What's our problem?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about body image and eating disorders.

Since society has clearly become irrational and disordered about the importance of appearance, we've lost sight of the fact that some people truly have brain problems that distort their visual and physical sensations and they literally see their reflection and feel their bodies in distorted ways that are just as real to them as the distance to the end of our fingers is to the rest of us.

Like amputees who feel their lost limbs, brains can truly distort reality.

Malnutrition can trigger this delusion. It can maintain the delusion. And it can lock the patient into perpetuating the delusion by making them blind to it and unable to calculate the risks and rewards of continuing.

They do not choose this. The rest of us are choosing, however. Choosing to overvalue appearance, to perseverate about the shape of our body, to talk endlessly about the ways we are torturing our bodies in the service of some mythical perfection.

Some people have brain disease. What's our excuse?

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