Letter To ‘Jane’: Clothes And Travel Won’t Cure My ED

I have spent about half of my life dealing with bipolar disorder and bulimia. I’ve been in and out of therapy and treatment, taken countless different medications, and engaged in many forms of self-destruction. It sometimes feels like a never-ending cycle, like I’m stuck in a black hole of depression and ice cream. It’s a really hard thing to deal with, especially for 12 years straight and with no sign of improvement.

So imagine how I felt when I loaded up the female-oriented website xojane today and saw an intro piece from the newly-hired galadarling, chronicling her experience with depression and an eating disorder of her own. The general theme of the article? Buy pretty clothes and jump ship to another country, all your problems will be solved. I wish it were that easy. I wish I could decline medication for my mental illness and not go completely batshit insane. I wish I could afford to medicate with clothing instead of pills. How nice it must be to be a person that can afford to go out and buy all those clothes while the rest of us plebes are struggling to pay for medications and therapy, even with health insurance.

Me, at age 14, two years into my battle with bulimia

I’ve never been Gala’s biggest fan, but this article really struck a nerve with me. She says she declined psychiatric medication because weight gain was a “known side effect,” and instead turned to EFT (emotional freedom technique). And she claims that this caused her eating disorder to vanish “practically overnight.” Um, I didn’t know eating disorders did that. Hell, it’s been 12 years and I still struggle with bulimia. It’s not that easy and it’s incredibly dangerous to assert that it is.

When you put the idea into people’s heads that they should be able to beat their eating disorder overnight, you are setting them up for failure. I’m happy for Gala that she was able to overcome her eating disorder—really, I am—but as someone who has been fighting for 12 years with no success? It makes me feel like I suck, plain and simple. She offers no words of support for those of us who struggle and struggle and struggle, and instead chooses to ignore us and our experiences.

What makes it worse is the (maybe indirect) assertion that retail therapy will help depression and poor body image. I don’t know about anyone else, but the fashion industry is one of the causes of my shitty body image. Going into stores that only carry certain sizes and trying on clothes in front of unforgiving mirrors in harsh lighting… that sounds like a blast. Yup, that’s the end of all my problems right there!

Still fighting it at age 24

I will say right now that I’m really disappointed in a publication that I’ve read and enjoyed for a number of years. Not for hiring Gala, because my distaste with her blog is my own opinion and not everyone feels that way. Rather, I’m disappointed that they would publish this article without thinking of how it would come off to their community of readers who have been very vocal about their longtime struggles with depression, eating disorders, and financial troubles. And their response? Calling the negative (and, yes, some straight-up mean) commenters “haters.” 14-year-old boys call people haters. Grown women running a public website should not be referring to people with dissenting opinions as haters. That’s incredibly dismissive of the valid concerns being discussed and it reeks of immaturity. I expected more from a website run by women I looked up to. Instead, I got an article full of privilege-denial and glitter.

Depression and eating disorders are not cured with materialism. Do not pretend like they are just to get page views.

What do you think of the way their article handled the subjects of eating disorders and depression? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Written by Alisse Desrosiers
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Opinions stated in our editorials do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Feminspire and its staff as a whole, but instead reflect the opinions of the writer.

Header image courtesy of galadarling.com

http://daysofdane.blogspot.com bigdane

A lot of times extreme materialism can be a sign of depression or a spending addiction (usually resulting from depression). I know I’m happy when I don’t need to shop all the time – the second I get depressed I find myself constantly wandering in and out of shops when I’m not at work. I think overlooking this fact (becoming a “brand addict” and shopping so often the clerks send you presents) means one ignores that perhaps she is still attempting to fill a hole, it’s just easier to do when you have a ton of stuff. If she is truly happy, that’s awesome, but I wonder…
Tricia Gilbride

There were a few articles recently posted to Gawker/Refinery29, etc. criticizing xoJane for including discussion of mental illness/depression/addiction so frequently in articles about beauty, like it was some schtick, and my reaction was that THAT IS WHAT I LIKE ABOUT XOJANE. I don’t love everything posted, but at least they’re willing to talk about beauty and fashion without pretending it’s a cure all. If it really was that simple for Gala Darling, cool. But yeah, that article is so dismissive of what the experiences of 99.9% of people who suffer from mental illness go through.
Marijka

Thanks for saying what needed to be said. I wish you luck overcoming your ED and bipolar. I know how tough it is.
- http://www.facebook.com/alisse.desrosiers Alisse Marie
  
  Thanks. That means a lot
AlisonFreer

This was very eloquently written. Plus you are a beauty! Lots of love and luck to you. <3
- http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter
  
  Ditto x 100000000.
Pooh

Thank you for this. You said what needs to be said succinctly and without name calling. Good luck to you.
Cheers.
http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter

To be fair, we were called ” hatters” … And I fully expect you all to supply me with new fascinators. You are a lovely person, inside and out. Great article.
- http://www.facebook.com/alisse.desrosiers Alisse Marie
  
  I was literally crying with laughter over the “hatters gonna hat” comment yesterday.
  - http://www.xojane.com/author/eve Eve Vawter
    
    So was I! It srsly made me lolcry. Too funny. At least we got that out of it.
S_kitty

If always being on some kind of very restrictive special diet (raw or cleanse or whatever this week’s one is) = totally cured of ED, then she’s totally cure of ED!

Oh wait, people with ED often make very strict rules about which foods they can allow themselves to eat… Oops.
http://www.facebook.com/lolco Lexie Cooper

Thank you for writing this. I loved Gala Darling and her site for a long time, until I just realized (mainly via the comments on the article you’re criticizing) that a lot of it is bullshit. Not having gone through an ED myself, I don’t know how it goes, but I get the feeling from the dozens of other commenters who HAVE gone through body image issues that eating disorders don’t just “disappear… overnight” like Darling says.

That said, I still do appreciate the message she’s sending out – “radical self love,” learning to accept yourself for who you are, flaws and all. I just don’t know that she’s the most sincere, genuine person behind it.
http://twitter.com/MarjorieWinter Marjorie Winter

I adore you and what you have written here. I also struggle with the kind of mental illness, i.e. the actual, real kind, in which you cannot simply turn down medication because you are watching your weight or whatever. I really appreciated you bringing up the fact that the many xojane readers cannot afford to rush out and buy a pretty dress everytime they are feeling blue. As a poor, struggling, depressed student from a low socio-economic background who lives on 2 minute ramen and, like you, has to budget just to get scripts filled, reading Gala’s article made me feel even more depressed. Because while it wouldn’t cure my depression and other issues it would be nice every once in a while … or, like, ever … to be able to buy something fancy and nice just for me. But instead we’re all having this shit rubbed in our face by a materialistic, vacuous woman who claims she cured an ED by tapping herself. Yeah, Gala’s article made me feel like shit too, until I realised that she is the one who should feel like shit about it.