college eating and eating disorders: even Smithies are not immune

I've bitched about this before in my Letter to the Editor, but I'll say it again because it definitely deserves the emphasis (especially during NEDAW): eating disorders are absolutely rampant at Smith, and if others' stories and rumors and anecdotes are to be believed, they're mad prevalent on other campuses too. Smith, despite its penchant for creating the giants of American feminism (Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, the Sheriff...KIDDING), is still a veritable recipe for creating eating disorders: young females + high achievers + atmosphere that encourages you to push yourself constantly=not shocking when you see friends barely touching their salad at dinner or anonymous gagging sounds in the stall next to you or fiends at the gym (please note that I am very much aware that a plethora of people who are neither spritely youths nor female bodied also experience ED/disordered eating, but the demographic of young females is the most at risk group). And although many of us, the Sheriff most definitely included, like to pretend that we're totally above succumbing to sexist beauty standards and the desire to be thin, secretly we get frustrated with and hate on our bodies as much as any "typical" group of female college students (how utterly sad that this is considered a typical activity. Goddamn).

Smith is pretty unique from other colleges (and by unique, I mean that it holds tenaciously to its old traditions) in that everyone who lives on campus is on a full meal plan, and virtually everyone lives on campus. The full meal plan is a holdover from the days when each house (yep, all 35 of them) had its own dining hall, and we all ate baked Alaska on white table clothes with linen napkins by candlelight (or so I'm told [and like to imagine] by old alumnae). Obviously, this was heinously expensive so they cut that shit out, but there are still 11 houses with dining across a campus with a population of about 2600, so we are pretty spoiled in that we have some choice about what to eat. Checking the daily menus is pretty much the campus wide pastime, but frankly? While I recognize the logistical difficulties of feeding that many hungry college students and pity the dining services staff, much of the food is over cooked, repetitive, unhealthy, or just bleh (although sometimes they do it majorly right, like when the had Sweet Potato Week. YES!)

And any or all of those reasons make it incredibly easy to make excuses about not eating dinner, or not eating much, or binging. The food looked gross. I grabbed those cookies for my roommate. I ate at another dining hall. I just had to pee after I ate so much. Everything they made was fried, so I just ate salad. Sounds pretty innocuous, right?

source

Except that it's often not. Trust me, as someone who has used every excuse and purged in every toilet at Smith (sliiiiight exaggeration), sometimes it's worth it to just say something when you're concerned about a friend. After I came clean to my friends about my ED's resurgence last year, many of them admitted that they'd noticed the weight loss/constant excuses for not being at meals, but that they hesitated to bring it up for fear of being offensive. Might your friend be mad at you? Might they deny it vehemently? Might they hate your guts for it? All possible. But it's also possible that they secretly want someone to notice, to help them recognize that they need assistance/a therapist/another way to deal with emotions. Don't judge, don't diagnose them, focus on the behaviors that concern you, and hopefully they'll be able to hear that it's coming from a place of love.

Much love,
The Sheriff

PS--if you live in or around the Five College area, you should absolutely come to the Scale Smashing event this Saturday! I don't even own a scale to smash and I'm so excited!