Coming Out: With Credit to PhDiva

(deep breath)

Ok. Here goes.

In honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I am also coming out. From the time I was 8 years old until I was almost 24, I had an eating disorder. Like many girls and women, I switched back and forth between bulimia, anorexia nervosa, and EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). Eating disorders seem to be unique in their fluidity. Times where I thought I was "better" because I wasn't starving myself, I was still making incredibly unhealthy choices. I would go weeks without eating any real meals, and then eat something that I thought of as "off-limits." I would then punish myself by binge eating, forced vomiting, and compulsive exercising.

At my thinnest (a number that, now, is not important and is better left unstated), I was also the unhappiest. My freshman year of college, everything began to fall apart. I couldn't use the starve-binge-vomit pattern to soothe myself, because I was afraid of what would happen if somebody knew. Now, looking at pictures from that time, I can see what everyone else (hopefully) saw--a hollow-eyed, sad girl, trying to "fix" herself by becoming an unattainable, unrealistic ideal.

Though I haven't binged or vomited in seven years, it's still a struggle. Some of the things that have helped have been therapy, and being honest with myself and others. I spent quite a bit of time being appalled by the amount of energy women expend on disappearing. I got angry. (Really, really angry.) Then I started to speak out, which made me less angry. I started to think about what I want, and who I want to be, as well as who I am. And I challenge other women to do the same.

Today, things are better. I remember that my worth is not weighed in pounds, and health is not indicated by the number of calories in versus calories out. I remember that while images of skinny women in the media didn't make me hate my body, comparing myself to those images doesn't do anything to improve my life, or the world we live in. I remember that I have only this body, and this life, and ask myself if this is how I want to expend my energy. I remember that I am not alone in my struggle. I focus on making healthy choices for myself, rather than for some ideal...an ideal that doesn't actually fit me, after all.

Specializations

Recently, I've been hearing that I shouldn't worry about specialization in therapy until I'm actually licensed. (Which will be 2013, for those of you keeping track at home.) However, I know now that I DON'T want to specialized in CADC (chemical and alcohol dependency). Here's what I DO want to do:

- EMDR. Can't do this until I've got my preliminary license, though. (CSW, at least.)

- PREP training, especially Got Your Back and Strong Bonds. (Get to do this next week!!!)

- Play therapy certification (also needs licensure)

- FACE training--METT and SETT (I can actually do this now!)

- Narrative therapy

- Child Life specialist

- Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) and, eventually, Certified Multiple Addiction Therapist (CMAT)

- Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT)

The trouble with book series

I recently read two series of books by an author who wrote another series of books that I like. The first series that I read by her has only 4 books in it, and I enjoyed each one. The books have the same two characters throughout, and there's good plot pacing, dialogue, and characterization. I was really sorry to read the fourth book, especially when I learned that she didn't plan on writing any more in the series.

The second series that I read had 5 books. The first three were good, but the last two felt like a rush job. The plot was moving along, and then the ending just...happened. Now, I realize that writing probably has a learning curve, just like everything else, and this series ended long before she started her other two series.

So the question is, how long should authors hold on to a character? Some authors make their mark with one character and twenty-plus books, while others create dozens of characters. Is it more likely that a character will get "stale" and plot will suffer if the character appears in multiple books? In other words, is one's writing craft at risk just because one is using the same characters? Or is it more about the learning curve?

** Note: I'm not going to name the author, both because I don't think it's fair, and because this really could be about anyone. **

Hmmm...

I haven't blogged in over a year. What have I been doing?

* Started (and finished) my first year of grad school in social work.

* Started (and finished) my first therapist job, working in residential treatment with kids.

* ...and...it feels like not much else, actually.

I'm sure that I probably HAVE been doing more than going to school and going to work, but I can't think of it off the top of my head. What I can say is that, day to day, I really enjoy what I'm doing, and I think I'll be happy doing it professionally.

Hi, my name is Jenny, and I'm fat.

I am fat.

I'm not chubby. I'm not plump, zaftig, Rubenesque, full-figured, thick, a "woman of size," or anything else you might think of as a synonym for the three letter word FAT.

