We were watching BBC America the other day (a quick personal note: I LOVE Direct TV. Yes, I miss getting NWCN because I tend to watch news at odd hours when the local affiliates aren’t broadcasting local news, but the fact that we are getting a HUGE range of channels, we can choose to ‘ignore’ all of the sports channels, and we get all of this without paying Comcast for second rate service and a stunted- from-birth DVR is by far enough to make up for losing Northwest news 24 X 7. ) and I ended up getting sucked in by a program called “The Truth About Online Anorexia”.

It was a fascinating and horrible look at the effect that the internet has had on anorexia. Ranging in coverage from online ideas for truly frightening “crash” diets, to the so called “Pro-Ana” (pro-anorexia) sites that encourage anorexics all over the world by posting pictures, how to tips, and a horrible, horrible list called “The Thin Commandments”.

And it got me thinking.
It’s clear that anorexia is a disease of a modern, developed society where food security is never an issue. I am somehow doubtful that, say, teen girls in Ethiopia in the mid-’80s, were at ALL prone to developing the idea that they were somehow overweight. And I can’t think that people in any country in ANY time that are personally responsible for producing their own food, those who know how hard it is to actually have food, would be prone to developing eating disorders.

But when did anorexia really become a problem in the US and worldwide? I can’t imagine in the 1950s when Marilyn Monroe and her curves were the beauty norm (and, incidentally, when pictures of Nazi concentration camp survivors were still fresh in everyone’s minds) that starving yourself to “beauty” was something that would go through anyone’s mind.

And just to clarify, I know I’m oversimplifying the problem greatly. No anorexic thinks that they are starving themselves, rather that they are “dieting” to achieve an ideal which, in their mind, is attractive and desirable. They’re not thinking about it at all, it’s the way that they’re wired. However, I don’t think that the possibility of being wired that way would be or would have been possible in the 1940s during rationing and surely not in the 1920s and 30s during the depression. When did anorexia really start?

And is anorexia not only just a disease of a modern, developed society with no question about food security, is it a disease of overdressing? If we all were prone to walking around stark naked, when everyone could see what everyone’s body looked like and that NO ONE except the terminally ill looked like walking skeletons, could the anorexic ideal image become fixed in people’s minds?
Again, a gross oversimplification. The idea of a society where everyone walks around stark naked pre supposes the concept that we had no issues with temperature control, that we were all wired to NOT think about our bodies. I guess that answers the question though. If we were all stark naked all the time, I don’t think anorexia would be possible.
Certainly willful anorexia isn’t present in the animal kingdom. As many people as I see whose pets “just WON’T eat…..” (regular pet food instead of table scraps, the diet food that I am recommending, commercial pet food instead of snooty, unbalanced “natural” raw crap, etc.) actually WILL eat what is being offered if they’re put in a situation where they have no other option. Body issues just don’t exist in critters.

Or is anorexia maybe a disease of UNDER dressing? Were everyone to dress as devout Muslim women do, covered from head to toe with only a gap for the eyes, would anyone ever be able to develop the particular pathology where they compared themselves to everyone else? That’s not quite right. Anorexics don’t necessarily compare themselves to other people, they compare themselves to the image that they have of themselves. But could that image develop if no one EVER was able to see another’s body outside the marriage bed? If you never had any idea of how the body of another person of your gender looked like, could you develop the notion that yours was wrong?

I’m not going to get into the question of rates of anorexia in devout Muslim areas versus those in areas where religious devotion is less avid because there’s no way to get any sort accurate information about it. This isn’t a discussion of religion, mind, I’m more interested in the psychology of the question.

And though recovered anorexics that I’ve known who were anorexics pre-internet managed to do just fine in starving themselves mostly to death without online help I have no doubt at all that my current medium of choice is no damn help at all. Are rates of anorexia higher now than they were in 1980?

I’m really glad I never got into human psychology. I’d spend far too much time inside my own head to be of any use to anyone.