How did your struggle with anorexia begin?
I had a normal childhood and adolescence but at 19, I broke up with a boyfriend and those sorts of things can be triggers. It developed in the first year of university at Oxford and was at its worst then. Then it was a long journey – all the way through my twenties I didn’t recover - though I didn’t have to go into hospital. Even when you’re recovering you realise that everyone’s talking about dropping a dress size or wanting to lose weight, which makes it harder. I think it’s getting worse and worse. There isn’t a normal way of eating at all – it’s difficult to not be affected. But I wanted to put it behind me and have a baby, and that was key to my recovery.
Are there support structures or people who could have done more when it was first a problem for you at university?
People are definitely much more aware of it now. But to be successful at an eating disorder, you lie a lot and deceive people. I’m struck just walking down the street that there are a number of women who are incredibly thin, but not necessarily with a disorder. Catching it early is important. The longer it goes on the more it’s part of your life. If these things can be nipped in the bud we have so much more chance of making progress.
How do you differentiate between an eating disorder that’s a response to an emotional situation, and something that’s a response to what we see and hear in the culture around us?
I think they go hand in hand. I can’t say [my eating disorder] was caused by the pressures to look thin. Severe anorexia is far from being about looking good or sexy or slim. But I think, for me, they’re part and parcel – it was my way of thinking that ‘I can be good at something’.
Is your anorexia now a thing of the past?
Control is something I will always struggle with – especially when I’m stressed. But I don’t weigh myself anymore, and I interview people who are frighteningly thin and it doesn’t get to me. They may be five stone, and I don’t come home and think ‘I want to lose weight’. Doing the last series, it was harder. It makes me sad for them, but there’s not a single part of me that wants to me thin now. I actually feel more resilient than lots of my friends who haven’t had eating disorders – I’ve learnt the hard way that you need fuel for your body.
Why did you decide to call your book The Ministry of Thin?
In George Orwell’s 1984, there’s the ‘Ministry of propaganda’ and the ‘Ministry of truth’; it was an ironic nod towards that. It looks at the idea of the inner voice in our head, saying ‘You will be happier when you’re thin’. It’s a kind of Orwellian voice that tells us we’re not thin enough, and when we lose weight we’re winning – which of course we’re not. We’re losing. In your book you say that as a nation we eat ‘in a disorderly way’.
Do you think this affects a lot of people?
I think it’s funny that people call it an eating ‘disorder’ – because to me (when I was struggling with it) it was very ordered; I knew exactly what I would eat at every meal – it was very calming. It gave me a sense of having a structure. When I looked at the way my boyfriend could just grab something on the go – to me that was out of control. Of course it’s not – it’s just eating on the hoof. But as a wider culture, it’s a kind of food porn. Look at the supermarkets – there’s so much available to us. It’s like when you’re a child and you get upset by all the choices around you – you need boundaries and you need rules.
Why do we think that being thinner is the ideal?
I think it comes from childhood – especially as girls. From early on we know that slim is good and fat is bad. If you say to your colleague – ‘I’ve been good today’, or ‘I’ve been bad’- they know exactly what you mean. It’s that basic. Naughty and bad and guilt means we’ve overindulged. We don’t even question that. The internet has fed into that massively. We see thousands of images we wouldn’t have seen 20 or even ten years ago.
Do you think this is even more of an issue for young people and especially young women?
At the moment I’m filming Supersize Vs Superskinny and there are women of all ages, and men too, suffering from body dysmorphia. Body image disturbance is on the increase in men, and it’s often unrecognised - we assume they’re sporty or skinny. It’s still 90 per cent women and ten per cent men – I think those stats are still right, in terms of who’s struggling. And we know that ‘we’ do judge women more than men – the minute a woman walks on the screen, we’re thinking ‘She doesn’t look good in that…’ Whereas for men, they can have a bit of grey, or a bit of a paunch and that’s ok. I think ageing is the next thing that people struggle with – women in their 40s and 50s trying so hard to stay young.
One thing you also mentioned in your book is that we have made huge gains with feminism - women fighting for equality at work and entering professions like never before – but yet we are crippled by feelings of insecurity about our appearance. How do we overcome this?
I do think it holds us back. Think about teenage girls - why are girls getting up two hours ahead of boys to straighten their hair? And if you’re hungry you’re not going to be firing on all cylinders. We’ve loosed some shackles, but found other ways in which we’re holding ourselves back. We’ve got these other rules. It’s hard to talk about it without sounding ‘ranty’, but everyone knows that we are held back. I don’t know what the answer is.
Parts of the feminist movement speak of educating young girls by never commenting on their appearance – either positively or negatively. Do you think this is a good idea?
I think it’s unrealistic – it’s a lovely thing to say to someone: ‘You look great’. My sister’s got children and she’s very theoretical about this sort of thing. She says, ‘I’ll always compliment their homework, but not their appearance.’ But she slips; it’s inevitable. I think the key is not to say: ‘You’ve lost weight – you’re looking great’. We do need to compliment people on their achievements, and their worth, but also on their appearance. It’s hardwired into us.
What can we say to young people who want nothing more than to be thin?
It doesn’t make you happy. It sounds so cheesy – but you need to look after yourself. To me it was about abandoning myself. Tell them that they matter, that they deserve to eat and that they need to look after themselves. Encourage them to think of the reasons to be strong or healthy – to do things, to have a great career, or whatever it is that they want to do, and not to think that being thin is the answer to all of their problems.
What do you think are the big influences on young people?
Airbrushing – when we think that this is the way women should look, and they don’t. The diet industry is crazy. When journalists talk about the five/two diet – starving yourself and binging and then writing about it – to me that’s a legalised eating disorder. I think it’s getting worse not better. It’s not surprising that children are affected.
It’s all well and good for youth workers to turn around and say that young people look great and are wonderful, but we may feel insecure in this area too. How do we model this for our young people without being hypocritical?
I’m currently doing some talks at some girls’ schools. One of the women at one of these schools wrote to me and said: ‘I have recovered from anorexia, but I’m teaching young girls about positive body image in PSHE’. As a general rule, I would say don’t get involved in it until you’re ready to and are on the road to recovery yourself. It’s often like that; people who work in mental health are often recovered addicts.
That’s why I don’t pretend to be a campaigner – because I don’t know enough. I’m a writer; I don’t know about in-patient guidelines. And I don’t want to spend my life writing about just this, I’m not interested enough in it. It’s part of my journey, and if part of my writing helps others then that’s great. But I made sure I was properly well before interviewing people with anorexia. Really work on your own recovery, make sure you’re alright. I don’t think it’s helpful to be taught by people with issues themselves.
How do we unlearn the thinking that ‘being thin = beautiful’?
Partly, it’s just confidence. Thinking, ‘Actually, I’m alright.’ But partly it’s just giving it time. I think I needed to grow out of it. It took way longer than it should have – but it’s like many life lessons. I was tired of anorexia, of not being able to join in and take part in life. It was about finding something more interesting – it had become a black hole in the middle of my life. Young girls ask me now - what will I have if I give this up? When you have an eating disorder you can’t imagine anything stronger than the massive addiction. It’s as bad as a drug addiction, or any addiction, it’s not just a diet gone wrong. But it’s about doing something more compelling than anorexia. For me it was writing and thinking about having a baby.
