Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher is an amazing read. I (thankfully) have never struggled with an eating disorder, yet I found this memoir completely engrossing. This book has shown me how easily things could have been different had I made just one or two different decisions: Eating disorders are sneaky, long, dark, slippery slopes. Hornbacher very skillfully conveys that frightening message.I had always been of the opinion that anorexia and bulimia are bizarre, inexplicable behaviors. As you may know, I love me some food. After reading this, however, I can totally see how an intelligent, beautiful, and healthy young woman could just begin to inexplicably self-destruct. That's what makes Hornbacher such a brilliant writer; she makes you relate to her. She doesn't only tell you her story, she sheds light on the devastating social phenomena and helps you understands the psychological roots.
Here's an excerpt, courtesy of the publisher's website:
The bragging was the worst. I hear this in schools all over the country, in cafés and restaurants, in bars, on the Internet, for Pete's sake, on buses, on sidewalks: Women yammering about how little they eat. Oh, I'm Starving, I haven't eaten all day, I think I'll have a great big piece of lettuce, I'm not hungry, I don't like to eat in the morning (in the afternoon, in the evening, on Tuesdays, when my nails aren't painted, when my shin hurts, when it's raining, when it's sunny, on national holidays, after or before 2 A.M.). I heard it in the hospital, that terrible ironic whine from the chapped lips of women starving to death, But I'm not hun-greeee. To hear women tell it, we're never hungry. We live on little Ms. Pac-Man power pellets. Food makes us queasy, food makes us itchy, food is too messy, all I really like to eat is celery. To hear women tell it we're ethereal beings who eat with the greatest distaste, scraping scraps of food between our teeth with our upper lips curled.
For your edification, it's bullshit.
...We lived in a larger world where there is also a sense of hunger and of a lack. We can call it loss of religion, loss of the nuclear family, loss of community, but whatever it is, it has created a deep and insatiable hunger in our collective unconscious. Our perpetual search for something that will be big enough to fill us has led us to a strange idolatry of at once consumption and starvation.We execute "complicated vacillations...between self-worship and self-degradation," the pendulum swinging back and forth, missing the point of balance every time. We know we need, and so we acquire and acquire and eat and eat, past the point of bodily fullness, trying to sate a greater need. Ashamed of this, we turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how to not-need.
I'm fond of this memoir primarily for it's valuable social/feminist commentary. It's also a very effective cautionary tale. Hornbacher warns the reader that an eating disorder, like any other kind of addiction, is never something you can completely get over. And, for people like me who had never really spent a lot of time thinking about body image issues in the modern age, it's eye-opening.
Stay healthy and beautiful, girls.
