To think we have lost sight of what "thin" looks like as much as what "fat" looks like

[marmitenot]

Hi
My daughter is recovering (well) from anorexia. At her worst she was on the 3rd centile for weight for her height and age. The terrifying thing is that she did not look any different to many girls in her year at school and certainly nowhere near as skinny as many women/teens in the public eye. As parents we had no idea that she was dangerously underweight as she didn't look different to many of her peers.

There has been a lot of publicity of how society's perception of what is overweight has changed. Aibu to think that the same has happened with the perception of what is underweight is.

My daughter is now in the healthy weight range with a bit more to go, but out of danger and heading in the right direction.

I lost my daughter to anorexia.

And there is nothing you can do to help. If you try to help it only gets worse. The denial. Baggy jumpers "can I borrow yours". The 5 minutes in the toilet before meals filling up on water. ragged is so spot on. The working in the delicatessen, the interest in food, yet eating a slice of cucumber, carrot and drinking the alcohol for the sugar while joining in the partying so you are not left out. But you can never deny the skeletal, grey skin, lacklustre eyes. The onset. Cancer of the mind. The body starts to consume the organs and so by 30-35 heart attack is common, by 20-23 it is too late to stop it. It is a slow death.

Yes WildRumpy you have seen it too.

And they do look and stare. I saw my daughter cross the street on a lovely summer day, between the trees, everybody else enjoying the sun, shopping on a tranquil day. Yet she moved like a ghost. I could see it then. And they all stopped and stared. All of them. So shocked. And there is nothing, nothing you can do.

some celebrities that look very thin like Kate Bosworth and Rachel Zoe
Who?

The really famous person who is drastically underweight is Angelina Jolie.
Look at her in Tomb Raiser or Mr&Mrs Smith compared to now.
Not a good look.

surroundme
A lady down our road is Anorexic.
I assume she is about 40 because she was an adult when we moved here 20 years ago.
Her skin looks awful and her wrist bones stick out.
But her head drives her on.

I think celebrities, particularly in the US, are definitely getting thinner. And if you ever remark that, Hilary Rhoda for example, appears to have lost a lot of weight, you get jumped on for being prejudiced against slim people.

I'm so sorry surroundme. You must be broken-hearted .

Hospitalised anorexics tend to be scrawnier than those bumbling along in the community, though, they aren't like community anorexics. And bulimics are sneakiest of all, best hiders.

Look for the skeletal face (huge eyes) and skeletal hands poking out of big clothes. Combined with no shape bottom whatsoever.
The girl like that who mentions the 5 foods she's given up for Lent.
Long term anorexia causes osteoporosis so relatively young women with hunch backs.
The person who suddenly disappears when cake is offered around.
There are things that go wrong with eyes, skin and hair and mood, too, but I can't explain.

I know some dripping wet barely weigh 9 stone women at 6' tall who aren't like any of that. healthy and Not anorexics.

If you google 'anorexic models' you'll find no shortage of images. But yet they're working women, some people find their look fine. This lady is trying hard to promote herself as a sexy model.

Xpost, so sorry about your loss,Surround.

I'm so glad you said that about the stare,surround, I wasn't sure, but I was pretty sure iyswim that they had a certain stare. There's a girl on the train... argh. She's a good weight recently (has a steady boyfriend). Her eyes have perked up so much. I hope she comes thru okay.

ragged you cannot categorise anorexic girls as bumbling, community or hospitalised. It is not a choice. An anorexic doesn't try to promote themselves. You have experience. Please use it wisely.

Sorry, I meant the anorexics themselves develop a certain look in their eyes. Like they're not quite here and present, I guess it goes with (?any) mental illness.

They are not in control. They know it. You know it. They know you know it. You know they know you knew it kind of thing....etc. And still there is nothing you can do. Anorexia is a drug like alcohol, tobacco, weed, shoplifting, gambling, etc. The girl in the picture knows she is at the edge of no return, but it is all she has.

*TheWildRumpyPumpus: I spent months in a psych hospital (PND) but living with about 15 girls with anorexia.

NONE of them had bodies like those of the average slim teenager you would sit next to at school.

That may have been where your daughter was heading, and it's wonderful that she is getting better. But don't think for a minute that inpatients at eating disorder clinics could walk down the street without people turning and staring.*

I'm sure this isn't your intention, but your post implies that the OP's daughter was skinny enough to be "properly anorexia". If you have any experience of anorexia you will know what a desperately unhelpful thing this is to say, so you might want to reframe any further comments you make.

