{via pinterest; orginally found on decor8}

Once in a while my husband and I like to pretend that we are far wealthier than we actually are (which, given our actual financial status, isn’t particularly difficult). We’ll walk into a store where we can afford, oh, maybe the tissue paper with which they delicately wrap up your purchase (can they wrap tissue paper in the tissue paper? hmmm…), and we’ll walk around like we own the place.

Such was the situation on our recent trip to Austin, a city with so much charm it’s bursting at its organically threaded seams. Somehow, however, we ended up in a major menswear retailer (I know, I know! What about all those locally owned vintage shops? We spent the majority of our time in those, I promise.)

My husband is what I consider the perfect blend of artistic and practical. A graphic designer-turned-corporate marketing professional, he has a deep appreciation for creative expression while being very grounded in financial reality. Except when it comes to suits. His recent fascination with suits could rival the worst Tori Birch shoe fetish. The ironic thing is that he could wear sweatpants to work if he wanted. But, trust me, he never would.

The combination of all of this was what found us trapped in the menswear store with a pile of blazers piling up next to us as the salesperson pulled, clipped, and analyzed. He pulled jacket after jacket off of various mannequins as my eyes searched desperately for that cozy chair usually reserved for bored men holding all the shopping bags.

As Mr. Beret (what I named the salesperson who seemed to think that his headwear gave him an edge in the credibility game… or something) exhausted his collection of available jackets in everything from plaid to herringbone to Texas orange (no, really), he determined that we were simply not going to find one off the rack to fit my husband.

The solution, of course, was to go the custom route. He would simply have to have a jacket made that would fit my husband’s, apparently, broad shoulders and small waist. As Mr. Beret explained, he just isn’t proportional. Nothing will fit, he cautioned us.

He went on to explain, “Look, people have all different body types.” Oh really, sir? Little did he know who he was talking to here!

“What we’re trying to do here is to take an entire range of human bodies with all of their various shapes and sizes and fit a piece of cloth over it. How could ever expect it to fit everyone? Usually, stuff off the rack fits about 25 to 30 percent of our customers. That’s not many.”

Can I tell you how refreshing this was to hear? I mean, obviously this is true, and at some level all of us are very aware of this fact. But, as simple of a concept as this is, our understanding of this somehow flies right under and out of the dressing room door when we’re standing in front of a full-length mirror.

Suddenly, it’s our arms that are too long for the jacket, or our feet that are too wide for the shoe, or our hips that are too narrow for the dress. Our boobs are too small, we’re too short, and our shoulders are too broad. There are hundreds of things that we can realize quickly are not right with our bodies when faced with finding the “perfect fit.”

But what if the perfect fit is a total illusion? [Because, honestly, it is.]

What if the problem lies not within our physical selves? What if doesn’t even lie within the clothing manufacturers’ vanity sizing? What if, instead, it lies within the simple truth that putting a piece of cloth (however well-constructed) over a range of human bodies and have it “fit” even a significant number of them is an impossibility?

I stated to think about this and began to research the evolution of ready-made clothes (we had a while to wait at the airport, you see…). I learned that before the American Civil War, it was a rarity to buy your clothes at a retailer. [And, interestingly, women’s apparel shifted to being mass produced long after men’s.] Most of our clothing was created by a tailor or family member who would fit it perfectly to our proportions.

Can you imagine? Everything fitting to your body, instead of feeling like your body should suddenly fit the clothes. What a concept!

Obviously there are reasons (some very good ones like the fact that even the buttons I sew on don’t last) that make ready-made clothes a viable option. But we simply cannot expect that our bodies could, or (more importantly) should, work perfectly with everything we grab off the rack.

We have to find clothes that make our bodies feel good. They need to fit to our unique curves, bumps, lengths, widths, and body anomalies. And, more importantly, they to fit to our own personalities. If it means investing in a few custom pieces (or learning to sew), I’m all for it. And I’m quite sure Mr. Beret would agree.

{image credit :: jeredb}

Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening mental and physical illnesses. I repeat: Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening mental and physical illnesses.

Got it?

With all of the tireless advocacy work that organizations around the globe are doing, I am hopeful that this message is being transmitted. Being tuned in to the efforts of such organizations as NEDA, ANAD, Generation Mirror, Eating Disorder Network of Maryland, and more, I see champions of this cause fighting endlessly to spread awareness about these disorders.

But we’re not there yet.

Myths about eating disorders abound. Perhaps most prevalent is the notion that eating disorders only impact young, white females, and that they are disorders of vanity. People won’t say this, at least not often and typically not to my face, but I see the vestiges of these old beliefs everywhere – insurance companies that won’t recognize eating disorders as the potentially fatal medial conditions that they are, tee-shirts sold by major retailers that paint eating disorders as a fashion statement, and even eating disorder campaigns that focus solely on a small segment of those affected.

Again, I am hopeful that the tides are turning and that reality of these illnesses are becoming more apparent. Today, over half of Americans know someone with or have an eating disorder. To be a better parent, co-worker, cousin, son, or friend, shouldn’t we know the truth?

