Carrying the Weight of an Eating Disorder
I started developing an eating disorder when I was twelve years old. At the time, I couldn’t identify it that way, but when I follow the bread crumbs backwards through my journey, it leads me there. At twelve, I entered puberty and all of a sudden I had boobs and hips and fat in places where there didn’t used to be fat. I also had acne. Bad acne. I felt very uncomfortable in my skin. Like a lot of preteen girls, I read magazines and idolized female performers. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t look like the women I saw on screen or plastered all over those glossy pages. They all had impossibly flat stomachs, flawless complexions and shiny straight hair. I had a newly formed ring of fat around my belly, a pimply face and frizzy hair that couldn’t be tamed by my thirty-dollar Conair straighter (thank god for the ceramic straighteners of today).
I’m a determined person and a problem solver. Being faced with what I considered to be a “problem” (which was actually just my body doing what is natural and healthy) I set out to solve it. I started restricting what and when I ate, and started running. (Not entirely problematic when taken at face value but concerning considering the motivations behind the behaviour). I needed control. To me, “fat” represented being out of control, gluttony, and laziness. It seemed like a straightforward fix. The acne, on the other hand, was stubborn. I tried everything; many different cleansers, toothpaste, lemon juice, the expensive three-step system of Pro Activ—I even debated getting a prescription for Accutane. Nothing worked. So, I decided to double-down on my body. I came up with a mantra that I would recite to myself whenever I was feeling a moment of weakness:
“If I can’t have beautiful skin, I will be beautifully thin.” Fucked up, right?
At sixteen, I decided to start taking birth control pills to treat my acne. The manipulation of my hormones cleared up my skin but also caused weight gain. For the remainder of grade school, my weight fluctuated and my need to control the situation grew stronger. It didn’t help that there was virtually no representation of body positivity in popular culture. I wanted to be an actor and naturally looked up to women in the industry. I struggled to see myself reflected in the beauty standards held by Hollywood. Eating disorders and body dysmorphia run in my family and, around this time, I started receiving unsolicited comments from family members about my body. If I dropped weight, it was recognized, sometimes before I had even recognized it myself. Losing weight became intrinsically associated with pride. Furthermore, if my family felt the need to comment on my weight loss then I really must have needed to slim down. I felt embarrassed and confused. Had I been overweight? I stopped trusting the way that I saw myself. I stopped trusting my body.
I moved to New York in 2009 to study acting and had a close friend there who also suffered from an eating disorder. She expressed to me, early on, that her plan was to have the perfect body when she graduated; that she didn’t want to disadvantage herself when she started auditioning. That made sense to me and I decided to do the same. I researched actresses who were the same height as me to see how much they weighed; the magic number seemed to be 105 pounds. So that was it, in order to be a successful actress or even worthy of auditioning, I needed to weigh 105 pounds. I began writing down everything I ate, meticulously keeping track of not only calories but calories that came from fat, protein and carbohydrates to try and get what the internet told me were the perfect ratios. I would go to the gym everyday after school and do hours of cardio. There were many nights I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I was so hungry but my calorie cap had been reached for the day so eating wasn’t an option. I would often skip out on social events for fear I would be tempted to eat or drink beyond my allowance. My caloric deficit got so high I started fainting in the shower in the morning but if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said I had an eating disorder. I wasn’t anorexic, I wasn’t bulimic, and that was the extent of my familiarity.
Despite all my efforts, I couldn’t reach my desired weight. It didn’t make sense; I was following all the “rules” I’d made for myself but the number wouldn’t budge. However, when I returned home for Christmas, I received an overwhelming amount of commentary about my body; people who hadn’t seen me for months telling me how thin I was. This made me happy, but again, confused. I knew I hadn’t lost very much weight— I didn’t have enough knowledge of nutrition and physiology to realize it’s not solely about the number on the scale. What I was convinced of was that I had to keep doing what I was doing, and then some.