In our culture, it's generally frowned upon to be fat, much less to acknowledge it. After all, we live in a capitalist, consumer-driven society in which food is plentiful. In agricultural societies, or where food is scarce, fat is seen as a sign of wealth, of abundance. But the fact is, we don't live in those cultures.

I wish I could say that knowing that, I have made my peace with being fat. I have not. I hate being fat. I hate the way people stare at me--or don't. I hate that I think people are examining everything on my plate. I hate the Food Police, mostly because they only exist inside my head. I hate looking at pictures of myself and cringing. I hate that I "let myself" get to this weight without even realizing it. I hate having hope for a thinner tomorrow, yet it's so reassuring to think of the possibility that some day, I might not be fat.

I realize that the only person who can make me not fat is me, and I also realize that without making peace with my body, I will never be comfortable in it or happy with it, regardless of the number that appears on the scale. Realizing that and making it happen, however, are two different things.

What's the point anymore

When I tell people that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, and that I'd be happy to take their suggestions, they usually think I'm kidding. I'm not. Since I graduated from college seven years ago this May, I have done the following:

• Applied to PhD programs in sociology at University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota, and Loyola University Chicago. Got into Loyola. Maybe if I'd gone, I wouldn't feel like such a failure now.
• Spent a year substitute teaching, mostly lonely and alone.
• Applied to PhD programs in sociology at New York University, Boston College, University of Wisconsin, Portland State University, University of Chicago, University of Texas (Austin), Georgia State University, Arizona State University, and University of California-San Francisco. Got into Chicago's MA program; actually went.
• Got my MA, then worked in a small law office, mostly catching up on reading and boring myself to death.
• Applied to law school at Indiana University, University of Kentucky, University of Washington, Ohio State, Tulane, Georgetown, American, Northwestern, and Hamline. Got into Hamline, then discovered that it's a Tier 4 law school. Didn't want to go that badly.
• Went to work at a job I hated, with people I didn't like. But it paid well.
• Applied to the only PhD programs that accept mid-year applicants at Emory, University of Maryland, and University of Louisville. Got into U of L, am about to finish my second MA, this one in Women's and Gender Studies.
• Applied to only one PhD program for the 2009-10 school year, University of British Columbia. Got rejected.
• Applied for the Masters of Science in Social Work program at U of L. Will start Marriage and Family Therapy program in the summer.

I still feel like I've failed, because I've wanted a PhD for so long. (The law school thing was an ill-advised offroad adventure from that, I'll admit. Though I did like the law classes I took, and I liked the kinds of things I encountered at the law office where I worked, in hindsight it's a very good thing that I didn't get accepted to law school.) Doing the MSSW/MFT thing almost feels like settling, especially since what I really want to do is teach. (However, I don't know if that's actually what I want to do. It seems like something I'd want to do from the outside, but past experience has shown that what a job looks like from outside is usually pretty different from what it's actually like. I need a professor who will turn their class over to me for a semester. Then we'll see how I feel about it.)

So at what point do you give up on the dream? It's been seven years, and I'd estimate that I've spent close to $3000 applying for schools, not counting the sheer amount of work-hours I spent working on applications and the like. That's half a year's rent for a nice one bedroom in Louisville. Maybe I just don't have it in me. 

Maybe I'm not cut out to get a PhD. It's getting harder and harder for me to find professors who were willing to write letters of recommendation for me. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that's a bad sign. It doesn't mean that I can't go back later and get a PhD, but for now, all signs point to 'stop.'

WHAT? INSIDE VOICE?

While I was on a break at work today, I found myself suddenly missing England. This is weird, because I pretty much loathed every minute I lived there. I counted down the months, weeks, days until I got to go back home. (Sidebar: Within the past month, almost a dozen people have asked me where I'm from (or the variation, "Where's home?"). I find it difficult to answer this question, after moving around so much. Home is...wherever.) But what I miss about England is the people.