Here are five of the lesser talked about myths that I come across regularly:

MYTH: Eating disorder treatment is too expensive and insurance won’t help.

FACT: The best eating disorder treatment is individualized and often includes a combination of psychotherapy, nutritional therapy, medical monitoring, and other types of treatment (such as family therapy, expressive therapies, and more). The cost of such treatment varies somewhat by such factors as geographic location, the licensure of the clinicians, and the availability of services in an area. However, treatment for an eating disorder is vital for full recovery, and most treatment centers will work with an individual to help them get the services that they need. While we often hear tragic stories of insurance companies denying payment, there are many insurance companies who do regularly pay for treatment, especially at lower levels of care (e.g. intensive outpatient services). The only way to know whether your insurance company will cover treatment is to speak with them directly. One’s doctors and other providers can also advocate for payment, and there are also actions one can take to appeal a decision of an insurance company. To learn more about this, visit NEDA’s page.

MYTH: Eating disorders are caused by bad parenting.

FACT: People with eating disorders often have difficult relationships with family. People without eating disorders also often have difficult relationships with family. While history has been full of accounts of how narcissistic, hypercritical, and unloving parents have pushed their children into eating disorders, today most experts agree that parents do not cause eating disorders. This is not to say that familial influence does not play a role in the way that an eating disorder is expressed, but we also know that the development of an eating disorder is multi-faceted. It involves a complex combination of genetic predisposition, temperament, learning, stress, and more. In fact, most individuals rely on their families for support during a battle with an eating disorder, and family can be one’s biggest champion.

MYTH: People who binge eat just need willpower.

FACT: Binge eating is part of both Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder, and is also often a part of other disorders as well. Binge eating can occur in response to a period of restricting food intake, emotional stress, or for other reasons. It does not, however, occur in response to a lack of willpower. Individuals who struggle with binging are from every age, gender, ethnic group, sexual orientation, and faith. They are also of every size, shape, and weight, and it’s not possible to tell whether someone has this issue by looking and him or her. You also cannot tell how much of this mythical “willpower” that an individual possesses simply by looking at what they eat. Binge eating is a serious and often very distressing issue, and one that requires both compassion and persistence to treat effectively.

MYTH: Everyone who has an eating disorder has been abused.

FACT: While our intuition or even clinical experience tells us that those individuals with eating disorders are more likely to have experienced trauma, research generally does not support this. Data usually shows that approximately 50% of the population have experienced trauma, a number that also holds true among individuals with eating disorders. Trauma can be a somewhat subjective idea, however, and the impact of events can differ greatly among individuals depending on many factors — age, supports, and resiliency, to name a few. When a trauma has occurred and is determined to be entwined with an eating disorder, it is often the case that an individual will need to address this as part of their treatment.

MYTH: To recover from an eating disorder, one just needs to start eating normally.

FACT: If only this were the case… Too many individuals have been told this by loved ones who they themselves were desperate for a way to help the person suffering. While developing “normal eating”, as defined by eating an amount appropriate to provide necessary calories and nutrients, is a vital part of the recovery process, it is not the only part. Individuals in recovery often have to start by recognizing their disordered eating patterns and even develop a sense of what normalized eating is. For some, eating issues have been part of their lives since being a young child and they have only a vague idea of what constitutes a healthy meal. Eating disorder treatment also often involves other important components, like developing alternative means of expressing one’s self, building self-esteem, andreconnecting with relationships.

For more myths, and the truth behind them, check out Generation Mirror.

What eating disorder myths have you heard?

{image credit :: patricio villarroel}

For most of us, the sight of little blue booties or a 20-week ultrasound plastered on facebook is a sweet one. Our hearts are warmed by knowing that a new little life is taking form inside of someone we love. Perhaps it reminds us of those lovely little moments when we were carrying our own child, or it generates excitement for the time in our lives when we’ll be ready to do the same.

But for a smaller, though significant, number, these images send a jab of intense pain through the heart. For women who have been trying to conceive – or who has stopped trying – reminders of the body’s betrayal can be gut-wrenching.

Over seven million women in the United States have spent more than one year trying to conceive, the diagnostic criteria for infertility. This is a little over one in ten women who struggle with what can be one of the most trying and painful experience of a human’s life. And yet, even in the health and body-image world, we usually hear barely a word spoken about how this experience can alter one’s perception of themselves.

In fact, while we do know that infertility is associated with depression, there’s a dearth of research on how infertility impacts individuals’ body image and self-concept. This silence is dangerous because it mirrors the hushed and hidden nature of the issue itself. Couples who are struggling to become pregnant, or faced with their inability to do so, rarely bring this up in the company of others. Ironically perhaps, the color of an infant’s feces becomes appropriate dinner conversation, but detailing your second round of IVF does not.

This type of isolation, whether socially or self-induced, combined with the emotional toll that infertility takes produces all kinds of intense feelings for a woman. She’s faced with working through a form of grief that perhaps few of her loved ones can comprehend. She’s struggling to maintain a relationship with a partner that can be intensely strained by putting intimacy on an egg-timer. And she’s taking a painful assessment of her values in order to make some extremely difficult decisions.

