Essay Pitch for Not Just “a White Girl’s Thing”

Originally published in 2009, this article is designed around opening your eyes to a world you may not have thought existed. This world is that of people other than the stereotypical white girl having eating disorders, and that those disorders usually result from body image issues. The article starts out with some incredibly powerful stories of girls who went to extreme lengths to either continue being skinny or to get skinny, at disgustingly young ages. The example that stood out to me was that of Sami Schalk, who has been “purging herself” after she ate since age 11. Imagine doing that yourself; going to the bathroom and purposely making yourself vomit everything you just ate as early as 5th grade.

I personally think that because of how powerful this article is, it is seriously worth giving it a read. It continues (past just the first page) to consistently quote other examples of real, living people who deal with these problems every day. However, although they were not the only ones being affected by it, white girls were the most publicized. Because white girls have more money, on average, to afford the proper care and treatment, they began drawing the most light on the issue of eating disorders and therefore went into the public’s eye. However, this drew many differing opinions on the girls who were coming forward and getting help.

The public began to view these girls as having “an addiction to perfection”, more so than girls who had a serious issue. This further grew into the idea that, because at the time only privileged girls who tended to be white were able to afford it, a disease like anorexia nervosa became something reserved for the rich and spoiled, the wealthiest of us all. Bordo does an excellent job of weaving in this horrible disease into something that almost sounds attractive, she makes it so that anorexia sounds like something you might want to have, to be privileged enough to have.

However, Susan Bordo later goes to point out that this is, in fact, exactly what society makes you believe and what actually most commonly causes anorexia. She also makes extreme efforts to explain that anorexia is not the only disease surrounding eating, it is one of few. She uses herself as an example to talk about how hard compulsive eating can be, in addition to using many more celebrities to back her up. Many famous celebrities, like Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, or Kate Moss, are all not afraid of their bodies and how they may not be as skinny as possible in every part of their bodies.

This essay is simply just well written and factual, nothing ever seems stretched or falsified, which is the scariest part of the whole essay. The statistics Bordo boasts and uses are seldom normal, which really drives home how important it is to read this essay and understand why eating disorders happen and why they can really affect people in ways you might not be able to normally imagine. I highly recommend it.