It's not that I dislike Americans, or subscribe to the idea that all Americans are ill-mannered and uncouth. There is, however, a big difference in the way Americans behave in public areas and the way the English behave in public. Some of it, I'm sure, has to do with the space available to Americans. There's simply not the amount of room available to the average Londoner that's available to the average person in Louisville. People in the Midwest take up more space, possibly because more is available to them. However, this doesn't quite explain the difference in volume.

The thing that I observed today is how LOUD American families tend to be. Rather than saying the child's name in a clear, audible voice, the American parent shouts across the room to the child. Whereas an English parent might expect the child to come over immediately, the American parent continues to deliver instructions or corrections LOUDLY and across the room. This could be a class thing, or perhaps I'm being overly critical of other people's parenting techniques. (As I tend to do, honestly.) 

But I'm inclined to believe that the difference is cultural, at least in part. My only evidence of this is that when American parents pull their children aside as English parents do, people start visibly. Their interactions are considered to be intense, and passers-by look at them the same way they look at people who smack their children in public.

Aside from parenting techniques, I miss England because when two people were talking to each other at a table in a London coffeeshop, I couldn't hear what they were saying. In comparison, I've learned way too much information about a great number of strangers, including the state of their bowels, their marital problems, etc. So, people of America, I ask you: Please use your inside voice.

This American Life

I have an addiction to "This American Life" on NPR.

At first, I was just a casual user. On Saturdays, I would be driving, and suddenly find myself listening to the melodic tones of Ira Glass. Soon, though, I started scheduling time to listen. Before I knew it, I was downloading podcasts every day and listening to them everywhere. It didn't matter where I was--in the car, before class, waiting at the doctor's office...I had to listen.

And now I find that I want to write my own segment for "This American Life."

The only thing is, where do I start? Should I start with some of my favorite episodes, like the one about how childhood misunderstandings carry over into adulthood? (Oooh, then I could tell my story about how I thought that fire trucks started fires.) Or about how "No One's Family Will Ever Change"? (Then I could talk about when I first realized that my family was a bit...unusual.)

Please, Ira. Call me.

Post Con update

After Comic Con, I've become aware of all the tv shows that I should be watching. Now, I know what you're saying...who needs to become addicted to more tv shows? Well, after going to panels, I've become aware that there are some amazing shows out there that I've been missing. Like "Weeds," for example, which we watched on the plane there and back. I don't get Showtime, so DVDs have been a fantastic option. So here's a list of other shows that I need to start watching:

1. Pushing Daisies

2. Saving Grace

3. The Closer

4. (Not out until 2009) Dollhouse

5. Mad Men

6. Breaking Bad

7. Chuck

Geek-tastic

We got back from Comic Con last night at about 10 pm, after having spent four days in geek heaven. We saw Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Frank Miller, and Zac Snyder, all in one panel, and I had my very own fangirl moment when I met Gail Simone. But that's not when the geek-o-rama started.

Technically, our geek fest started the previous sunday, when we went to see The Dark Knight (along with everyone else in the world). It's difficult to describe the experience of watching The Dark Knight, even when one is talking to someone who has already seen the movie. I've seen every Batman movie since 1989's Batman, and until the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale Batman Begins, I saw all of them with my father. Seeing as how I was 9 when the first Batman movie came out, I shouldn't have been shocked that people brought their kids to see The Dark Knight. And yet, because I knew that it closely followed Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, I also knew that The Dark Knight was not "suitable for children."* It's not that the movie is particularly violent--300 and other recent graphic novel-into movie projects have had considerably more violence. (Hey, The Dark Knight isn't even as violent as the trailer for The Punisher, but I'll cover that later.) What would make me reluctant to take a child to see The Dark Knight is that it is deeply psychologically disturbing.

And for some children, the psychologically disturbing nature of the film would bring up interesting and difficult questions--about the nature of heroism, about hero worship in itself, and about the nature of madness. Hopefully, the same questions were brought up for adults who saw it. (I almost believe this, just based on the number of people who've seen it multiple times.) 

