Eating Disorder ProAna Blogger Focused on Body Image and Self Esteem

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Andre’a sent me this video and asked me to post it. After watching it, it is my pleasure to post it. I post this with a message of hope and prayer to all of you reading my blog.

I wish for you happiness, self confidence, and freedom from self hatred.

I wish for you glimpses of hope in your daily life that give you the energy to believe a better life awaits you.

I wish for you adults that have their heads screwed on straight, capable of guiding you down a path of self confidence and respect for your body.

I wish for you friends that surround you, encourage you, and never judge you.

Even if my wishes do not come true, you will make it. You are going to make it. This ED hell is going to pass, and you are going to live the life you were meant to. As horrific as all of this is, I truly believe it is happening for a reason. That reason alludes you now, but someday it will be clear.

As clear as it became to me when I started writing this blog 20 years after my struggles had past. The day I wrote my first post was the day I understood why I suffered so much to get to this place.

Love,

mamaV

XOXO

I received an email from the producer of Oprah’s long awaited new show “Addicted To Food.” Below is the episode in full, please watch it and post your feedback. I’ll admit, I have mixed feelings — I liked it more than I thought I would. More thoughts below the video.

PROS:

1. I liked the way the show was shot, it seemed genuine, real — and as “non-exploitive” as possible.  I am thinking some of you will feel the bulimic and/or eating scenes were not necessary, but I would disagree because the realness of it added to true sickness of the disease(s).
2. The show successfully captured the deep, dark, sadness individuals with an eating disorder suffer with — alone, day after day and often year after year.
3. The philosophy that all eating disorders are at the core the same issue, I agree with and the atmosphere of placing individuals with all different disorders is different than I am accustomed to (ie anorexic and bulimics treated together, separate from compulsive overeaters for example).

CONS:

1. Individuals featured in the show may experience regret from “going  public” with their healing process.
2. Can one really be themselves with a camera in their face? If it was me — not a chance. I think it would hinder me a great deal.

Still pondering this….

The mother of Isabelle Caro, the anorexic French model who died last year, has committed suicide according to Daily Mail. Read the full story about Isabelle here.

‘[Marie] felt guilty for having put my daughter in the Bichat Hospital. My daughter did not want to go to that hospital,’ Isabelle’s step-father Christian told Swiss newspaper 20 Minutes.

In 2008 Isabelle released an autobiography called The Little Girl Who Didn’t Want to Get Fat in which she wrote that her mother appeared to resent her growing up.

What a horribly sad story. There really is not much else to say is there?

mV

XOXO

Portia DeRossi and Ellen DeGeneres

So what do you guys think about the latest two Hollywood stars to come out of about their eating disorders? Does this help you, hurt you, or do you not give a rip?

Portia De Rossi was on Oprah earlier this week talking about anorexia and recovery to promote her new book ‘Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain.’. De Rossi shared how she exercised to work off the calories from a pack of gum by running around in a parking lot (been there, done that, except I did the stairs at my apartment) and revealing that at one time she weighed 82 pounds standing 5’8. Osteoporoses, cirrhosis, organ failure and the auto-immune disease lupus were the diseases that were a result of her eating disorder. She is now happily married to Ellen Degeneres and credits her recovery to the love and acceptance they share for one another.

This morning I read about Demi Lovato, one of my 10 year old daughters favorites. In case you don’t know her, she was the star of Camp Rock and later landed her own Disney sitcom “Sunny with a Chance.” Lovato just announced she will take a break from touring with the Jonas Brothers to enter treatment for her eating disorder which she says stems from being bullied. The video below shows Lovato talking about her experience, which shows that even being part of the popular crowd doesn’t make you immune from bullying.

How do you feel when you read about these stories?

Do they matter? Does it make you feel less alone?

Or are these people totally irrelevant?

If I had to guess, we are going to have a mixed response on this one. There tends to be those who say their ED has nothing do with Hollywood or anything else, its purely their own control, perfectionism, personal issue. Then there are those who are VERY influenced by the media, Hollywood and fashion (hello pro anas!) who have succumbed to the pressure to try to measure up to weight and beauty standards.

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Knowledge is power.

I support the National Eating Disorder Association, and if you are looking for help NOW they have an awesome ANONYMOUS helpline your can call to chat with someone who gets it.

What do you have to lose?

Just call ‘em will ya?!

Love,

mamaV

XOXO

PS Life is MUCH better on the other side.

