March

Do you know the story behind Airborne? It was created by an elementary school teacher. The teacher was tired of constantly catching colds from her students so she created a small disc the size of a quarter filled with Vitamin C and other vitamins that fizzled in water and was drinkable within seconds. It ended up preventing colds! Airborne was such a hit that the teacher ended up quitting her job to run the company. The funny thing is she would have never have come up with Airborne had she not been in the school environment where the common cold runs rampant. Having been a teacher myself I can attest to the misery of “First year Dues in teaching” where the teacher gets handed the coughs and colds of students. Colds are prevalent in schools due to students whose bodies are still growing the necessary immune system to fight the colds. They pass them back and forth to each other in this microcosm. It seems as if eating disorders in Israel operate in much of the same way. The Jewish culture there has many aspects to it that actually promotes eating disorders. Much like the students and teachers the Israeli people pass it from one generation to the next.

 

Currently, Israel has one of the highest eating disorder rates in the world. One study of ultra-Orthodox and Syrian Jewish communities in Brooklyn and found that 1 out of 19 girls was diagnosed with an eating disorder – a rate about 50 percent higher than the general U.S. population. Why is this? It is believed to be a combination of culture, perfectionism and family dynamics.

For starters Judaism has deep roots in food centered rituals around religion, family and culture. Families bond and traditions are held over holidays like Yom Kippur and Shabbat dinners. Indulging in food is encouraged and celebrated. However, many marriages in Israel are still arranged. Potential brides (and their mothers) are expected to be flawless in education, intellect, body and features. Requests for the girl’s transcripts, weight and mother’s weight (projecting what the potential bride might look like in the future) are requested by suitors prior to any courting period. The pressure for these numbers and stats to be perfect can be daunting on a young girl. Her family can be seen pressuring her to indeed not eat and drive herself to succeed in school in order to secure an elite marriage.

Having so many opportunities for fasting, rules around mixing dairy with meat, the lack of port and eating kosher makes an eating disorder hard to detect among Israeli girls. In Israeli women have been challenged by the dogmatic view of beauty narrowing toward Western features. A girl being told she “looks Jewish” for her predominant features in her nose and dark curly hair is often seen as a misfortune.

 

Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical instructor in Harvard Medical School’s department of psychiatry did research on eating disorders in Israel identified a cluster of personality traits associated with eating disorders: sensitive, intelligent, eager to please, low risk taker, anxious, high drive for achievement.

Adair asks “How many Jewish people do you know who fit that bill?” she asks rhetorically. “A lot. Whether that’s nature or nurture, we don’t know. This is not just about a bunch of spoiled girls skipping lunch or throwing up in the bathroom. Eating disorders are a coping mechanism.”

Are Jews more prone to eating disorders because of their genetic code for success? The writer thinks, perhaps. Having grown up with a Jewish father I know that as a Jew there is not only pressure to be a person of broad intelligence, but to use that intelligence to change the world and be the best at what you choose to do. I can definitely see how this pressure coupled with the pressure of arranged marriage and the pressure around food can create the perfect storm for an eating disorder to sneak in on a Jewish teen.

However, there is always hope. Israel’s parliament endorsed a bill that aimed to keep underweight models out of commercials, prohibit modeling agencies and photographers from employing them, and ban the media and advertising agencies from airbrushing models to extremes. Israel is preventing eating disorders by trying to change how the people in their country classify as beauty. The people in Israel may be prone to eating disorders, but there is always HOPE. All of us can do something to help. By that way, what are you doing to prevent eating disorders today?

A common misconception about eating disorders is that they are predominantly a disease of Western culture. That Disney, Barbie, shaving cream commercials and other forms of exploitation of the color pink have led to the disease of white, upper-middle class, self absorbed girls and women. These statements are far from the true. Not only are eating disorders found all over the world, they plague the East and third world nations. Over the next four weeks The Victorian Recovery Blog will be exploring eating disorders in Japan, Israel, India and Jamaica. Today we are en route to the east and visiting Japan.

In the past decade eating disorders in Japan have been on the rise. The notice started between 1988 and 1992, when the number of identified cases of anorexia and bulimia increased by four times.  (Nadaoka et al. 1996). Though the behaviors of eating disorders in the East and the West are similar including starving, binging and purging the causes for the behaviors are quite different. Western causes are typically rooted in the tension resulting from the striving for achievement and career. To be a successful woman in the West is to be noted as a powerful, thin and beautiful. However, in the East a successful woman is one who is a manicured, doting, wife and mother. The pressure to fit into this cookie cutter mold of a wife and mother is the predicted root of eating disorders in Japan.

As a nation Japan has historically valued the work of wives and mothers to be the primary nurtures of children and to maintain the domestic needs of a house hold. Making marriage and mother hood the primary avenue for women’s economic stability and social participation.

Researchers believe that in the West women “fear fatness” because being fat jeopardizes their ability to succeed. Where women in the east don’t fear being fat, they “fear a loss of control” of themselves. Because they are expected to take on a roll of a mother or wife, when they are presumably not ready for the responsibility, they try to regress to be small and child like. This is where the eating disorder steps in.

 

It is also believed that the eating disorder is triggered by Japan’s approach to the transition from girl hood to woman hood. The approach being there isn’t one. Japan is known for its idyllic graphic images of characters created in comic strip anime and toys from Hello Kitty. All infantile and innocent creatures that are lovable heroines. Take these images consumed by a teenage Japanese girl and parallel them with her mandatory home-ec classes in high school where they are taught the appropriate etiquette on being a good wife including, cleaning, cooking, decorating, sewing and raising children.

