Welcome

Welcome to the Vassar Better Body Image Project blog.

"In an environment increasingly occupied with appearances, BBIP seeks to promote healthy body image on campus, and to foster a spirit of community without judgment. We feel that college is a time of experimentation, adjustment, and discovery not only of an intellectual nature, but also in terms of our bodies. In working with the Office of Health Education, our mission is to help students pursue health in the most comprehensive sense, striving toward a state of physical and psychological well-being."
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So. Hello Everyone! Our mission statement, above, is the most formal expression of our goals as a group. However, we want this blog to be as fun as it is serious, a place for reflection but also for recreation. We would love to hear whatever you have to say about any issues pertaining to body image - which, we know, is a huge (limitless?) area. What we're really interested in, for the most part, are your personal stories. Everyone lives with a "body image," and encounters millions more everyday. What does that feel like? When have you been made hyper-aware of it?

Submission steps:
1. Email your experience to bbipvassar@gmail.com
2. You can email us anything related to body image issues. This is HUGE; it covers almost anything. Stories, photos, features, links, your own writing... Get creative (or not)!
3. Please DO NOT use real names (except your own if you are comfortable with that.) You can make up pseudonyms instead, which is more fun anyway. We have the rights to edit out anyone's name if we deem it necessary.
4. Now go have fun and think about something other than bodies.

- BBIP

Things on campus

that make me smile are things like this:

Source: Bathroom by the media cloisters

Once upon a time

a silly me was a junior in high school. In my school, sophomores, juniors and seniors were all allowed to go to the prom at the end of the school year. Freshmen were allowed upon invitation from an upperclassmen. 

I was wearing a great dress. A vintage dress. Coral or apricot. It used to be my mother's. It's pretty fabulous. That's beside the point of this story. The point is to extend the dangers of not eating, and the consequences. 

I wanted to look great. My parents were out of town. I didn't really know how I was getting back from prom, especially since the trains weren't running all that late that night. No one knew how much I was eating that day. No one could make sure I was eating. The thing is, I wasn't even having problems with this whole eating thing. I kind of contained my "relapses" to special events. Prom was one of the few of those. 

I think I had half a bag of salad that day. My high school also allowed us to drink three glasses of wine or beer at this prom (for free, well, after you had paid the 35 dollar entrance of course). Need I say more? I'm small. I'm a girl. After the first glass of wine (which weren't one drink sized, because they liked to fill the glasses to the top) I was getting tipsy. By the second? I was slurring. I couldn't walk straight - heck I was wearing heels. What would you expect?

At some point, the headmaster talked to me. At some point, some other teachers talked to me. At some point, some teacher I don't even know threw me into a bathroom stall. I came out, she asked if I were going to be sick again and I said: "No." not knowing that she thought I had puked (which, for the record, I hadn't). 

A couple of days later it turns out that I was one of a few people who got in trouble for "clogging the hotel's bathrooms" and I was about to get suspended or expelled for a day or two. My headmaster was not the best one. The teachers at the dance talked some sense into him, especially given most of our's academic records. Really, it could have been their fault for providing us with free liquor anyway. 

Although there were many factors that could have caused me to get that drunk (the fact that they let 16-year-old girls drink three glasses of wine in less than an hour, which actually were much more of the size of six drinks of wine), I should have eaten that day. It would have saved me some embarrassing moments, and some shameful ones too. Being sent into the principal's office is, for someone like me, the worst thing in the world. 

About a year ago, I read about drunkorexia. Basically, it's when someone doesn't eat because they want to save the calories for alcoholic drinks. Great? No. It's terrible. Although this is not what I was doing - I wanted to look good by not eating - it's related. 

Don't drink and not eat. Eat and drink. Or eat and don't drink. 

Positivity

I love the way my eyes look when I am excited about something. 

"You look tired"

Someone said to me the other day. 

I wasn't tired. I wasn't exhausted. I had had 8 hours of sleep, and although the weather was a little gray, I wasn't tired. 

This made me feel a little less happy on the inside. Especially because it was, after all, a gray day, and I was now conscious of the fact that I looked tired - as in, less "attractive" than usual. 

Also, it made me tired. If people thought I was tired - I had to act tired too, right? Seems crazy, but that's how we may respond to these comments. 

I am sure my friend didn't mean it in a bad way, just a sympathetic way. 

Great Expectations

Written about two years ago:

Several years ago, I ate less and soon developed anorexia because I wanted to get rid of my (in my opinion) broad shoulders. In retrospect, I know that this is impossible, primarily because shoulders are made of bones, which was something that was beyond my comprehension at the time. But somehow, along with this, I also wanted my whole body to be thin. It might also have been a competition, a contest to get the most attention. And I did get it. However, I didn't want negative attention, especially not from people who I looked up to... 

I remember one day in 8th grade I was walking along a path at my school (a K-12th grade), and some seniors walked by and discussed my extremely thin body at the time (I can't look at pictures from back then). They asked me questions about whether I had an eating disorder, and I just ignored them, pretending that I didn't hear them. I don't remember exactly, but I think their comments really made me wonder what I was doing. Realizing (although I am not quite sure if it was those two seniors that triggered this) what my past year and a half had been like - storing food in my closet for the time when I would really allow myself to eat (especially candy), lying to my parents about what I had eaten at school that day, fainting in class - I decided that now was the time for me to eat again. I ate compulsively, obsessively and ate more than anyone else. Gaining weight and positive comments from my friends helped me understand that life was more than just being thin. Yet, in retrospect I developed another unhealthy food habit.

You may never get cured, but you have periods of times when you are "fine", when you're not thinking of that extra quarter of an inch an extra piece of bread will add to your stomach. Your competitive and perfectionist nature still sticks with you, and in moments of feeling that you're not in control of your life, it may come back to you. You may feel that people expect you to stay thin, yet at the same time eat the right amount of food. You may feel that people, maybe even parents, expect you to be healthy and not be either too thin or too fat. But what is too thin and what is too fat? For most people there is no range of thinness that is "okay". There is a border and it is the "flat" stomach that you want to maintain. There is no range.
Some say it's about control, perfection, pressure, etc. They also feel that it's the need to be "thin". What is thin? It's a subjective concept to each and every individual, but most people would agree that if they were too look at a "too thin" person's picture, they'd all agree it was unhealthy to be that way. For me, being "thin" is not the aim anymore. It used to be the consequence of my former goal: to stay in proportion to my body build. This meant that thin line between a stomach that is curved in and curved out. It doesn't make sense to me anymore: you can't look the same every day. You fluctuate. Because of these expectations, I expected myself to stay the right possible size, yet at the same time not starving myself. Sometimes I am sick of eating more food than people around me just because I feel the need to - I eat compulsively and sometimes I wish I didn't.

One millimeter too thin is unacceptable for people around you. They care. One millimeter too much is unacceptable for you. You care.

The people around me at Vassar may know nothing about this but yet I can feel the eyes of them when they think: "how can she eat all of that and stay so thin?" Or, alternatively, sometimes I feel like I have to eat  a lot just because I feel that people will think I have an eating disorder otherwise. This all because I'm skinny.

Submitted by anonymous.

Wondering

Sometimes I wonder whether I don't wear tight clothes because of how they feel on me (as in, they're not as comfortable as your pj's), or if it's because of the fact that I may look less attractive in them. 

Maybe it's a little bit of both. 

Submitted by anonymous.