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Our Dec. 5 cover story shed some light on the battle against anorexia, readers said. The mother of a sufferer diagnosed as a preteen wrote, "Anorexia is not only a despicable and deadly disease but an oft-misunderstood one." Another said, "Your magazine came the day after my college roommate and I stayed up till the wee hours discussing her eating disorder. So many prior interventions had failed, and you offered refreshing insight and some new answers to her desperate search for [them]." Men, and women past their teen years, wrote to say that anorexia affects them, too, and they expressed concern about the lack of adequate medical coverage. One doctor said, "Many health-insurance plans severely limit coverage for eating disorders. Anorexia [is considered] a second-order concern, not deserving of the complete coverage afforded 'real diseases' like heart disease and cancer."
Your article on anorexia made me cry ("No One to Blame," Dec. 5). I am a mother, wife and pediatrician with zero extra time. But your striking cover compelled me to buy the issue, and once I started, I could not stop reading the article. I developed anorexia when I was 13, then battled bulimia until I was 21. There were many risk factors: I am a type-A personality, always struggled with anxiety, was heavily involved in ballet from a young age and have a history of alcoholism and psychiatric illness in my family. Still, despite what many of my therapists said at the time, I knew that distancing myself from my family was not what I needed. Nowhere else would I have obtained the logistical, emotional and financial support they provided--despite their warts--that contributed to my recovery and helped me accomplish what I have accomplished today. If only there had been better understanding then so as to enable us to have a "family affair" and help me get well faster.
Carole O'Beirne
Read More on News
Toronto, Canada
Your article on anorexia read likea textbook description of my own daughter's struggles last year: 77 pounds, running 22 miles a day in the Texas summer heat, and her reward at the end of each day was a Popsicle. Sarah truly ran to the brink of death; a lot of heartache and almost $80,000 later, she is struggling but doing much better. What your article doesn't discuss is an even darker side of this health-care crisis: almost no insurance in any state covers eating disorders. Almost all our expenses were out of pocket. This in spite of paying nearly $1,200 per month for health coverage. The lack of insurance delays adequate treatment and discourages health-care providers from specializing in the treatment of eating disorders. No doubt, thousands of young women die every year because they have no insurance that covers their eating disorders. Society would never deny coverage for such conditions as heart disease or cancer. Why are we denying it for eating disorders?
Gene Whitworth
Manchaca, Texas
Indeed, many adults drift along in states of semi-starvation. They're called dieters. And while the underlying causes of anorexia may be biochemical, you cannot convince me that the diet culture's obsession with food and body type, along with the insane belief that anyone can look like a supermodel if only he or she tries hard enough, doesn't play a significant role. Regrettably, this culture is so entrenched that it is seen as the norm to be obsessed with weight and to think that something is wrong with people who won't diet. The parents of anorexic children you featured should be congratulated for their honesty and courage, as should the kids themselves. It's time for society to do its part by dismantling, once and for all, the diet culture and its attendant mythology that has made fat the scapegoat for every imaginable evil.
Katharhynn Heidelberg
Montrose, Colo.
After reading your article on anorexia, I felt a combination of relief, fear and hope about this devastating disease. Falling victim to it nearly two years ago, I could not identify what I was going through as an eating disorder because of what I had been taught in my growth and development courses: anorexia is a condition in which a person simply chooses not to eat. Once I entered outpatient treatment, I slowly realized that anorexia is a disease and not a choice. I have heard young people (and even adults) make comments on how anorexics should just learn how to eat; those same kids claim that depressed people should learn how to smile. None of them would dare say that leukemia patients should just suck it up. I sincerely thank NEWSWEEK for portraying this disease in all its truth and horror.
Elizabeth Brasington
Marshfield, Wis.
While anorexia may have a genetic component, your title "No One to Blame" is irresponsible. I'm an ex-anorexic and have known a dozen others. We all have the same background story: a weight-obsessed mother who put us on diets as children, even though pictures show that, at the time, we were of normal weight. Some of us also could tell you how, as we were trying to recover from anorexia, our mothers fretted that we would get too fat. Your suggestion that parents can ward off anorexia by having family dinners is laughably simplistic. You might want to add that parents should not tape pictures of pigs on their daughter's mirror when she weighs 112 pounds. Or tell a normal-weight girl she has to lose 15 pounds before she can go to college because the "freshman 15" will make her obese. Or buy her only size 2 school clothes, so that she has nothing to wear if she lets herself get "fat." Or forbid her to socialize with a friend who brought junk food to a sleepover. When you portray parents only as baffled, blameless victims, you let them off the hook for behavior that contributes directly to the disease.
