Keira Knightley and Anorexic Witchhunts
Actress Keira Knightly continually denies that she suffers from Anorexia. She even went so far as suing a British tabloid paper in January.
This brings to light the issue of stigma based on body size and how a "too-thin" body brings on accusations of anorexia.
Recently I was reading through the excellent Health at Every Size program - however the term every size is slightly misleading as it focuses on the overweight or obese.
There are many naturally ectomorphic people in society. One could also argue that as average body weight has increased, our perception of "normal" body weight may also have changed.
Discrimination against the obese is prevalent. Yet it also seems acceptable to pick on very thin people. How many times do thin women get called skinny bitches?
Most popular magazines have regular columns that focus on the size of a celebrity - and whether or not [insert celebrity name here] has an eating disorder. The subject is immensely interesting to thousands.
But how does that knowledge affect you? Does it make you feel better about yourself if you can point the finger and diagnose someone's mental illness?
Fat people can be unhealthy and so can thin people. Fat people can be unhappy and so can thin people.
Pursue health, pursue happiness, but don't let size be your sole measure of such pursuits.
As a wise man once said "Do not judge, or you too will be judged".
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Amen!
ReplyI try to avoid calling anyone anorexic. It is not a synonym for "underweight". However, Keira Knightley appears to me to be very underweight. I'm not going to speculate what made her underweight, but she is.
ReplyGood post.
Brian
ReplyThe Health at Every Size program is excellent, thanks! I hope that they gain some traction; adopting that policy would be such a great step in the right direction.
Picking on skinny people is much rarer than picking on the obese, and, like the case with Knightley, is often in reaction to obesity demonizing.
Sherrie's posting on Obesity as Entertainment was the scariest one to me this morning. Is the next group of children from well-off parents going to be underweight and undervaccinated? Yikes!
ReplyIf it is the MMR vaccine, I don't think them being undervaccinated is such a bad idea. I'd rather a child of mine has the measles. Call me paranoid.
ReplyWe used to write, " UCHD $ Seq." (Usual childhood diseases without sequelae) on most patient's admission work ups. I've wondered if, like playing in dirt, there are some advantages in having those childhood illnesses.
ReplyI agree, Dr. J. Not only as a boost to the immune system, but I find it appalling that mercury is used as part of vaccines. I have nothing against vaccines in principle, but the same medicine that tells us that if we break a thermometer in the house we are all at risk for serious diseases because of mercury exposure sees nothing wrong with having it injected in infants. Hmmm....
ReplyI don't see the "playing in dirt" contrast - a vaccine causes the creation of antibodies, which is what the playing in dirt theory argues. You'd have to argue that having a full-blown version of the disease is better than having just the antibodies created.
ReplyMercury is a preservative so they don't need refrigeration.
Replyhttp://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=3532c646-f556-400a-8aa3-2ae576519b8d&k=19044
ReplyHere is the study I saw on 'dirt.'
I'm a bit in the dark about the vaccine issue, so I'm going back to anorexia.
Anyway, I thought this post was quite thought provoking--I realize I have a sort of unconscious judgment when I see women who look very underweight. If they are thin to the point of apparent danger to their health, I realize I sort of say to myself "tsk, tsk" and assume they could be a normal weight if they wanted to. I tend to blame misplaced vanity or mental illness, but without really putting much thought to it.
Hadn't really realized how little I know about the whole issue and how I should perhaps either educate myself more or stop making snap judgments.
This is a great site, by the way, just wandered in. Unusually smart crowd.
ReplyI saw one of the articles on Keira in a magazine here in the UK accusing her of being anorexic. She looked absolutely fabulous to me.
Low body fat but good muscle tone.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story eh :-)
ReplyMercury is in thimerosal, which is an antimicrobial. Many vaccines don't use it anymore. Thimerosal metabolizes to ethylmercury, which is not the same as the much more scary methylmercury one gets from foods like tuna. The FDA has a page on thimerosal that includes citations to some of the worrysome research on infant exposure.
Sorry for dragging this into vaccinations! My point - clumsily made - was that parents, for all sorts of good parent reasons influenced by popular culture - can make decisions that hurt their children's lives. When reading Sherrie's posting, I thought "Oh my God! It's another parent trap!" I should've avoided the comparison.
ReplyI'd give a child the DT first cause it is an actual serious condition, and second cause the preservative used in it does not contain any mercury, since it is administered orally. But that is the only vaccine I'd give, none other.
Tetanus, if the child has exposure through a cut, sure. Just for "prevention", no. I would probably not bother with hepatitis either.
While there are thimerosal-free vaccines, I still wouldn't give a measles vaccine that didn't contain thimerosal. The autism link is powerful - while there is no "children who get the vaccine become autistic" link, there are high amounts of the measles virus, in the vaccine form, found in the gut of 98% of autistic children, which would indicate they had a reaction to the vaccine that was more substantial than other children.
