The XX Factor: What women really think.

Hey, That Isn't the Kid I Ordered!

A post from  DoubleX  writer KJ Dell'Antonia:

A little disappointment is inherent in parenting. Suzie doesn't inherit her hockey-forward mom's stick skills; Johnny lacks Dad's engineering bent. But a few women (and they all seem to be women) are disappointed enough that Johnny isn't Suzie to spend thousands of dollars and endure IVF, abortions, and even a divorce to produce the little girl of their dreams (who, I suspect, had better damn well like pink) ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

MTV's Golden Cage

Willa, to quote Cher from Clueless (which I seem to be referencing daily now)—trying to find responsible messages about eating in The City is like looking for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie. Which is to say, ultimately fruitless. But the flippant handling of anorexia in The City is definitely worth mentioning because it seems that in the three decades that the disease has been in the zeitgeist (basically since the 1978 publication of Hilde Bruch's seminal anorexia text, The Golden Cage) the media has still portrayed it in a completely unproductive way.

Women's magazines are particularly ham-handed in the way they deal with eating disorders, and I was reminded of this when perusing the February issue of Elle earlier this week. They have a personal essay by recovered anorexic Abby Sher, which reads like a pro-ana handbook:

I had new rules: No eating before the show. No eating in public. No less than an hour and a half at the gym every day. I started drinking diuretic teas and devouring magazine articles about how to feel full from your daily intake of water. ... I’d have high-fiber cereal covered with chicken broth and melted fat-free cheddar cheese on top, sometimes hummus and carrots, washed down with watery cocoa. Whenever I didn’t think I could make it another mile on the stationary bike or felt light-headed on the treadmill, I imagined this banquet awaiting me and tried to pedal faster, harder, stronger.

For those without eating disorders, Sher's chronicle of her not-eating is terminally boring. It is exactly like every other personal account of anorexia that's been in every women's magazine since the days of Karen Carpenter. For those with eating disorders, or perhaps those perilously on the brink, this sort of story is a blueprint, a possible enticement. There seems to be very little literature and media devoted to addressing the causes of anorexia, only these train-wreckish essays for others to gawk at.

So, Willa, I agree—MTV should treat discussions of potential anorexia with more gravity than they treat a shoe purchase, but that would require them to cast a critical eye on the extreme thinness that's the current beauty ideal. I'd bet you some hummus and carrots that they're never going to be willing to do that.