Yesterday evening, I found out what a bikini bridge is. I wasn’t seeking out this knowledge; I was reading the news and it popped out at me, unbidden. The trouble is, now I can’t ever un-know it (to give you a chance, I’m not linking to the piece in question). Bikini bridges will henceforth be stored in my brain alongside thigh gaps, muffin tops, bingo wings, cankles and a million other terms which exist solely to make women hate their bodies a great deal and their minds even more.
To be fair, I wouldn’t know about any of these phenomena if it wasn’t for all the hand-wringing articles which document how “everybody” (i.e. no one) is talking about them already. Indeed, there are few things more damaging to those who already have eating disorders than today’s ever-present eating disorder concern trolling. If journalists were not so “concerned” about anorexia and bulimia those of us with eating disorders could go back to creating our own arbitrary thinness tests without fretting over which of these now gets external endorsement. Not worried about the thigh gap? Well, you should be. Everybody else is! To someone with an eating disorder it starts to feel arrogant not to tick all the body paranoia boxes. After all, it’s not as though you’re someone special. On the contrary, you’re useless, a non-person. How could you possibly let yourself off the hook regarding thigh gaps when “everybody” – including the “normal” people – is panicking about them, too?
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