I didn’t have anorexia because I wanted to look like a fashion model | Hadley Freeman

A French plan to ban skinny women from the catwalk ignores the fact that anorexia is an illness. We need to look at the causes not outcomes of self-loathing

Nobody ever asks me what it felt like. They never ask what it was like to spend three of my teenage years in secure psychiatric units for severe anorexia nervosa; how it felt to be so undernourished I could hardly walk; how it feels now to be able to picture the doctors’ and nurses’ faces more clearly than I can those of my late grandparents; how it feels to have spent my formative years with young women who are now, in so many cases, dead; how this experience changed my personality for ever. No, no one asks that. Instead they ask why: “Why were you anorexic? Why?”

Related: What is the link between the media and eating disorders? | Hadley Freeman

Related: France likely to ban fashion models deemed to be too thin

Dr Sigman ignores the obvious possibility that behind eating disorders in women is a fear of being sexualised

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