Lisa Epstein
Montreal, Canada
I applaud you for your article exposing the dangers of anorexia. But while I was pleased to finally read about such an intricate illness, I was disappointed not to read even the slightest bit about bulimia. Though bulimia is more prevalent than anorexia and more difficult to recognize, we focus more on anorexia, thus trivializing the experiences of those dealing with bulimia. Having had some experience with bulimia, I can tell you I felt very ashamed during that short period of my life. With bulimia comes shame, sickness and, often, very little weight loss, making the symptoms even harder to identify. It is equally important to make information on bulimia more available to parents and teachers.
Rosha Manoranjan
Columbus, Ohio
As the stepmother of a girl recently diagnosed with anorexia, I found your article to be quite informative. However, you fail to emphasize the dangers of pro-anorexic or "pro-ano" Web sites, which offer disturbing photos, negative messages and encouragement of unhealthy behaviors and attitudes. Parents need to be aware of the availability of these harmful online influences--a discovery we made far too late.
Kathy Brown
Midland, Texas
As an anorexia survivor and a leader in the women's movement, I am deeply disappointed in your decision to publish photographs of severely malnourished kids in your story, and for publishing exactly what sufferers ate. They use such photographs and dietary plans to rationalize further restriction. It's akin to explaining, in detail, how to make a suicide bomb in coverage of the roots of terrorism. Except here you've hurt only a group, made up primarily of women and girls, who are already hurting.
Erin Matson, President
Minneapolis, Minn. What Is Free Speech?
George Will's article "Free Speech Under Siege" (Dec. 5) reminds me that most conservatives have either lost touch with reality or have become so buried in the right's false rhetoric that they actually believe the propaganda they peddle. He claims liberals have a "program of extending government supervision of life." It is what the right has been saying for years, and it is purely misleading. It was the conservatives who tried to decide what was best for Terri Schiavo. It is conservatives who want to tell a woman what to do with her body. It is conservatives who want to tell us whom we can and can't fall in love with. Then they confuse liberal programs that help people with big government. Will tries to claim that campaign-finance reform--supported by Democrats and Republicans alike--is an attack on free speech. Campaign-finance reform is the last, best hope we have to limit career politicians. Attacks on free speech are more about calling people anti-American who don't agree with the war in Iraq, or limiting the press coverage of fallen soldiers' coming home in coffins.
Glenn DiTomaso
Brockton, Mass.
Thanks to George Will for his concise and well-written article on free speech. The conservative viewpoint on this issue was laid down well in all its logical clearness and shown in juxtaposition to the liberal viewpoint on the matter, whose logic is remarkably less clear. My hope is that the article will spark much thought and soul-searching regarding free speech, political speech, Internet speech, etc., and where America is heading on this issue. We need more open, honest and logically structured arguments like this one on both sides of the political spectrum. We can do with less "politics as usual" in the form of personal assaults.
Guy Peterson
Tulsa, Okla.
I am a high-school math teacher in South Carolina. A colleague and I were reading your Dec. 5 article "Analyze These!" about two math geniuses and were astonished by the statement that the "quintic" is "one step up from the dread quadratic equation." A quintic function is a function with five in the exponent, and a quadratic function is a function with two in the exponent. Therefore, "one step up" is incorrect--it should have read three steps up. The progression goes from quadratic to cubic to quartic to quintic functions.
Michelle Greene
Lamar, S.C.
In "Ten Eco-Friendly Companies" (Next frontiers, Nov. 21), a reference was made to the disposal of palm-oil waste by Aarhus of Port Newark, N.J. In fact, the company, AarhusKarlshamn USA, Inc., does not refine or sell the palm oil used in manufacturing M&Ms, does not generate palm-oil waste in its manufacturing and refining operations and does not dispose of vegetable oil from its operations in landfills. The company produces a byproduct in its refining operations, called deodorizer distillate, which it sells to other manufacturers for a variety of uses. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.
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