchers surveyed patients treated for eating disorders, ages 10 to 22, and found that users of pro-eating-disorder sites were sick longer. And 96 percent of them reported learning new tips for weight loss or purging; 69 percent said they used them.

The sites tend to gloss over bad news: people with anorexia are 56 times more likely than their peers to commit suicide. (And they’re not broadcasting the November anorexia-related death of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston.)

Sites deny being harmful, saying they provide a community for those with eating disorders. The term “pro-ana” is broadly used, and sites vary greatly. “We offer them support, saying, ‘It will be. Continue going to your doctor’,” says five-foot, 89-pound proana.us owner Anna Robbins.

In November, the Academy for Eating Disorders suggested a mandatory warning statement: “Warning: anorexia nervosa is a potentially deadly illness. The site you are about to enter provides material that may be detrimental to your health.”

—Karen Springen

With statistics showing the rate of anorexia in London youth may be 10 times higher than the national average, a London centre is taking its message to younger pupils.

London Community Foundation has donated $8,000 to Hope’s Garden Eating Disorders Support and Resource Centre to expand its educational outreach, which includes elementary schools.

“The younger children are showing so many of the precursors to developing an eating disorder,” said Kathy Berg, the president of Hope’s Garden board of directors.

“If we’re going to do early identification and prevention work, we really have to go to the Grades 3 to 6 because that’s where these behaviours are starting.”
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