My best friend's little boy is autistic. He was completely normal until 2 months after the MMT vaccine. It may be anedoctal, but there are so many parents saying the same things, they had kids who had vocabularies of around 1,000 words that suddenly stop talking and just stare into the sky. They say 1 is isolated, 2 is a coincidence, and 3 is a trend, right? I wouldn't want to risk it.
Anyway, I completely agree with your point though. It seems one of the latest fads is "dairy is bad for you", and yet I don't see these parents on the anti-dairy bandwagon giving their kids calcium supplementation. So expect a lot more kids with brittle bones.
ReplyBack to the anorexia witchhunt thing...I'm a distance runner and I'm very lean and thin. But I do eat and I'm not anorexic. I HATE it when people tell me: "You need to gain some weight!" or "You need to get some fat so you can have kids" (right now, I'm not exactly ready to have kids, so they need to butt out). I don't go up to fat people and say "You know, your back pain would go away if you'd drop a few". Yet it's perfectly OK for someone to tell me "You know, if you gain weight, your hair would be a lot thicker and nicer" or whatever. People are so rude sometimes.
Besides, real anorexia patients don't usually go around showing people their bodies...lots of times they wear clothes that hide their body or keep them warm. Many times, you won't be able to tell that they are very skinny.
ReplyFINALLY...someone has brought up a point which I have been trying to get across to people for a very long time. Weight discrimination goes both ways, not only for the "overweight" but also for the "underweight." I have a friend who falls in the catagory of "overweight" by typical cultural standards, and she does get picked on occasionally and has a hard time shopping for clothing. People judge her by how she looks. I am what people would call very skinny, and about once every couple of weeks or more I am criticized for my appearance, sometimes from people I don't even know. I've been called a bean pole, a skeleton, and a stick that might break in half in the wind. I've gotten strange glances and have been confronted by family members who tell me to but some meat on my bones. I have a hard time shopping for pants and most people probably think I'm unhealthy and anorexic. But I'm not. I eat three meals a day, and some snacks in between. No, I don't eat a lot compared to most people, because I don't get a lot of pleasure from eating and I get full easily. I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am not hungry. I try not to let myself fall below a certain weight, but in order to gain I have to make myself miserable feel stuffed all the time. I love my body and myself, and I don't think that I, or my friend, should have to suffer from weight discrimination. Neither of us are "troubled" or depressed, we're just living life. I just want people to know that us "skinny bitches" or "skeletors" can be healthy too, just like the "fatties" out there. The extremes on the weight spectrum can be acceptable.
Replyhey i got a question! How come, when you don't eat, fot a long time, like anorexia, why do your eyes get purple and look sick? My skin gets pale, and my eyes turn purple, and i look nasty. Why is this?
ReplyEssentially, you're half dead or dying. You're not providing your body with what it needs to live well/fully, so your body will cut corners whereever it can so you don't die. I don't like your habit of starving yourself, but if you're going to severely restrict calories, you need to make sure you get the most out of every calorie. My suggestion would be to limit yourself to eggs and green leafy vegetables. Don't bother with starch, fruit, or other significant carb sources; you don't build tissue from carbs. Also, eliminating carbs will keep your fat weight down, which is apparently critical to you.
ReplyMarie, you are not really fat, or fat at all. I know, just saying it once again.
ReplyI tend to look at the hair to see if someone's anorexic or not. When I was anorexic, my hair and skin were disgusting. Also, the lips for bulimia- mine started to pull back when I was continuously purging. And these aren't things that can be faked with makeup or hair products. (Like, I personally think that both of the Olsens have some sort of eating disorder because of their sunken eyes and dry skin- but I'm not medically qualified- yet- to make that assumption.)
Also, you don't have to be extremely skinny to have an eating disorder. I know people who had BMIs of 29, but were living on one cup of coffee a day.
ReplyPlease don't starve yourself, Marie. I'm three inches shorter than you are and the same weight, gone through the same things, and learned to love my curves. :( If you need help, you can always talk to me, because I've been there/done that/read the book/seen the movie.
ReplyHey thin ladies I hear you especially the runner. Picking on thin people is NOT rare. I get picked on and told I'm anorexic all the time. In the US thin people are a minority. I eat 2200 calories a day, because I run, kickbox, and lift weights. I'm also very tall Starting in my late twenties I added weight lifting to my workouts which made me a lot leaner and started the rampage of harrasment by nonathletic women. I'm at a healthy weight for my height, and have a healthy BMI and yet I always get mean spirited comments from women all the time, and women I've never met will stare at me and look me up and down. The funny thing is why don't thin men get the harrassement that thin women do? You don't see Adrein Brody on the cover of people with a "concerned" headline? It's because being thin is desired by women, but not men. The number one killer in the US in heart disease being overweight is one of the main risk factors. If people were genuinely concerned about other people regarding weight, they would harrass overweight people. I personally don't say things to people about weight. People know there size and nobody is perfect.
