When I was a teenager, like many millions of young men and women in this world, I struggled with an eating disorder. There are lots of reasons why this happens and why it happened to me; why it happens more often to women, especially teenagers; and why talking about it becomes taboo—another item stacked on top of the already vast list of things women are judged and shamed for. I am not ashamed of this history for myself because I know it’s an incredibly complex issue and I am more than well aware of the pressures for perfection, beauty, social acceptance, youthfulness, “goodness,” etc. that are inordinately placed on women’s shoulders, at every age. I, very luckily and also with a lot of tremendous work, fully recovered from my eating disorder, but it did leave something lasting behind: a broiling feminist anger for, well, a great number of things, but, in particular, the way the world talks about bodies, diets, and food.
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