thaipolychaete.com

By John Sammon

Anorexia is not a disease.

Anorexia is not a disease.

All you skinny teenage girls out there. Write it on the blackboard three hundred times. Anorexia is not a disease.

Some of you may know I did some articles on anorexia, starving yourself to achieve thinness, that raised a fire storm of angry responses on my talk line, most from young women. When they werent calling me a sonofabitch or an asshole or some other choice names like lard-ass.

I happen to love my ass. I have a beautiful ass. Its my best part (you should see me in a jock strap).

When they werent name calling, they were always citing the same three protests, that I needed to study anorexia, that I couldnt understand anorexia, that it was their disease and not mine, and that I didnt have a right to talk about something that was their thingnot mine.

I fought back, saying I can comment on anything I want, and that I dont have to study anorexia to know that starving yourself to look like a fashion model on TV is wrong. I also said that the film, TV and magazine industries had made false physical perfection a desirable goal so that young women starve themselves, denying their bodies of the nutrients they need.

The angry comments have gone on for years.

Theyre still saying (check my talk line) its a disease. Anorexia is not a disease. Lets refer to the American Heritage Dictionary. Disease is defined as a condition of an organism that impairs physiological functioning, resulting from causes such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress.

With anorexia, I dont see any organism. Do you? Wheres the organism? I dont see any infection. Wheres the infection? I dont see any genetic defect either. Environmental stress?

I see a teenage girl who looks in Seventeen Magazine, and wants to look like the skinny model in the picture. So, she refuses to eat, and lies to her family that shes eating, and endangers her health. That must be the environmental stress.

If you choose to do it. If its choice, its not a disease. Its not like cancer, where a cell goes wrong, or AIDS, where the bodys immune system breaks down. Starving yourself of the food you need is not a disease, but a compulsion.

Dont shake your bony finger at me and call me a butt-head.

You need to get real. You also need to eat. The reason you call it a disease is a psychological tactic, to absolve yourself of personal responsibility for your own actions. It makes it a lot easier explaining it away that way rather than say, Im just a dumb person who is into impairing my health because I have insecurities about the way I look caused by air-brushed magazine pictures of famous models.

I have never once sought to minimize the suffering of these people or the danger to their health posed by their lifestyle choices. Choice is the word. If you choose it (starving), its your choice.

With cancer, a real disease, I cant make the simple choice not to have it. I have it, and Ive got it. Get it? Good!

Copyright 2007

About the Author: John Sammon is the author of two books and writes a weekly humor column you may access at

Sammonsays.com

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