As I was heading to lunch one day during O-week earlier this year, one of the first years asked if there were any problems with anorexic girls in the res. From what I understood, she was asking whether there were girls who would shame others about what they eat or whether girls would compete with each other to see who could eat the least. Naturally I told her no. But as the year progressed, I began to realise that I may be wrong.
Perhaps it's inevitable in an all-girls dining hall, but I've begun to notice disturbing trends. Girls comment about missing meals and losing weight as if it's a normal occurrence; the concept of "first year spread" is thrown about as both a joke and something to fear. I know that when I first came into res I lost weight. This was partly because I didn't really like the food, partly because I didn't know how to change my meals and partly because I was convinced that I would not get fat (then I discovered the fast food meals and quickly became rather chunky).
One night last year I didn't like the meal I'd booked and took one of the leftover rolls. I was still hungry, so I took another one. The girl who had been sitting next to me came back from making tea and the conversation went something like this...
Her: "What's that?"
Me: "A roll. There's a few leftover from lunch."
Her: "What happened to the other one?"
Me: "Um...I ate it?" (thinking: what does she think I was planning on doing with it?)
Her: (horrified) "So you're having a second one??"
Me: "...yes."
She promptly raised her eyebrows, laughed and turned away. I was tempted to point out that a) I'd missed lunch and b) she couldn't really laugh because my stomach was way flatter than hers, but I realised that that would mean I'd allowed her to get to me. So I ate my roll quietly and then spent the rest of the night wondering whether I should have or not.
But in the end, I was hungry so I ate the damn roll. And you know what? I'm glad that I did. But we need to learn that mindless comments like that can have a greater effect than we expect. And I'm not only talking about girls; guys are equally - if not more - guilty of making such comments. Call a girl an "oompa-loompa" and she may end up hospitalised two years later for anorexia. Maybe you meant that she was short, or wearing orange clothes, but she took it differently. Tell a girl that you're not attracted to her and you could find that she starts dieting, exercising and blogging excessively on Tumblr about weight loss and food. Maybe you meant you were not interested in girls at all, but she doesn't necessarily know that.
It's far too easy to look at someone else and assume that you're better than them just because you ordered the health meal and they're eating a pizza, or to comment because someone ate a second piece of buttered toast. But at the end of the day, it's their body and they can do what they like with it. I eat perhaps one or two fast food meals a week, I rarely exercise (except for the occasional game of squash), I have a wide butt and heavy legs and an increasingly wobbly stomach. But you know what? I like to think that there are more important things in life for me to focus on than trying to achieve the look of the airbrushed models in Glamour and Cosmopolitan (for the record, I love both magazines). Come on girls, join the body revolution. Learn to love yourself as you are :) if you want to diet and exercise because you feel unhealthy, go for it! But don't start starving yourselves and obsessing about having your hipbones stick out just because some idiot took it upon him/herself to comment on your appearance or eating habits. Stand up for yourself. Tell the world that you like who you are. And eat that extra roll if you want it. :)
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