Let’s talk about food policing, virality, and editor responsibility

Let’s talk about that Elle piece that pretty much everyone in the Twittersphere was talking about today.

When I first read it, I had feelings. I didn’t stop to examine those feelings, as others smarter and more thoughtful than I am did, and I posted the article as a sort of hate-read. Upon reading a few posts from these more thoughtful women (check out this tweet from Jodie Layne, and Meredith Graves posted a few great ones if you want to take a look) I took down my post.

The reason I had so many feelings about that post is because it reminded me so much of my own health goals at one point, but without the discipline to actually follow through (or, ahem, the money/access to such foods).

I dealt with, and still deal with, an eating disorder for years, and masked a lot of that in a “quest for health.”

This is a whole load of projection and while I’m not saying the subject herself has an eating disorder, it was still a pretty triggering read. Also, because of my past lack of ability to actually “succeed” in what she’s made a lifestyle of, it was weirdly mixed with envy.

That’s a very strange and hard realization to admit, but I wonder if that’s why it’s struck such a cord with so many young women — because so many of us are in a similar boat, and have experienced or are currently experiencing disordered eating.

Some people can take “fitspo,” “clean eating,” and all the other trendy ways of saying “I aim to only eat the healthiest things possible” so far that it can become an eating disorder — in fact, there’s name for it now, and that name is orthorexia. However, the line between truly wanting to do what’s good for your body and using healthy foods as a method to excessively whittle your body down is a thin one, and it’s not one that’s easily detectible from the outside. While eating disorders are dangerous behavior, it’s also dangerous to police the choices of others — and discussions about the health of other women are discussions that should not be had outside of the framework of true care and love.

Regardless of why other women reacted to the article, however, the main point is this — women receive so much policing on a daily basis about what to wear, say, and even how their faces should look — why are we policing each OTHER about what we eat?

I didn’t post the link to this article (though I’m sure you’ve already read it) because I now feel bad for the woman in question. I worry that tonight, she’s probably wondering what went wrong. That she might’ve been completely unprepared for the backlash, and truly wanted to share her lifestyle with readers.

That’s why I also take issue with the editors who decided to publish this piece.

There has been a lot of talk in the industry lately about the responsibility of editors when it comes to personal stories and the responsibility to protect writers/subjects of stories like these, and I wonder how cognizant this woman was of the potential negative backlash of the story — I know the editors were aware of its viral potential as a hate-read.

We have to do better, both as editors when stories like this arise, and as readers in general when these things pop up on our screens. I promise to sit with my feelings in the future before reacting harshly and policing the choices of others, when really I’m feeling hurt and tender of my own accord.