4:20 p.m. - 03/16/02
back on the warpath.
I feel like I'm going too far, and I feel like we have so many more miles to tread. It's a never-ending process. The more letters I write, the more ads pop up for companies that deserve them. Today AOL promises to tell you if you're fat, e-diets has a string of competition, and the drug industry is booming.
You want to know where Tracy is today? So do I...
This is fucking unfair.
*
to: oxygen.com
category: feedback
regarding: BMI indicators
status: unsent (if anyone wants to edit this to 500 characters, feel free- I don't have the energy)
I have to admit I came to your site very angry this afternoon. I was led here by a link on AOL with that asked the ever intriguing question, "Are you fat?" and promised that with a few quick numbers it could determine the truth about my weight. The link, I discovered, was a connection to your BMI calculator, a not uncommon service provided on-line. I know this because I used such services often in the depths of my eating disorder, bulimarexia, which I was hospitalized for toward the end of last year. I have to say I was surprised if not relieved, by the relative level of awareness displayed by your site. In general the Internet (not to mention other forms of media) are littered with subtle attacks at a person's self-worth through their weight. The attention to eating disorders discussed in the "underweight" category of your results is rarely paralleled at similar sites. However, as a recovering ED sufferer, who has become even more vigilant about the issue through the loss of her roommate to this illness, I do have a few suggestions that I honestly hope you will take into consideration. For all our sakes'.
1.) On the 'healthy weight' result page you guide against gaining weight in the coming years, but you do not warn against losing weight as well. Balance out the advice you give by explaining that the goal is to sustain a healthy weight, which is known to fluctuate between five and ten pounds in either direction, but not to go too far up *or* down.
2.) Discuss eating disorders, or give *credible, responsible* links about them on the healthy weight page in addition to the information for underweight results. When I was in my eating disorder, I was often motivated to continue my destructive behavior because the web still said I was healthy. Explain on all results pages that eating disorders have symptoms, such as an obsession with body weight and shape, distorted body image, food rituals, perfectionism etc, that can take over in a person even at a healthy weight. One of the first things I discovered in the hospital was that no one can point out someone with an eating disorder. There simply is no such thing as "looking anorexic" or bulimic etc. People suffer in all weight groups, and the behaviors are far more important than the outcome because you don't have to lose weight to lose your life, both in the everyday sense, and in the final one.
3.) Remember that we are currently creating a society so detrimental that being reasonable about weight loss isn't enough. It isn't enough to not be a proponent of eating disorders and the parts of our culture that support them. There has to be a diligent, vocal argument against those messages, and you have the roots of that here. It just needs to blossom a bit.
Thank you for your time and consideration. This is a very important matter to me, and I hope you will understand that importance and strive toward appropriate change.
Sincerely,
Mary Lastname
*
to: discreetdrugs.com
regarding: improvement
status: received by company, awaiting reply
Normally, I'd assume a company is not interested in being told its business, but your habits became my business when an ad popped up linking me to buy diet drugs at your site. It remained my business when you offered a feedback link, asking for my advice on how to improve your site. I think you can improve your site by getting honest with yourselves. Giving people who feel shame about a condition like herpes a confidential method to obtain treatment is one thing (though I have to wonder if we don't contribute to that shame by being so secretive- and when did the common incompetence of doctors negate the incompetance of the rest of us as non-medical professionals?) but let's face facts: the core of your business is in weight loss drugs. You have the most medications for that category, they're at the top of your list, and they're what I see ads popping up on my computer for. I guess a year ago I would have gone along saying nothing, thinking you have the right to help people lose weight, (these things change when one is hospitilized for and loses a dear friend to an eating disorder) but do you? Do you have the right to tell people that just because they happened to be looking at a site you figure is related to weight concern, they are overweight? Do you have the right to suck in eating disorder patients and give them a confidential way to obtain dangerous drugs, so long as they have the cash and the story? Do you have the right to contribute so fatally, not only through your products but through the implication of your industry's massive growth, to a society that preys upon a conditioned shame? Tell me how you brush that aside enough to sleep at night because *I* have trouble with it, and I need a lot more than a pill to cure my concern.
You can improve your company by taking an honest look at who you are and what you're doing. If you ask me (which you did, with your feedback link) the entire diet-drug industry needs to lose some fucking weight.
Mary Lastname
Guess whose banner's on my screen right now? Ediets. I really don't want to be a zealot, but is the whole world mocking me?
Other companies that need to be yelled at: nickelodeon, aol, and all the e-diets knockoffs.
an exhausted chord
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