This is why I read comic books. Because they're not just stories with pictures. They're not just for kids. (In fact, most of the authors that I adore--Frank Miller, Gail Simone, and Alan Moore, among others--are definitely not for children.) They're intense stories with cultural icons and archetypes, accompanied by illustrations that, outside of printed books, could be displayed as art work--if the stigma of being a "comic artist" didn't exist.

And this is why I loved going to Comic Con. It wasn't just the panels that we went to (which included Kevin Smith's "Zac and Miri Make A Porno," a panel that featured Frank Miller, Judd Apatow, Kevin Smith and Zac Snyder, "Battlestar Galactica," and "Doctor Who") or the people we saw (Jeff had his fanboy moment less than 2 feet from Ed Brubaker); it was the overall experience of the Con. People are committed to their love of the medium, and they're unabashed in their joy. More than that, everyone we met was genuinely nice. Despite the fact that there were over 200,000 people at the San Diego Convention Center and it was almost impossible to get anywhere without bumping into people or walking through groups of people, everyone apologized for bumping into one another and everyone was generally quite polite. Overall, Con attendees are awesome. 

And the Con rocked.

---

* Note: Because, after all, children are different from one another, what might be inappropriate for one child might be perfectly accessible for another. I'm generalizing here, of course. 

Knitting in public

I'm going to try to blog more, particularly about my knitting projects. Right now, I'm making a scarf for my sister out of bamboo yarn, a lovely grey blanket for myself, and seafoam green socks. The socks are not going too well--I got the ankle part done, but have come to a full stop at starting the heel. Not good. Everything else is going well, and the blanket will probably be done soon.

My biggest concern right now is not being able to take my knitting on the plane with me. Must look into that.

I think I like blogger better

I'm all but one week done with my first level of ASL. I've learned some new signs, and (more importantly) have had a lot of opportunities to practice. More than that, though, I've figured something out that I didn't know when I was an undergrad--what you do, how you behave in class, whether or not you show up prepared...all of it matters. Not just to you, but to your classmates as well. When you have a bad attitude, not only are you cheating yourself out of class, but your bad attitude affects everyone else.

I really don't think I knew this when I was an undergrad, and I'm certain that my attitude rubbed people the wrong way again and again. Sometimes I wish I could do it over again, knowing what I know now about personal responsibility and what one is supposed to get out of college. Maybe in a few years I'll have a better attitude about my college experience, too.

I haven't posted for over a year...

So I thought I'd drop a little rant.

Two weekends ago, I was at a knitting group and was "awwing" over someone's baby. I mentioned that my godson was a very, very quiet baby, and that was because later they discovered he was deaf. Her reply was, "Oh, that's terrible."

Why is that terrible? He happens to be deaf. (He's not culturally deaf, because both of his parents are hearing, and he's mainstreamed as much as possible, with him also being autistic.) I realize that this is wrapped up in the audism that is omnipresent in our culture, but, really, what's so bad about not hearing? He's well-adjusted, happy, and seems to be pretty much ok.

What is the central tenet of feminism?

"But it's hard not to wonder if those positions aren't just a beard, along with the term, "feminist," for the hard-core, misogynist agenda of the Vatican. The organization's no-exceptions anti-abortion position follows Catholic doctrine to the letter, a doctrine that has always demanded of women that they bear whatever burden men place upon them, and that they not soil the altar with the very bodiliness they represent by virtue of the means by which children are born."

(from the article "The Stealth 'Feminists' that Oppose Abortion")

Is a pro-choice stance necessary to calling oneself a feminist? Feminism is such a diverse collection of philosophies and beliefs that I don't think it's necessary to have any opinion about the right to obtain a legal abortion. There are so many things that (should) go into forming an opinion about abortion. For example:

• The fact that comprehensive sex education isn't being taught in schools, so at the beginning of their reproductive life spans, students are ill-informed about the alternatives to abortion. (Abstinence-only is the only sex ed that is funded and approved by the government, despite numerous studies that prove that unwanted pregnancy and abortion rates have risen since the abstinence-only was mandated.)
• Currently, abortion isn't available to all women because of financial and cultural restrictions. When you factor in lost pay, time off work, and/or daycare plus the cost of the procedure itself, abortion is cost-prohibitive for many of the nation's lowest income women. Additionally, most abortion clinics aren't prepared to deal with people from a non-English-speaking background, who are hearing-impaired or d/Deaf, or have other cultural particularities.
• The number of people seeking a child for adoption is far greater than the number of healthy white babies available for adoption. But the number of non-white babies and children over the age of two remains steadily high.

