Body Dysmorphism

Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental condition where people are convinced they are ugly because of a minor, sometimes even imagined, flaw in their appearance. It's not limited to sufferers of eating disorders, but it is frequently a symptom.

If you watch documentaries on eating disorders, you'll see victims saying that they're fat, or drawing themselves in a distorted way. One example of this is in the documentary Thin. A girl is asked to draw what she believes her outline to be. She then stands inside this and someone draws her real outline, which is considerably smaller.

For a long time, I didn't really accept or understand this. I couldn't conceive that an anorexic might look in the mirror and not be able to see the bones sticking out as a sign that there wasn't enough fat and muscle. This half-blindness seemed a ridiculous concept.

I still don't understand it, but I'm forced to accept the ugly truth of its existence.

When I was younger, I used to take part in a village show put on every year. I did this between the ages of seven and fourteen. Looking back on my life, I consider that my eating disorder starting somewhere between the ages of fourteen and fifteen, but I have some distinct memories of the last village show I was in.

I wondered if part of the reason I hadn't got the role of the princess was because I was too fat.

I hated having my measurements taken for the costumes. I was convinced that the lady who made the costumes would look at what she was writing down and think I was some fat pig.

I was horrified because one section of the show required me to wear a really skimpy costume. I was terrified of the idea of going out on stage with my huge stomach on view to hundreds of people. I nearly quit the show because of it.

The show was recorded and all the cast got a video of it. My dad recently spent ages transferring videos onto DVD and yesterday I watched the show again. I wasn't skinny, but I certainly wasn't fat.

I was thinner than the girl who was playing the princess (which is a blow to my ego regarding my acting abilities :) ). In the part I was concerned about showing my stomach to the world, there was barely any difference between my size and that of the girl standing next to me, in an equally skimpy costume.

Looking back, it's clear that I was already in a disordered mindset. At that point in my life, there were no real binges, there were no drastic attempts to lose weight, but I was obviously well on the way to becoming disordered. The mental patterns set in long before the behavioural ones.

I think that's one of the main problems with curing eating disorders; we can't catch them soon enough. By the time the physical signs are noticeable, the mental patterns have been in place too long and they've formed an addiction. Eating disorders are going to continue to be a problem, no matter how many health centres and support groups there are, until we can find a way to prevent the disordered mindset forming in the first place.

With our society getting more and more bogged down in calorie counting and recommend amounts of carb and fat, I think we're heading in the wrong direction.