While millions of Australians are overweight, others risk death through extreme dieting, influenced by unreal ideals of the body beautiful. Lucy Brook reports

“Here, have you read this?” asks dynamo anti-diet campaigner Karla Cameron, dropping a tatty hot pink copy of When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies (Hirschmann & Munter, 1995) into my lap. I leaf through the pages, thinking I would hardly whip this baby out on the bus, before Karla takes it from me and reads the book’s key question aloud.

“What do you think would happen if women stopped hating their bodies?”

Hating our bodies, though, is what we do and have done for decades. What’s the beginning of spring without a new diet and exercise regime to ready us for summer? What’s a girly catch up without the familiar “I hate my thighs”, “I’ve replaced breakfast with a diet shake” or, “Is avocado a good witch or a bad witch?”

Experts, and those like Karla, a 40-year-old mother of two who battled anorexia and bulimia before becoming trapped in a 13-year diet/binge cycle, say women have been conditioned to believe that body hatred and obsessing about food and weight is “normal”.

“I have a great T-shirt that says ‘start a revolution – stop hating your body’,” says Karla, who mentors women, presents seminars and leads support groups for emotional overeaters through Life After Diets, founded in 2004.

“We have all been brainwashed by our image-obsessed culture, which actively promotes a diet mentality and body dissatisfaction – we are meant to be seen to be ‘watching our weight’.”

Watching our weight is one thing – obsessive “healthy” eating is another. According to Californian alternative medicine practitioner Steven Bratman, those consumed with “healthy” eating are “orthorexics”, a term he coined in 1997 and covered in his book, Health Food Junkies (Broadway, 2001).

Orthorexia, characterised by an overwhelming obsession with a diet limited to food that is organic with no added sugar, no preservatives or additives, low in saturated fats, high in essential fatty acids and locally produced, is not yet recognised by medical authorities as an eating disorder. Steven Bratman says orthorexics, who eliminate caffeine, dairy products, wheat and anything processed, suffer the same debilitating effects as those with anoxeria nervosa.

“In some cases, orthorexia goes beyond a mere lifestyle choice, and obsession with healthy food can progress to the point where it crowds out other activities and interests, impairs relationships, and becomes dangerous,” says Steven on website www.orthorexia.com.

“When this happens, orthorexia takes on the dimensions of a true eating disorder.”

Eating disorders stem from a desire for control, perfection and weight loss. That women’s bodies are beautifully diverse is rarely acknowledged in a culture where those larger than a size eight are “letting themselves go”. Nigella Lawson, Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera, Kirstie Alley, Jennifer Hudson and Mandy Moore are, frighteningly, the odd girls out.

“In the past decade, there has been an increasing obsession with celebrity and women, particularly young women, trying to emulate the famous women they see in the media,” says Mia Freedman, former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly.
“Unfortunately, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because there is very little diversity in the physical appearance of female celebrities. There are so few alternative examples of body image out there for the 95 per cent of women who don’t look like Paris Hilton.

“In gossip magazines, the only roles available to celebrities are negative ones about their bodies. They hate themselves because they’re too fat or ‘worryingly thin’. The only women allowed to love their bodies are those who have lost vast amounts of weight after having a baby,” says Mia, who writes a blog mamamia.com.au. “That inevitably rubs off on the rest of us who are taught to focus on our bodies. What about our brains? What about our achievements at work and as mothers?”

The causes of body hatred are numerous and so too, are the symptoms. More than seven million Australians aged 25 and over are overweight or obese. We spend an estimated $500 million each year on weight loss, and body image is the number one concern among those aged 20-24, according to an Australian survey of 29,000 young people. Eating disorder statistics are grim, with anorexia – which has a 20 per cent mortality rate – the most common disease affecting women aged 15-24 after (ironically) obesity and asthma. Diagnosis in girls as young as eight has been reported, and bulimia and binge-eating disorder are on the rise. All the while, self-esteem is plummeting.

Kylie Turner knows first-hand the intensity of an internal war fought over food and weight. The 39 year old from Rochedale suffered bulimia from age 24 for almost 10 years. At 173cm tall and weighing 46kg, she knew her daily laxative abuse, compulsive exercise and long periods of starvation followed by a frantic binge was a dance with death, but says she was so caught up with her disorder – an expression of a deep self-hatred – that she didn’t care.
Kylie, now a counselling psychotherapist with Relationships Australia and Springwood Wellness Centre, says rejecting external expectations set her on the path to recovery.

“I have a favourite quote that says, ‘what other people think of me is none of my business’. Once I could stop worrying about what others thought and what society said I should be, I stopped doubting myself.”

Kylie says woman have been groomed to have more, do more and be more, which can leave them feeling empty. “We’re so busy denying our humanness – sagging breasts, round tummies, grey hair, wrinkles – that the focus is always needing more of what society says we should have instead of looking inside ourselves and realising it’s already there.”
Psychologist and Griffith University senior lecturer in medicine Dr Peta Stapleton says thinness has come to represent many things – success, beauty, acceptance, happiness – as has fatness, which connotes laziness or failure.

“There is a quote from the Body Shop journal Full Voice from 1997 which says, ‘In Western culture, women obtain their self-esteem from being desired and from their body shape. Men gain self-esteem from achievement, power, status and control.’ It’s still the way today.”

Changing our culture is unlikely. Rejecting the parts of it that are of no benefit to us so we may live for ourselves, not so that we can squeeze into a pair of jeans that a thin celebrity is selling is what we can do, says Karla. The first step is to ditch dieting – for good.

“When we fail our diets, we seem to blame ourselves, instead of blaming the diet.”
Karla, a size eight who hasn’t dieted in years, says we must also make the change for the next generation of women. “We need to create a nurturing environment for ourselves and learn to accept and love our bodies before we can ever expect our daughters to do the same.”

LIFE AFTER DIETS, PH: 0411 224 609,
WWW.LIFEAFTERDIETS.COM.AU. For help, contact the EATING DISORDERS ASSOCIATION QUEENSLAND, Ph: 3394 3661, WWW.EDA.ORG.AU

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