When I entered the second year of my program, I hit a wall. I wasn’t where I thought I needed to be physically and therefore I wasn’t where I needed to be at all. My failure to achieve an actress’ body meant that I wasn’t serious about my career, I wasn’t working hard enough, I wasn’t talented and I didn’t deserve success. I was terrified and depressed and began binge eating. The brain does strange things when it’s captained by disordered thinking.
Food suddenly became both a weapon and a form of medication. I was addicted to soothing my anxiety and depression by eating mindlessly and compulsively. I would feel brief moments of relief and elation followed by prolonged shame, guilt and worthlessness. It was a never-ending cycle, literally feeding off of itself, that I didn’t know how to escape. By the time I graduated my prestigious acting program, I was heavier than I’d been when I entered and committed to achieving the perfect body. Along with my utter lack of confidence in my appearance, the school I went to provided very little guidance in how to navigate the real world and obtain acting work. I was completely lost and started exhibiting some pretty destructive behaviour. Attaching all of your worth to external validation and an arbitrary number makes it very difficult to value yourself.
My journey in the entertainment industry and my relationship to food and my body ebbed and flowed in the following years. I was constantly attempting new ways of eating and new forms of exercise. I would dread meeting with my agent for fear they’d comment on my weight or ask me questions like, “do you look good in a bikini?” When I did finally start booking work, wardrobe fittings became the bane of my existence. I have a petite frame but I also have curves and the wardrobe department would often get frustrated that certain outfits they’d pulled for me didn’t work. Moments like these would reinforce my belief that my body was a problem that I needed to apologize for.
The last rousing, inspired commitment I made to changing (aka controlling) my body was two years ago when, after a particularly calorie-filled Christmas, I decided to hire a personal trainer. I dished out thousands of dollars and thousands of hours and was really, actually, serious about it this time you guys! At the behest of my then-agent, I was planning on spending a couple months in Vancouver where he guaranteed he could get me seen by all the best casting directors for all the best shows. This move provided that extra boost of motivation, and a timeline, I needed to reach my goal. After three months of intense training and a strict eating schedule, I would look and feel my best and be ready to take on the west coast! It didn’t work. And neither did Vancouver. For the eight weeks and nearly all the savings I spent to go there, in the end, I had two auditions. Two. One of which I basically had to beg for. It was crushing.
By the summer of 2018 I was completely depleted financially, physically, and spiritually and maybe it was this all-around void that ignited a shift in me. I took stock of how I had been treating my body and soul for almost half of my life and it was pretty grim. I had gotten in the habit, since the age of twelve, of torturing myself, setting unrealistic goals, not reaching them, and then punishing myself… slowly chipping away at my self-worth. I had put so much energy and time towards controlling body, and for what? I had never gotten where I thought I needed to be. So I stopped. I stopped restricting what I ate and when I ate. I stopped setting unrealistic fitness goals. I stopped commenting on other people’s bodies, knowing the negative affect that even “positive” comments had on me. And most importantly, I stopped hating my body. It’s pretty magical what a little, genuine, self-love will do. Ever since making this shift, my career has been on the up and up.
A few months ago I sat down with a friend to watch a movie I was in. As as side note, I would like to say that this particular friend has been an incredible support system during this time of my life and I don’t know where I would be without her. This was the first time I was seeing any footage, and I was apprehensive about the movie and my appearance in it. I knew there were certain outfits that I hadn’t felt confident in and I wasn’t sure how I’d react to seeing myself in those scenes. When the movie was over, my friend asked how I felt and I was amazed at how unfazed I was. Yes, there were some unflattering outfits… but I wasn’t having a panic attack or spiralling into a vortex of punishment and shame.
In fact I was kind of proud. I considered that maybe a young girl would come across this movie and see me display some rolls and curves and think, I guess it’s okay to look that way. I like that thought. It gives me hope. Hope that if we represent and celebrate different body types in the entertainment industry it will have a ripple effect in society. Hope that young women won’t feel the need to torture and hurt their bodies to try and fit a mold. And hope that those who’ve experienced the same hatred towards their bodies that I have can make the shift to love.
Art courtesy of Emily Dickinson, Instagram: @emilydickinsonart