I often wonder just how many people think I’m a bitch. A bitch because I know what I want, I know how I feel, and I don’t let people treat me like crap.

How about you?

My guess is you let people walk all over you. You spend your day worried about what everyone else thinks about you fretting around asking yourself “do they like me? Am I good enough? Am I thin enough? Am I pretty enough?”

To hell with it already. I mean seriously girls, is it working?

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See the FaceBook Group here! We are up to 1,200 members!

Time for a Wild-Ass-Guess on who is this sad creature on the left? Not to mention the obviously strained, uncomfortable reporter on the right.

Ok, a few hints:

1) Blondie claims to have the same talent as the King of Pop, with her debut album ready to hit the stores, ironically titled “Superficial” (you can’t make this shit up people!)

2) “Double D is not large enough,” is the message she wishes to send to all the young hopefuls out there. (Note taken bimbo queen).

3) Demented in her Christian faith, she chalks up her 10+ plastic surgeries (IN ONE DAY) as happening in “gods time” (what exactly are you smokin’ and can I have some?”

Still can’t guess huh?

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Gemma Ward today -- normal is not cutting it in fashion, she is ready for "plus sized" modeling according to Bryan Boy

Top Fashion Model Gemma Ward has had it — she has called it quits after years of harrassment about her weight Perhaps the final straw was being called a ”Roll Model” by the Sunday Telegraph, read more here (first person to find the roll wins!)

It’s called PUBERTY people.

Celebrating her 22nd birthday in New York last week, Ward was photographed alongside close friend and Sports Illustrated swimwear model, Jessica Gomes. Ward, who was romantically linked to Heath Ledger, disappeared from the fashion industry after his death in January 2008, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

Last week, she was snapped wearing a leopard-print jacket, shorts and biker boots - looking the very picture of a healthy young woman (above).  But the photographs were quickly posted by international fashion blogger Bryan Boy. Reader comments varied from overwhelming support to vicious attacks on her new real shape, with the blogger boy himself saying she could now give “Crystal Renn a run for her money.”

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Love this video. Enjoy your weekend.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEZtiW8oUh8]

There’s a lot of things I think of but I don’t post because I always try to add an image, add links, etc., etc. etc. Problem is that takes time, which I don’t have a lot of , and I miss this blog.  So, you’re going to get more writing, and less fancy schmancy stuff and we will see how that goes. Cool?

Todays topic: What to do when your mother is on a diet.

Here’s the scenario; your mom comes home from her coffee clutch all excited about joining Weight Watchers.  She is on a mission to lose 30 pounds, she’s pumped, and then she just happens to mention you could afford to lose some weight too.

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Howdy! A little blog reconstruction going on here so don’t freak. I’ll be working on a new look and feel so you’ll see continual changes, but in the meantime you’ll see my old header and navigation.

Fall 2006 First header image, what a youngster!

OPEN FORUM!

In the meantime, how about we bring back the open forum? For those of you who are new, the open forum was just an open post where we all chatted about whatever, whenever, and we ended up making a lot of friends. No rules, just talk — go here to check it out.

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This guest post is from TwistedSister,
a 23 year old woman from the UK. In this post, she relays her
perspective of an incident that occurred when she was 13 years old,
struggling with mental illness and anorexia.

—-
Being looked up and down is never nice for anyone to endure, but
when you constantly have people doing it, it makes you wonder what is
so wrong with you that people feel the need to do it.

I have been constantly criticized on how I look and what I eat.
Mainly from family and females. Men have done it too but the main
judging has always come from females. Being judged by how I looked cut
me to pieces.

I remember one time that really got to me when I was out at the
shops to get milk for my mother. I walked around the shop looking for
what I needed, and I could feel someone looking at me. I always kept my
head down, ashamed of myself for even being in the public eye and I
tried to be as invisible as possible,  but I could feel someone looking
at me.

Without looking up I tried to find the person whose eyes were
burning into me, and then I saw her. She was probably in her late
teens, and she was just staring at me, I couldn’t understand why. She
then started whispering to her mate that was standing behind her and
started pointing at me. I heard them both laugh as they  kept pointing.
When the girl realized I could see her, she started shouting at me.

“What’s wrong with you?!” she yelled.

I kept silent.

“You look a mess. No one will ever fancy you. You will never get a boyfriend because you look like crap” she said.

She went on with the tirade —telling me my hair was dry and
horrible, that I was spotty and had fat legs. Before I could respond,
to this girl the cashier told me to come forward. As I walked to the
counter I could feel the eyes watching me as I moved, it felt like I
was in a freak show and the audience were watching the freak come to
the stage.

