Confirmation bias: The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. (Oxford English Dictionary.)
I spent two years at Middlebury struggling with an eating disorder. In those two years, I took a million separate incidents as confirmation of the truth of my negative self talk, self hatred and body image problem. Middlebury provided plenty of evidence for my mind to twist to support my flawed thinking. Yes, my eating disorder is a voice inside my head that I live with full time. It is my constant companion and it is constantly looking for confirmation that it is telling me the truth. Yes, my eating disorder is internal but it steals from the outside world. And I am telling you that our Middlebury culture fed that voice.
We have a problem and no one talks about it. We are starting to break the silence through groups such as Every Body and The Resilience Project, but what we need is a cultural change. We live on a campus of girls that subsist on salads, spend an hour on the elliptical every day and dress in the tightest clothes they own on the weekend because they feel like it’s the only way to attract male attention. I’ve had men at parties tell me I’m much hotter in my red lipstick and crop top than I am in my favorite sweater and funky purple lipstick. I’ve had conversations with female friends where we compete over who hates her body more. Trading I hate my legs I want yours and Yeah but your stomach is so flat look at mine. I’ve walked into the dining hall and seen the line at the salad bar and thought I need to be like those girls, strong enough to just eat salad. I’ve been on the elliptical at the gym and seen that the girl next to me has been on the elliptical for ninety minutes and thought that I am not enough if I can only do sixty minutes.
You can tell me that all of these are internal experiences, that I’m twisting what I see to fit in the lens of my eating disorder, but I challenge that. We are a school filled with beautiful women who hate themselves. I want to tell every woman on our campus that she should eat what she wants, that she doesn’t need to feel guilty if she can’t make it to the gym one day. I want to tell the person who told me during sex that I was the fattest person they’d ever had sex with that their words have been replayed in my head a thousand times.
I will end with a poem from Rupi Kaur’s collection milk and honey.
“i want to apologize to all the women
i have called pretty
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is the most you have to be proud of when your
spirit has crushed mountains
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient or you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re pretty
but because you are so much more than that”
Dear Middlebury, let’s start replacing pretty with resilient, extraordinary, and intelligent.
Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, go to the National Eating Disorders Association website (https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/) to learn about the resources that are available.