So it’s no surprise that in our society of buck up, cowgirl and sweeping emotions under the proverbial rug, women with infertility turn quickly on themselves, and specifically their bodies.

As women in our culture, we’re simply not used to the fact that sometimes working harder doesn’t produce the outcome that you so desire. We’re taught to believe that if we invest the resources and will into pursuing a goal, we will achieve it. But what about when all of our efforts fail? We feel powerless. We get angry. We get hopeless. And we rage against the bodies that feel as though they are betraying us.

For women with histories of disordered eating, this experience can be especially devastating, and sometimes send them spiraling back into a bitter relationship with food and their bodies. Thoughts of what bodies are “meant” to do swirl through their minds, and the ways in which their own bodies seem to fall short rock their internal world.

And so they do what they know how – they exert control in the only ways they can. Their eating may become restrictive or, conversely, unmanageable, or they may find themselves desperately attempting to bridle their bodies in other ways. They exercise to the point of exhaustion, they chart their basal body temperature with the precision of an air traffic controller, or they analyze every subtle shift in their bodies. And inevitably, as always happens when we attempt to alleviate our anxieties through exerting control on the body, disappointment eventually comes rushing in. And when it does, the pain that is buried and unspoken comes along with it.

Moving this experience out of the shadows is one way to prevent these feelings from narrowing one’s life. This of course comes with a host of other risks – such as feeling exposed and having one’s reproductive organs be, well, out on the table. But carefully selecting individuals one’s trusts to share this experience with can be key to allowing our bodies to release the burden of carrying this on our own.

There are limits to what friends and family can do in terms of support, and so talking to a professional or finding a support group can be helpful in sorting through the myriad of emotions that are triggered as well. For resources and support, check out the Resolve.org page.

Have you ever felt that your body betrayed you? How did you cope with these feelings?

“The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.” – Marilyn Monroe

{image credit :: joshua mellin}

Walking down the street to my office the other morning, I was more than a little surprised to see a 22,000 pound buxom beauty staring me down. To be honest, she was staring far above me, standing over 26 feet high with her iconic dress shading onlookers like the tree of life.

The immortalized woman in question is Marylin Monroe, or at least a statue of the beloved starlet. Recently unveiled in Chicago, the steel and aluminum piece overlooks the bustling street below with that coy smile made famous by the 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch.

I might have been the only one to catch the irony, but I found it interesting that the woman that body image advocates have long pointed to as the exemplar of curvaceous womanhood was now overtaking Michigan Avenue like Godzilla.

Pointing out Marilyn Monroe’s dress size and weight has long been a body image warrior’s battle cry. Reportedly between a size 12 and 14, Monroe is frequently referenced when we talk about the evils of the media and the increasingly unrealistic standard of beauty in our society.

“But did you know that Marilyn was a Size 14?” we say, incredulously. “If she were alive today, she would be considered fat!”  And then we puff out our chests and raise our eyebrows expectantly, hoping these facts will knock some sense into the masses that we think are deluded by the Kate Mosses and Calista Flockharts of our day (Okay, so I clearly need a bit of celebrity updating. Miranda Kerr, perhaps?).

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly recognize just how distorted our perception of thin has become. And pointing to Monroe’s slightly larger frame can give an attention-grabbing reason to think twice about our cultural norms.

But what if history was wrong? Does our argument fall apart?

For better or worse, Monroe likely wasn’t a Size 12 or 14 or 16 – at least not by today’s sizing. In a witty piece on NPR, writer Jessica Siegel (who wears a 12) tried on a Marilyn original dress… and couldn’t zip it up. There was apparently over a six inch gap.

So if Monroe wasn’t a Size 12 – if we can’t point to a beauty icon to show how these standards have changed – where does that leave us?

Ironically, maybe it leaves us in a better place than where we started. I’m not so sure that using a sixty-plus year old statistic about another woman’s dress size really helps the cause of creating our own body size appreciation.

What I’ve found is that while facts like this one are interesting, they rely a bit too much on our left brains. They make sense, we nod our heads in agreement, but don’t change much about how we feel about ourselves – at least not substantially. Attention grabbing? Yes. Life altering? Not so much.

And maybe the point is not to be life-altering, but rather to remind us that cultural ideals do shift and change, and thus enslaving ourselves to them is a futile effort. Even more interesting, in my opinion, is learning about the way that Monroe’s own body changed in the course of her life. According to historians, her weight fluctuated by about 20% in her adult life – not a huge amount, but enough that it made a difference on her 5’5 frame. And through that Monroe remained poised and confident, proud of her beautiful curves.

So perhaps Monroe’s Size 16 doesn’t hold water anymore, but there’s still plenty that we can learn from the bombshell. One of my favorites? ”I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made.” Now that is truth.

Do you think the Marilyn myth keeps us too focused on others? Has is helped you in feeling better about your body?