I think I said that lady was promoting her body as sexy, I don't know if she wants to promote anorexia too (wouldn't surprise me, world is a strange place).

I thought most of us bumbled thru life in community not hospitals.

I also hate this mn thing 'kids are supposed to be skinny and have visible ribs'

It's not a MN thing according to paediatricians

Because "In the UK, 25% of boys and 33% of girls between the ages of two and 19 are overweight or obese" (taken from the link), I imagine some people still find this hard to accept.

Hilary Rhoda has lost a lot of weight tbf Mintyy.

If you Google her before and after pictures I'd say it was very clear from the changes to her face that she's someone who is currently well below their personal ideal healthy weight.

In my teens I knew 2 girls who were anorexic. One was in hospital on a feeding tube.

I was slimmer than both but healthy. Some of us just are. My BMI in my teens was about 16.5-17. I think.

People carry weighty differently. Also when a teenager has a growth spurt they do tend to look like a beanpole for a bit until they fill out. Colt like almost.

I should add that in fairness both of these girls were having treatment so and had been for a while so as a result had started to look more healthy that's they did at one point.

I can only imagine what OP wanted from this thread - I'm not her - maybe it was more about reassurance that she didn't do something wrong to make her daughter ill than about comparing her daughter to others. Maybe that's way off. But I for one am not getting much other than a feeling of being patronised.

"Anorexics do this... " "Pro-anorexics call themselves this..." "I was in a hospital and this is what anorexics look like..."

We're not a homogenous group. My hospital is different to the next. My experience of anorexia is probably nothing like anyone else's.

The post wasn't about what anorexics are or aren't, it was about society's ideas about underweight/overweight.

There are people here who've lost loved ones to an illness which can be invisible to the point just before someone dies, because whether we think we know the signs, for many a huge part of having this illness is that we become adept at hiding those signs.

You can't see inside someone's else body to see if their organs are intact, and if my bones are bigger than someone else's then they are bound to weigh less than me and look thinner, even if our body fat percentage is the same.

Sorry to get dramatic but this is exactly the kind of thread that reinforces the idea that people are always looking to see how skinny you are.

Aj has always been skinny look at these old photos www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3002965/PICTURE-EXCLUSIVE-Angelina-Jolie-s-Las-Vegas-wedding-Billy-Bob-Thornton-bride-wore-JEANS.html she probably bulked up for tr

Anyone who thinks Hilary Rhoda looks the way she does currently naturally, and without a strict diet and punishing regime in the gym is frankly kidding themselves. I don't understand the denial around it.

That's interesting about your school in the 80s, Pilchard
I was at school 1960s - early 70s; there were no overweight kids in my primary school (ages 5-11), just one out of 500+ in my secondary school.
We only knew about calories from chemistry and didn't connect them to food.
I didn't know anyone my age dieting, until my mid-20s, around 1980.

Amazing we had no food issues at school: dinners were compulsory, horrible, no choices and at primary school we had to sit the entire lunch break if necessary, to finish every scrap.

I once vomited up something I hated and was immediately forced to eat my vomit. We were smacked on the legs if we tried to leave and I was once sent to the head to be caned for cheekiness, because I smiled, trying to appease the scary teacher shouting at me to eat.

I hated school, but it didn't affect my eating nice food at home. Same with my friends. Noone considered weight then.

Surround I'm so sorry you lost your daughter.

I think we have lost sight of what a "normal" weight is. It seems "role models" fall into two camps - the super skinny super model type or the super morbidly obese type like Beth Ditto. They are equally bad.

Also the clothes sizing has changed a lot since my teenage years in the 70s. In my teenage day size 10 was 32 22 34 which I could never have got into (I wore 12s or 14s) . I can happily wear size 10 now which must equate to nearly size 14 in old money. I am the same weight at 54 as I was at 18 (nine and a half stone, five foot 7)

Sorry, lots of posts since Pilchard's school one.

"The post wasn't about what anorexics are or aren't, it was about society's ideas about underweight/overweight."

But OP brought up her DD's low weight and then stated that other girls are thinner or as thin. She was making weight comparisons. This thread has highlighted that we have warped views of what is "too thin", as well as "too fat". So, she was right but did it in a roundabout way.

People with AN always get dragged into these decisions because we constantly hear shit in the media like "X looks anorexic".