Replyreally so i can be as fat as i am and still have an eating disorder? I can be border line anorexic if i weigh as much as i do, and eat all the time? What was your lowest weight? How much did you lose? Where you hospitalized? How did you recover? ANGIE.
ReplyKeira Knightley: 'Anorexia Runs in My Family' - Skinny actress slams eating disorder rumors.
'The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' promotion tour moved to Europe and, on its premiere in London, the 21-year-old beauty wowed everyone by choosing to wear an extremely revealing Gucci dress that exposed most of the upper part of her body. She spent most of the time keeping a close eye on thre dress, so as to avoid any wardrobe malfunction or boobie-revealing incident.
While critics immediately jumped on the occasion and declared her a 'sweaty disco crack ho', most of her fans were enchanted by her almost too-slim-figure and grace. Yet, they couldn't help themselves from wondering if the raising star isn't suffering from the Hollywood-esque typical disease, anorexia.
During the press conference held after the premiere, Keira answered all the questions patiently, including those related to her so-called eating disorder. She told the reporters that, despite the fact that anorexia is almost a family trait and that her grandmother and great-grandmother suffered from it, she personally has no such problems.
The actress added that she feels good to be so skinny and that, were she an anorexic, she would have been the first to know, as she is very familiar to the disorder's effects and consequences.
Further on, Keira told the British public that she has no regrets for wearing the revealing dress, even if it caused such bad reactions from everybody. 'I'm still thinking it was rather inappropriate to wear this dress, but it's so hot I'm really glad I did', said the 'Pirates' star, thus silencing all commentaries.
ReplyAnorexic's hate their bodies, she seems fine
ReplyMarie, keep in mind she is an actress, aka, she gets paid to pretend to be things she isn't, which would make her more qualified than a regular person at appearing to love her body, if she wished to do so.
ReplyOne of my best friends is only one inch shorter than me, I'm 5 ft even. She is very small framed, built much like a child, shops in childrens for most everthing, including shoes-she wears a size 3. On a good day she weighs around 85 lbs. She eats junk food, eats normal amounts of food, and is vocal in her desire to gain weight. The heaviest she's ever been is when she was pregnant- over 100 lbs. She wishes she could be that weight all the time. I have heard people accuse her of not eating, asking her if she thinks they could break her in two.
ReplyI in contrast am larger framed, heavy muscled, and convinced I would die if I tried to weigh less than 100 lbs, and would't look right either. I was happiest with my body when I weighed 125, which according to medical charts is about 20 lbs overweight for me.
Yes, there are some celebrities out there that do deserve the questioning of whether or not they are anorexic. I've seen many young actress start out looking healthy and curvy, to only join the skeletal trend.
Should any be picked on because of their apperance? A big fat NO! Fat or skinny, short or tall, pretty or ugly, skin color- we are all humans.
We can't all be the same weight. Women will always be naturally different weights and sizes. Even two women the same height and weight can look completely different depending on their bone structure and how they carry their weight. I don't think any women has the right to judge another as to wheather they are unhealthy or not. I am a 27 year old very petite female 5'1 and weigh only 85 lbs. Now what is so wrong about being 85 lbs. if I look and feel healthy and nothing is wrong with me, confirmed by my doctor. I have always been this way. Genetics. I would like to gain some weight but if you saw me you wouldn't guess that I weigh only 85 pounds. I have suffered thouh all my life with constant comments about my appearence and you know what? I am not taking it anymore. If someone says something to me about my weight I give it right back to them. I love Keira Knightly. Maybe she is not underweight at all. Maybe that is her natural body weight. Why is everyone so concerned with everyone else's weight. We are all insecure is my guess and calling someone fat or anorexic makes everyone feel better. It is a shame we have to make other women feel bad to make our selves feel better.
Replyheres what i usually eat in a day (or what i ate today)
breakfast:
1 cup of cheerios and 1/2 cup of milk
1 banana bread muffin
Mid morning snack:
bowl of jello with pears in syrup
Lunch:
1 cup of 2% milk
a uncrustable peanut butter sandwich
1 can of chicken noodle and rice soup
Supper:
a small bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce from Fazoli's
2 Fazoli's bread sticks
1 cup of 2% milk
Bed time snack
1 twist cone from McDonalds
NOW after reading this...would you except the person to be writing this to only weigh 88 lbs and be 5'5"?
Probably not.
ReplyKeira Knightley might be underweight which probably isnt healthy but that does not make her annorexic. all im trying to say is some people are naturally thin. and the truth is it actually kinda sucks. i know eating that much in a day is more than some of my friends that are at normal weights eat but yet i have to deal with being called anorexic constantly. people see me eat but they assume just cuz i am boney and thin im annorexic.
but do you think eating that in a day is annorexic?^
A kid yelled out a bus window at me the other day-the last day of school- "Are you annorexic?"
do me a favor and dont be like that kid.
