So, peer pressure
convinced me to get this. I think I may use it more as a rant space than for personal stuff. I like ranting about shit that pisses me off, even if no one listens. I’m sure I’ll look back on this in several years and be deathly embarrassed. Oh well. It passes the time.
First rant: Pink’s song “Stupid Girls”.
Overall, it is a very good song, telling girls to be as they please and not just a piece of meat for men to ogle, to be “girls with ambition” and not just a “stupid girl”. However, I don’t agree with the way she portrays those with eating disorders as self-absorbed bimbos with only three brain cells left from bleaching their hair.
Not every girl with an eating disorder is “only concern[ed] will they **** up my hair.” Some are, but many women with eating disorders are highly intelligent, perfectionistic people, such as Marya Hornbacher, the author of the the brilliant books Wasted and Madness: a Bipolar Life. In Wasted, she explained her eating disorder, not as a quest to get skinny, but as a skewed method of coping with life. Rachel Richardson, author of the blog the-f-word.org, currently works towards fat acceptance after herself recovering from anorexia and bulimia. These women are not “stupid girl[s]” just trying to be skinny and attract men.
White, middle-to-upper-class young women are not the only ones that get eating disorders, despite the stereotypes. Men also get eating disorders, as do women of all ethnicities. Eating disorders are seen as a woman’s disease, making men ashamed to get help, and less likely to be diagnosed, just as are women of color.
So please, don’t generalize about eating disorders and lump those with them into the category of “self-centered bimbos”, or just white suburban women. Eating disorders can affect anyone.
