This week is Eating Disorders Week. Thirty years ago there was no such thing. We were ignorant. Anorexia was known as “the slimmer’s disease,” prompting images of someone who’d foolishly overdone it with the celery. We knew that Karen Carpenter had died of it, and that Lena Zavaroni would possibly follow suit (“silly girl,” my grandma muttered, disapproving of Lena’s oversized head and fragile body appearing on Blankety Blank).
We didn’t really know about bulimia (making yourself vomit was for the ancient Romans). We knew about fat – a Feminist Issue, no less – but we cared more about not being able to pinch more than an inch. Of course there were people suffering behind closed doors, and sometimes we knew this from the jutting bones, or the bite marks on the hand, or the leftovers that disappeared without a trace. Even so, the stigma that surrounded eating disorders was tremendous and sufferers were judged harshly – spoilt little girls, vain manipulators, failures who had either no self-control or far too much.
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