indiefucks:

POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING FOR EATING DISORDERS?

The girl circled is Taralynn of UndressedSkeleton, a rather popular “fitblr” here on our quaint little website. In the photo, one can see the caption “She lost 50 pounds the healthy way!” under her name. What’s so bad about that? Well, nothing. Putting aside any fat-phobia, losing weight the ‘healthy way’ (i.e. eating appropriately and exercising on a regular basis) is great. But that’s not my issue. Taralynn claims time and time again that her eating habits are normal and healthy, but the truth is, they’re not.

A quick click-through of her blog brings up the following:

•  She adds sugar-free jello to everything. In an attempt to cut out added sugars, she switches to using artificial sweeteners (in this case, aspartame). Despite the reports that aspartame and other artificial sweeteners may not actually be harmful, sugar-free jello lacks something that fruit does not: nutrients.
• She eats soup with a fork to “cut out 500mg of sodium just in the broth!” 
• She seems to eat about 1000 calories every day — nearly half of the average caloric intake recommended by the US Department of Health (pdf). 

You can find more at undressedskeleton.tumblr.com.

I want to be forward here: I am not saying Taralynn has an eating disorder. What I am saying is that her means of dieting are not healthy and that it is unfair to herself and her readers to claim that they are.

But my issues do not lie solely with Taralynn herself. I have more of a problem with Seventeen Magazine for featuring such habits as the “healthy way” to lose weight. Let’s be real: teenage girls are impressionable. The girls who read Seventeen look to the magazine for inspiration, as though it is their big sister. To feature a girl whose eating habits are nowhere near healthy is extremely irresponsible and I am disappointed in the lack of judgment on their part.

I decided to send Seventeen the following email:

Dear Seventeen,

I’m disappointed. As a magazine that millions and millions of young girls read and look up to, I thought you would be more careful in your selection of topics. Girls in the US and across the world already have too much pressure put on them to be thin, and eating disorders are spreading like wildfire. Your magazine has acknowledged this with articles about the effects anorexia has on the body. However, I am disturbed by your recent choice to feature Taralynn from the tumblr UndressedSkeleton.

Taralynn promotes unhealthy ideas about weight loss and provides very, very unhealthy “tips” and “tricks.” Her “diet plan” consists of eating 1000 calories and 0g fat a day, and putting sugar-free jell-o packets in plain greek yogurt—this is the stuff eating disorders are made of! I would think that a magazine that is aware of eating disorders and their effect on young girls would be more careful in their selection of “inspirational” women for these girls to look up to. You give your readers direct messages about body acceptance in your Body Peace feature, but the subtext of featuring women like this reeks of fat-phobia and promotes a body ideal. It’s as though the only body that girls should be accepting is a skinny one.

I hope in the future you are more careful with your selection of topics and, within those topics, the people you feature. If you are going to have a diet and weight loss section in your magazine, then it is your responsibility to make sure you are promoting healthy ideas.

And this is the response I got:

Hey!
 
Thank you so much for writing to Seventeen with your concerns. Encouraging a healthy body image is incredibly important to us, too. As the largest and most popular teen magazine, we feel we have a responsibility to the 14 million teens who rely on us to create something each month that is not only fun and entertaining, but is also a positive influence in readers’ lives. 
 
That’s a big reason why we are using more and more real girls (as opposed to models) in our pages. We are committed to making our readers feel good about themselves. 
 
Thank you for expressing your concerns on this important issue.
 
XO!
 
Seventeen

Okay, so, essentially—Seventeen completely blew me off with this generic piece of crap email. They did not address anything I wrote about. In fact, all they seemed to care about is telling me how popular their magazine is. So now, I’m sending another email directly to the Health editor. And if she responds in the same way, I will go to Hearst Communications. And I’m asking you to do the same. Seventeen needs to realize that they have a responsibility to their readers to provide accurate information. They claim they are committed to making their 14 million readers feel good—so why are they giving them a way to develop an eating disorder?

Please reblog this and help spread the word.

This is important. 

I don’t really give a shit about Taralynn. If she says she’s not disordered and is healthy, then I believe her. Even if she was disordered, it wouldn’t be any of my business. But this isn’t about Taralynn. This about Seventeen promoting a blog that can incite harmful and dangerous eating/diet habits to young women, and presenting said blog as a good resource and educational tool.

In virtually every issue, Seventeen (and other magazines of the like, such as CosmoGirl, TeenVogue, etc) has an article titled “Love Your Body” or “How Anorexia Ruined My Life.” Aaaaaand then three pages later, they spew a bunch of weird dieting tips or recipes, and workout regimens (to  be fair, the workout moves would actually be fine if they weren’t plastered with things like “HOW TO GET THE PERFECT BIKINI BOD” all over). What happened to loving the way you are and body positivity???

These magazines love to brandish their covers with news of an exclusive, eye-opening story on eating disorders, or a great statement on self-love and body positivity. But embedded in the pages are sentiments that implicitly counteract everything—inane eating “tips,” low-cal/low-fat recipes and strange alternatives to foods.

I remember I read a nutritional “tip” in there that said you should judge how healthy your meal is based on the colors of the food on your plate—lots of brown/white/tan was bad, but greens and colors were good. It may make sense in some ways (green vegetables are healthier than bread or mashed potatoes), but that comment will not encourage healthy choices and proper nutrition. This is something that will instill potentially dangerous habits of nitpicking food for meaningless features in concern for health, and deliberately avoiding foods based on arbitrary factors (such as color). 

These magazines claim to encourage young women to be healthy. That is wonderful and commendable. But that’s also not what happens.

If they strove to encourage healthy attitudes and habits about food and body image, they would give proper nutritional advice and education (such as about what makes food healthy or not healthy, good eating habits, what foods are healthy and why, etc), and refrain from posting exercise moves that are only there to make body part X look thinner/firmer/bigger/WHATEVER the societal beauty norm dictates. 

I now recognize that when I was a pre-teen/in my early teens (yeah, the magazine is called Seventeen, but it’s mainly geared toward 11-14 year olds imo), the things that contributed to unhealthy habits and disordered eating were not the pictures of thin, pretty celebrities and models printed everywhere. The things that lead to these problems were the subtle hints in the magazines. The ideas that I should be paying more attention to calories and eating fewer of them and avoiding foods (rather than going for the healthy choices). 

Seventeen, as a magazine, does not inherently have an obligation to provide health and nutritional information or education. However it has chosen to do it by having sections devoted to fitness and diet, and regular features on the matter. And because they’ve chosen to take on this task they have the social responsibility to publish material that is not only healthy, but also does not promote, encourage, or incite practices that could be harmful. The fact that their audience is so large and so impressionable only intensifies this.

Taralynn is in a similar situation. I know I said above this isn’t about her (and it mostly isn’t, I am far more concerned about Seventeen and that seems to be the case with the OP too), but the fact remains that she presents improper habits (things like obsessive calorie counting and calculating, very low calorie meals, habits to prevent consuming, the list goes on) as not only normal, but HEALTHY, and advocates and encourages them to her large audience. She has a responsibility to provide correct information if she considers her site a health/wellness blog (or “fitblr” or whatever). In some ways, the blog worse than pro-ana sites to me, because it presents itself as being healthy and encourages such practices. 

ANYWAY if you’ve managed to make it this far down (sorry, I can’t believe I wrote so much) and want a resource/inspiration for healthy living, I suggest Taylor aka majorstranger. She’s got details of her intense weight loss journey on her blog, and is really sweet and approachable if you have questions. 

And please email Seventeen (mail@seventeen.com) to demand for more constructive content for their health and wellness sections. 

(via queen)