While I was paying the girls continued to laugh, then two boys
walked in and joined the queue with the girls. They asked what the
girls were laughing at and they told them they were laughing at me and
the state of me. They then joined in too, one boy shouted hey lard ass!
This made the rest of the group cackle like a bunch of bloody hyenas.

I paid as quickly as possible; I just wanted to get out of there and go home and hide.

“You don’t have a fat ass,” the cashier whispered to me as she
handed me my change (which I should have known seeing that I weighed 6
stone 3lbs). “They are just  jealous. Ignore them,” she said.

I nodded and ran crying my eyes out towards my house.

I hid in a bush for near on a hour, in tears, wondering what was so
wrong with me that people felt the need to keep hurting me, telling me
I wasn’t good enough and that I was fat. I believed them, I thought
that if so many people believed this was true well then it just must
be. I wiped my eyes and crawled out the bush, kept my head low and
walked home.

Soon as I got home mother started her usual rant about how long I
had been and what the hell was I thinking taking so long. I tried to
explain.

“What? Did ugliness stop you from walking? Or did your legs keep rubbing together so it got harder?” she preached.

That’s what I was asked.

I kept silent.

I put the milk on the counter along with the change and ran to my
bedroom where I shut the door and hid under my bed. My self esteem was
in shreds, I hated myself, I cut myself, on my legs, to see the blood
was for some reason refreshing to me, it made me feel a little better
but not enough.

So I then crawled out from the under the bed and stuck my fingers
down my throat trying to get every ounce of food, water, anything out
of my body. I wanted to be thin, I believed I was fat, I needed to
change to make people like me. I wasn’t good enough to have friends or
a family that loved me, so I needed to become thinner in order to be
liked.

I hated myself so much, I have never felt hatred like it and the voice in my head fueled this hate.

I was convinced my body was ugly and the only thought in my head was — I am never eating again.

I still get judged today, people stare at me as if I am a puzzle
that needs working out or a math question that confuses them. Girls and
boys alike shout obscene things at me as I walk along the street. I
still have low self-esteem, and I still feel bad about myself
sometimes. I am trying to tackle these things one at a time.

No one likes being judged, but at the end of the day, I am my own worst critic.

-Twisted Sister

Hi Girls: I would like your point of view on a post on my other blog, WeAreTheRealDeal which is a collective blog by Body Image Activists.

Please view it here: Barbie's Shut Your Yapper

Feel free to comment there and here, I'd like to engage in our own conversation on mamaV since I believe this community comes from a different pov.

Looking forward to your thoughts,

-mamaV

Beautiful.

You gotta read the copy. All of it. Go here to view full screen.

Thanks LM for sending

New album cover for Kelly Clarkson.

Photoshopped to hell.

Artist likes it.

Why?

“We decided the cover of the album and
just in case you haven’t seen it I’ll post it! It’s very colorful and
they have definitely Photoshopped the crap out of me – but I don’t
care, haha!

“Whoever she is, she looks great, ha! I’ve had so much fun with this album; I really hope y’all dig it woohooooooooooo!!!!” - Clarkson's blog

How can you not care?

I wonder what Dove thinks? See Walmart/Dove soundcheck sponsorship

Here's where I am going with this;

Imagine you are going to be featured on the cover of a local magazine. The cover comes out and its not you, its some perfectly-smooth-no-bumps-no-lumps-version of you. Wouldn't you feel weird cruising around town having people see you in real life and think ing"Wow, she doesn't look like that cover? She sure as hell is not as pretty."

Allowing this fake-ery (if that is even a word) is just asking for it. Asking for criticism. Inviting public analysis,. And generally just, well, an unwise move.

I lived this crap and it sucks. As a model, you have these amazing pictures produced  of  yourself. It made me feel like an impostor. The model version becomes your evil twin.  The one everyone thinks you are…but are then disappointed when they see the real you. So; the evil twin had to go.

 

My Evil Twin. Dead as a door nail.

I killed her years ago.

I killed her by going everywhere and anywhere with no makeup. 

I finished her off by letting my body go back to its normal, healthy size.

I wiped her off the face of the earth by letting every single ugly flaw show to the world; zits , cellulite and all.

I said goodbye to the fake me, and I said hello to the real me. The one with perfect imperfections that are mine for life and I wouldn't give them up for anything.

Beauty will always go downhill, so you gotta just enjoy the ride.