As a Catholic, I'm disheartened that "the last acceptable prejudice" is alive and well in the feminist community. Part of the anti-Catholic comments made in the article are based on the essential misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine. Say what you will, but the pro-life stance of the Church is at least consistent across all ages and circumstances. Yes, the Church asks women to carry the larger part of the burden when it comes to children, but "the bodiliness" of women isn't maligned. (In fact, if anything, the Church has strayed away from its Jewish roots, which really emphasized a woman's bodily uncleanliness. We don't have to have monthly mikvas any more, and there's no religious/cultural shunning of menstruation any more, either.)

One of the things that touches me most deeply about the Church is its long history of women's involvement. In the Church, I found a tradition of scholarship, of mysticism, of charity, and of ritual that filled in the missing pieces. I found a tradition where women were important to the life of the Church, as educators, as mothers, as mystics, and as saints. With the rich history of women in the Church, I can't believe that misogyny is as omnipresent in the Church as the article's author believes it is.

And for that, I am glad.

Rant: Fat and happy

Ack. Where to begin...

descriptions of the way fat people, although occupying a great deal of physical space, actually become 'invisible' - to the shop assistants who stare through them to the men who pretend you don't exist - made me realise that the best thing I ever did to lose weight and keep it off was to stop beating myself up about it.

This just in: fat people have super powers! An extra ten pounds gives you the ability to become invisible!

Being overweight affected every single day of my life. It isn't easy starting the day with a smile when all you can pull on is a pair of size 22 stretch black trousers and a T-shirt that could shelter a dozen earthquake victims.

In all seriousness, I blame the fashion industry for not providing acceptable clothing for women over a size 14. Everything "plus" sized is shapeless, flower-covered, black, or overly matronly. Or all of the above.

If I had my life to live all over again, I'd re-direct all the time and money that I spent dieting toward learning how to create fashion for fat women. That would have been a productive use of my time.

You feel wretched. When you displace all the water in the bath and no towel will wrap around you, you feel utterly exposed.

Here's an idea: Get a bigger bath towel! People come in all sizes and shapes. I personally love the giant bath sheets, because I can wrap them around myself like a cape. (See above, re: superpowers.)

I used to look in the bathroom mirror and despair. Never mind shaving or waxing my bikini line - I couldn't even see it. Try painting your toenails when you have three folds of stomach in the way.

Sounds like a flexibility problem, rather than a weight problem. I know some other people who can't paint their toenails or shave their bikini line (side note: didja ever think that the hair "down there" is natural and performs a necessary function?), and they'd love to be fat. They have degenerative neuromuscular diseases.

I'd lost the same four stone four times. I'd spent most of my 40s yo-yo dieting. At 15 stone 10lb, I thought I'd never beat it and would become a fat old lady. I was beginning to have aches and pains generally suffered by the overweight: niggling backaches, swollen ankles at night, breathlessness and high blood pressure.
Was I going to develop diabetes? Was I increasing my risk of cancer? Would I keel over from a heart attack or stroke? Was I going to die before my time?

It's the old "See?! FAT=DEATH!" arguement!

Actually, yo-yo dieting decreases your life span more than carrying around an extra 50 pounds does.

That's when I realised how important your body is; it's your life. You can't be a mother, wife or career woman if your body is compromised.

And your body isn't compromised by spending all this time obsessing about your weight? What about all the time you spend hating your body? What kind of example is that setting for your children?

I stopped beating myself up about my weight and resolved to take action.

(Here's where I had a moment of hopefull-ness that she would "take action" by actually [i]stopping[/i] the "beating herself up" bit. As my best friend once said, "These people, they give you a little flicker of hope, so you lean in...and it singes your eyebrows.")