 

The issue Japanese women are wrestling with seems to be the time to grow between their “innocence” (and dependency) and into their role in marriage eventually coupled with motherhood. The problem is that we know from psychology that when a person has not self –actualized and instead take on the roles that they believe as expected of them they walk through life angry, self-destructive and prone to depression and eating disorders.

So what is the solution? Some might think feminisim. I would say not. I believe the solution is for the Japanese culture to be a tad more laid back on the way women are presented with their "role" of being a wife and mother. Maybe if there was less pressure to fulfill these roles women would 1.) Appreciate them more when they do so choose to fulfill them 2.) Women might go out an explore who they are outside of who they are expected to be.

My personal belief is that no two people are alike and that's an awesome thing. Women need to be encouraged to explore, create and find the people they were put on earth to be. I would encourage women to find themselves during their adolesence and 20's and return home with what they have discovered and be embraced.

To sum up the differences between the West and the East, Western eating disorders form out of the concept associated with thinness providing power and control that will, in turn, convey happiness. The Japanese pursuit of thinness is more reminiscent of eating disorders as a strategy for delaying maturation and responsibilities.  

If you enjoyed this post today from The Victorian Eating Disorder Recovery Blog I ask that you share it with your friends and family. The more education we provide to people on what eating disorders are, how they manifest and what they look like we will make this topic less taboo and prevent this disease from taking down another generation of women.  

A special thanks to Kathleen M. Pike and Amy Borovoy of Princeton University for their studies on eating disorders in Japan. Their thesis was referenced for this article. As well, a big thank you to The Victorian of Newport Beach for sponsoring this blog and providing recovery 365 days of the year.

Happy Recovery,

Irvina

 

 

 

 

Image by Studio Jones www.etsy.com

 

 A few years back I read a study done on two separate sets of boys. Group One was being raised by a single mother. Group Two had both parents raising them and present in the home, but in this group the father was absent due to work and travel commitments. The study found that the boys in Group 2 ended up under performing at school, abusing alcohol and drugs and were far less socially and psychologically developed than the group of boys with a single mother. Why? Well according to the study the boys in the second group felt more rejection from the father that was present, but absent. The boys without a father had no expectations of a father and therefore were less angry and hostile people. 

 

Over the past few years many studies have been published finding that the role of a father in a child’s life is much more powerful than that of a mother. Surprising, that since the beginning of civilization child care has been assigned to women and hunting to men. It seems as if Adam and Eve made more mistakes than one eh? But, who can blame them? Naturally one would assume that the sensitivity of a woman would make her a better care taker and a man’s ability to chop down a tree would make him a better provider. However, if we take a step back and look at what makes a well rounded, responsible human being it is undoubtedly discipline and strength. Masculine traits.

 

These kind of studies make me reflect on the character of my own father and how his strengths and weaknesses affected my own development and eating disorder . My dad’s strengths were that he is incredibly intelligent and challenged me. As a child, he constantly bought me books above my reading level, took me to museums and gallery’s and challenged my opinions with entertaining and witty debate. He was very aware of global events and had images of starving children in Africa from TIME magazine framed and put in the dining room of our home, in his chicken scratch writing he inscribed, “For all of us to see.” My dad was a confident, charismatic man. He taught me how to invite the homeless to have a 3 hour lunch with us, to never pass a blind person without helping them across the street and to never pass a beggar without giving them a couple of bucks. My dad is a good man.

 

However, somehow I ended up creating so much trouble on the school bus in Junior High that I was suspended from riding the bus for 3 months. I started drinking alcohol when I was 14. Skipping classes when I was 16, jumping out of moving vehicles as practical jokes and much more theatrics that I’ll save for my book, but you get the idea. I remember having an insatiable need to please others. To make them laugh. Somehow making people laugh turned into an eating disorder. Ironically, jumping  between anorexia and compulsive overeating can be exhausting and left little room for laughter.

 

So what happened to me? My father was present, but what was I missing? According to the following studies being present is one thing, but young girls need a lot more than just presence from their fathers:   

 

Affection:

One study shows that adolescent daughters' self-esteem is best predicted by fathers' physical affection. - Western Connecticut State University.

  

Housework:  

Recent research from UC Riverside shows that when fathers do housework with their children, their kids turn out to be better adjusted and more socially aware.  - University of California Riverside

 

Intimacy:

Since men in our society are "encouraged to achieve but not to feel" fathering is often a difficult task for men, especially with their daughters because the relationship requires "more intimacy then most men can handle" - Vanderbilt University

 

Freedom:

Overall, fathers of daughters with eating disorders emerged as a complex mixture of frequently distant, sometimes punitive, but also overprotective parents.  - Eating Disorder Review

 

Genetics

Some people do not have much of a choice when it comes to eating disorders, because genetics play a big part. - Mental Health Matters

 

I have my own theories on things my father did and did not do that led to my eating disorder. However, I sway greatly to the side that eating disorders are genetic, much like alcoholism and drug abuse. Yes, environment and parenting can trigger the disease, but I don’t blame my dad for this disease.  I think my dad (and most dad’s for that matter) do their best when it comes to parenting. I think we can all agree with Oprah’s statement that, “Parenting is like owning an ocean.” For that reason, Oprah said that she chose not to be a parent. Bravo on the self awareness Oprah, bravo. But, I ask is anyone ever ready to own a ocean? I don’t think so. But, if you gave me an ocean, I would definitely do my best to protect and care for it, I couldn’t promise that everything would turn out safe, sound and healthy, but I promise I would do my best to love it and care for it. I think that’s all we can ask of parents; just love and care.

Happy Recovery,

Irvina