Dont judge.
im currently 5'5" and weigh 88 lbs...here's what i ate today...any ideas on how i could "improve" this without going too overboard and being unhealthy (this is usually what my diet consists of at minimum)
Breakfast:
2 servings of Fruity Cheerios with milk
a Banana N Oats Muffin Bar
Lunch:
Grilled chicken Snack Wrap w/o dressing from McDonalds
Fruit N Walnut Salad (no walnuts)
Large Vanilla Ice Cream Cone
Milk Jug
Supper:
2 Serv. spaghetti with Parmsean cheese
Half a french toast Bagel with about 1 tsp of Peanut Butter
bowl of watermelon
peanut butter chip brownie
cup of milk 2%
Bedtime Snack
Large Apple
is it bad to only weigh 88lbs at 5'5" and eat that amount of food as a minimum each day? ^ i need advice!
Replywhy don't ya go to the doctor? they could give you a diet plan that would help you get to either a higher weight, or help you maintain your weight
ReplyHow old are you Em? If you are very young then you just need to not worry about your weight. But since I am an adult (27 yrs.old) and am still so skinny...I went to a doctor and had all kinds of tests run to make sure I don't have any medical conditions and all the tests came back normal. So at 85 lbs. I don't worry about trying to gain weight...I just eat very healthy and make sure I am eating a lot of food. I am very small framed and short and so are my parents and I am not Asian. I am a caucasion, so I get a lot of grief from people cause I guess most people don't think caucasions come that petite like me. I don't think it is healthy to force your body to either gain weight or lose extreme weight that is not natural to your body type.
ReplyIf you are still young then you will get to your natural weight when you get older.
If you don't feel well or are concerned that you have a weight problem...then see a doctor.
Marie is right. But for starters:
5 small meals a day (so yeah, you need snacks). 5 servings of fruit and veg a day (better yet, make it 5 servings of veg + 2 of fruit). 2-3 servings of dairy a day (that one you actually met there). 2-3 servings of protein (you have about 1 serving spread out there, with the chiken and the peanut butter). 3 servings of fat. 5 servings of carb a day.
ReplyI got a question. Please answer it someone.
I am borderline anorexia. I am fat though. K. Am i also borderline bulimic? I wonder this because i do binge sometiems, i "puge" by riding my bike a long ways. I don't actually throw up, but i gag myself every night, and spit up snot, and NOTHING ELSE. Does this signal bulima? What's going on? Someone please tell me?
ReplyJane, I read your comment and I had to answer you. I've been anorexic/bulimic for about 6 years now. I was anorexic first. I'm 5'7" and at my worst point weighted only 80 pounds. I ate 220 calories a day for over 2 years and was afraid to eat anything that was not on my "safe" food list. When i first went into recovery and started gaining weight I panicked and tried to purge by vomiting. Initially I wasn't very good at it and often couldn't get anything up. The fact that you have attempted this behaviour is a sign that you are in serious danger of developing an eating disorder. Another common behavior among bulimics that a lot of people don't realize is excessive exercise. Exercise bulimia is when a person binge eats and then attempts to compensate for the excess food by exercising excessively. I would define excessive as more than 2 hours a day, while ignoring injuries or illness, and feeling guilty, ashamed, panicky when you are unable to exercise.
ReplySomething else to think about: while a diagnosis of anorexia technically requires a bmi of 17.5 so that a person is significantly below their normal body weight, people with anorexic behavior and thought patterns are often diagnosed with EDNOS, or Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Once their weight level becomes low enough they would officially be diagnosed with anorexia.
This is not a fun disease at all. It is NEVER worth it. So if you are still struggling please talk to someone about it. Just because you haven't progressed to full blown anorexia or bulimia doesn't mean you have to wait to get help. I did, and I wish I hadn't...
k i will stop thanx it hurts anyway
ReplyMia_Para_me
what if you just ate something, and then stick your finger down your thoat, and then spit up snotty stuff that has some food in it? I am scared. How am i soupposted to tell someone?
Replythis is ridiculous. I have no doubt in my mind the kiera is natural skinny. But right now she does not look naturally skinny, she looks sick. Our culture tells us women and girls to try and "Be" pretty rather than "do" something. I'm sick of this. and I am sick of people with eating disorders being glorified. You aren't attractive keira,you have a beautiful face,maybe if you concentrated on your inside rather than your outside, you would be comfortable enough with yourself to eat.
ReplyAnd em. just the fact that you care that much to record how many cups of cereal in a day you eat is worrisome. why not try and work on something outside of yourself and quit being so narcissistic. there are bigger things in this life than your body shape. get over it.
Reply