Recently, I also took a health and weight-loss show on tour - to pass on my message to thousands of men and women who are concerned about their weight.

And that message is: Get surgically-induced anorexia! Live with protein and vitamin deficiencies for the rest of your life! Have your hair fall out! Experience "dumping"!

Part of me wants to say, "Well, it's your life. Have weight loss surgery if you feel that's the best choice for you. It may be, as long as you have all the facts." But most of me just looks at my aunt, who had a gastric bypass three years ago and has lost around eighty pounds. But she's gained other things, too: three more surgeries to correct "side effects" of the surgery (a hernia, gallbladder infection & necrosis, excess tissue), repeated severe bouts with depression, debt from medical expenses and missed work, and a host of other common aftereffects of weight loss surgery.

I wake up every morning and say, "I LOVE MY BODY." Some mornings I believe it a little more than other mornings. But I do it, because in this world, loving your body as it is is a truly revolutionary act.

What do I do with all the time in which I don't obsess and hate? Only time will tell what my revolution will bring about--in me, in my family, and in our world.

Rant: What is child abuse?

I'm disgusted by what is going on. Big Fat Blog, which I read regularly, is running a piece on another blog, purportedly written by doctors, that ridicules fat people, compares fat people to animals, and accuses parents of fat children of child abuse.

Where is the child abuse? Granted, feeding your child nothing but donuts and cheetos is neglectful--not because the food is "junk" food, but because it's not nutritionally sound. The thing is, people will gravitate toward their natural body types. This means that if your parents are muscular, large-framed people with the tendency to build muscle easily and gain weight in certain spots, you're never going to be Twiggy. We need to stop looking at weight from a willpower perspective and look at it from a genetic perspective, like height. And much like negative nutrition can negatively effect height, negative nutrition can negatively effect weight. Whether this means that the negative nutrition leads to emaciation or obesity depends--people can be horrifyingly thin with the same poor nutrition habits that fat people are supposedly all guilty of.

I'll tell you where the child abuse is. It's in putting a five year-old on a restricted calorie diet, attaching shame, guilt, feelings of inadequacy and of needing to "earn" food to an inanimate object that otherwise has no association. It's in teaching a child to hate his or her body. And comparing fat people to animals, referring to their "blubber" and expressing your disgust with what are simply vessels for human beings tells us all that in order to be accepted, in order to be loved, we must be thin.

A title

It's all coming together now. I have a title for my dissertation (the one that I haven't started, because I have not, as of yet, been admitted to a PhD program). The title will be:

Consumed: Internet Culture and Bodily Deviance

Thoughts?

Field research

One of the great things about being a social scientist is field research. One of my hobbies has always been people watching. I like going to Border's after church on Sunday, sitting outside with a cup of coffee and a magazine or book, and watching all the people go by. There's something reassuring about the infinite variety of bodies in the world, and I always see a kid or a dog who makes me smile.

Which is why it's no great surprise that I love field research. Because most of my research has been historical, I haven't had much of a chance to really perfect my field experience. There's a huge difference between "people watching" and doing real, heavy anthropological/sociological research.

With my doctoral thesis, I had planned on focusing on surveys and interviews. But today it occurred to me that I could do field research on the social perceptions of thin people. We've all seen the (obnoxious, in my opinion) pseudo-field research talk show bits where someone svelte like Tyra Banks puts on a fat suit and suddenly "understands" what it's like to be a fat person in a society that loathes fat people. But how do you do the reverse? And since that's so extreme, how do you do the reverse in extreme? They make fat suits, but they don't make deathly-ill suits. (There's some commentary right in that.) Surely "underweight" people are treated with the same presumption of deafness that "overweight" people experience.

Thoughts are welcome.

Preliminary survey design

The following is a rough idea of what I will ask in my survey. I'm trying to create a computer program that will create a database from the provided answers, as well as allow users to digitally "sign" their surveys. I welcome all feedback and ideas, either in formatting of the quiz or in questions asked.