-mV

This is part 2 of a post about the book About Face.

I said I would follow up with my story about "what I see in the mirror," but I've got to tell you- this was a rough one. I wrote two totally separate versions; one nice, one angry. I choose to post the nice one, with a few angry jabs stuffed in. Here goes;

Who is this freaky chick?*

Happy-Go-Lucky

I can't remember a time that I looked
in the mirror and I did not like what I see.

 Sure, there was the gangling teeth stage,
the teenage zit phase (which has not ended by the way and I am almost
40 for cripes sake), and the post modeling days when I cruised around
in a black baseball hat and baggy clothes in an effort to keep all
eyes OFF of me so I didn't have to live up to everyone's beauty
expectations.

But all in all, I've never wanted to
change anything about myself.

I am well aware there are way more beautiful
women in the world; those beaming with perfectly
symmetrical faces,
exotic expressions, and sex appeal leaking out of their pores…but I
have never wanted to be someone else.

 Ever.

My nose is kinda crooked, and its
getting bigger with age. We joke my dad that he has a “bulb” at
the end of his nose, just like his mother, and now I see mine growing
slowly but surely. It makes me proud to know, a part of him is now
part of me.

My facial structure is from my mom. I
remember when she came to Paris with me and my agent took one look at
her and said “I see where she gets her high cheekbones from!” My
mom was grinning from ear to ear. We still joke about it, and when
she brings it up kiddingly I say “yeah, yeah….its all because of
you mom.”

My height and big feet are from my
Grandma, the one that walked a bit hunched over, but held her head
up high, and didn't take any shit. She lived in the ghetto of
Milwaukee, the only white women among many black families, who
accepted her as one of their own. She was a firecracker, independent
as hell, as she walked the blocks to the bus daily, and never, ever
got mugged (sure, they tried, but she held on to her pocketbook and
told them to get lost). And the tough little punks ran from the
little old lady, with a glare that could knock you sideways. I'd like
to think I also got my spunk from her.

Image Laura Bell Flickr

My features are now passed on to my
children. A “mini-me” daughter and my blue-eyed-boy that is going
to give me an ulcer when his hormones kick in. They both were lucky
enough to inherit two very distinct features from my husband –
dimples and flat feet, the true sign of a Blessington.

When I ask my parents what I was like
as a child, they smile and say “you were happy-go-lucky.”

I love that saying, perhaps because I
believe it fits me to this day, and now I see the same quality in my
children which makes me so very proud.

What more could you ask for than to be
happy-go-lucky? A free spirit, born to roam, totally immune to
cultural expectations. Free to just be who you were meant to be
without looking back, without questioning, and without the imaginary
stress the masses carry from day to day.

Perhaps the best part of this quality
is that one doesn't care much about how others view them. Not in a
crass, selfish way, but in a realistic world view way.

 Truth be told, I did spend the bulk of
my twenties ashamed of my beauty.

With beauty comes attention.

With attention comes envy.

With envy comes hurt.

With hurt comes shame.

Who is this sad skinny chick?*

I was shamed for my beauty, made to
feel as if I was somehow selfish for it (actually I should say I was
told point blank I was selfish over and over and over and over until
I started to believe it). I spent some time convinced it was true, until I got smart. This ploy is always just a front to
accommodate the nay-sayers insecurities.

So here I sit, approaching 40 years of
age, still that happy-go-lucky girl that my parents admired, doing
nothing more than looking forward to what the next 40 will bring,
paying no mind to the the signs of aging that will continue to creep
across my face and body, because if I have learned anything at all, I
have learned that you can not get the time back.

Who is this happy, cool chick?*

You live with the memories you create,
the destiny you chase, and the legacy you leave.

And I, for one am enjoying the ride.

Your turn,

mamaV

—–

Image Info

Freaky chick is me in NY, perhaps during the one and only photo shoot I enjoyed. Wearing a wig was so fun!

Sad, skinny chick is me in gay Parie' way back when. My mom found these images last weekend, they make me sad because I remember it like it was yesterday.

Happy, cool chick is me, now, 39 and feeling fine!

DeLaVega Site

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS ADULT IMAGES AND IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 13...oh, that's right, the performer is a 10 year old girl

Thanks to Mollie for sending me a link to this disturbing video of a 10
year old "woman" performing her choreographed dance routine, including
hip thrusts, booty shaking, and sexy pouting…just like good ole'
Britney.

Naa…the media doesn't influence behavior, that's just silly.

-mamaV