Men with Eating Disorders Overlooked

[Marechal des logis Daedalus]

Male anorexia certainly does exist, but is probably not as apparently common in part due to all the escapist, mainstream expectations of beauty which women appear to have hammered in, despite it usually being physically impossible to embody these traits. The other issue is that men seem generally less likely to seek medical or psychological help for eating disorders, and all of that really stems from fears of being called "gay", because obviously only women have eating disorders and issues of self-image right? In a slightly related note, it is disconcerting to know how many men claim to be fine with those outside the heterosexual range, but still see all of it, and use the terms, in a negative context, especially for quick insults and cheap jokes.

I was mildly anorexic when I was 13 to 15 years old, and that does not mean that I was just abnormally thin. My intention was to loose weight because my body was growing and I was not comfortable with the changes. I had been subsisting off roughly 600 calories a day and bicycling many miles every week. Eventually that intake was reduced to even less. The shape of my ribs was visible, and I was wearing size 28 pants with belts.

I went unchallenged about it because my father had an absolutist view of health. He thought that fat- any fat at all -equals heart-failure, and that thinness is healthy, no matter how thin. No one noticed until my mother moved closer and began paying attention. I believe I had been "brainwashed" or perhaps conditioned, to put it more mildly, to believe that I had to be as thin as possible. I think this is what happens when one is surrounded by diet-culture for too long a time. I am trying no to go too deeply into the subject because of the pain and embarrassment, but I definitely had pertinent issues of self-image.