Page 1: Adobe acrobat signature consent page
Page 2: Demographics:
• Gender
• Age
• Average household income
• Highest level of education personally achieved
• Highest level of education achieved by parent
• Metro area
• Citizenship
Page 3: Vitals—internet usage (in hours)
• How much time to you spend online?
• How much of this time is spent on eating disorder-related websites?
• What are your favorite eating disorder websites?
• Have you visited pro-ana/mia sites?
Page 4: Vitals: personal internet
• What do you use for inspiration?
• Which of the following are on your website?
o Stats
o Pictures of yourself at various weights
o Thinspiration
o Quotations
o Tickers
o Food diary
Page 5: Personal stats
• High weight
• Low weight
• Current weight
• Goal weight
• Goal reason
• Height
• Which of the following do you do?
Restrict
Vomit
Exercise
Laxatives
Medication (what kind?)
Pick certain foods
Fast
Add your own
Page 6: History
• Diagnosis
• Was this diagnosis rofessional or personal?
• What age did you start developing food issues?
• Why?
Teased
Wanted to look good for an event
Write your own
• Anyone else in your family with an ED?
• Seen a doctor?
• How long?
• Been hospitalized?
• Been in a group?
• In recovery?
• How long?
• Medical problems related to ED: osteoporosis, hair loss, stomach problems, heart palpitations, etc.
Page 7A: Pro-ana/mia
• Number of visits in past week
• In past month?
• What have you learned: restricting, covering, exercising?
• What do you think the purpose is?
• If in therapy, does your therapist know about your web visits?
• Volunteer for phone interview?
Page 7 B: Pro-recovery
• Number of visits in past week
• In past month?
• What do you think the purpose is?
• If in therapy, does your therapist know about your web visits?
• Volunteer for phone interview?

Statement of purpose: I want to finish my damn PhD

Within the past decade, popular media has begun to pay attention to the websites of young men and women with eating disorders. One of the most sensational type of these websites is the pro-anorexia or pro-bulimia (“pro-ana” and “pro-mia,” respectively) site. These sites function to either encourage those with eating disorders to continue to starve themselves, or they function to tout anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa not as diseases, but as lifestyle choices. Traditionally, eating disorders are the territory of psychologists. Psychologists studying eating disorders focus on the environment in which the disorder develops and exists, but this usually refers to the nuclear family or the visual media that they contend spawns this bodily deviance. I plan to use symbolic interaction to study anorexia and bulimia in a sociological context, first examining how one becomes diagnosed with an eating disorder, then to examine the recovery movement within eating disorders.

From there, I plan to examine how communities of those with eating disorders function, particularly in the use of electronic media. While media studies and journalism have examined the impact of general media on the wider community, I am particularly concerned with recovery and pro-ana/mia websites, web logs/online diaries, and message boards and how they function to help or hinder recovery. In order to assess how these web groups function, I will invite people who have eating disorder websites (either pro-anorexia/bulimia or pro-recovery) to complete an online self-assessment of their eating behaviors, onset of behavior, time spent online visiting other pro-anorexia/bulimia or pro-recovery sites, and other questions to assess how they think the online community has impacted their eating disorder. I will offer an option to complete a further interview via telephone, for further assessment.

In my MA thesis, which focused on eugenics decisions in the US from 1880 to 1920, I argued that shifting social mores created an environment where a woman’s deviant behavior of any kind could have her labeled as incompetent and sterilized against her will. I used symbolic interaction, labeling theory, and social psychology to explain that sterilization was a punishment meted out by parents to control their daughter’s bodily deviance. While that project focused on deviance of a sexual nature, my proposed dissertation project will focus on extreme weight control as a form of bodily deviance, and the pro-recovery and pro-eating disorder communities as filters through which this deviance is processed.

I am especially interested in this subject area because of my experience with eating disorders, both personally and professionally. While an undergraduate at Purdue University, I assisted in writing a handbook about eating disorders that was targeted toward the gay and lesbian community.

The University of Maryland appeals to me because of the work of Professor Melissa Milkie on pervasive beauty images and their effect on girls, and Professor John Robinson’s work on the social implications of the internet.