The Origins of Anorexia

In Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s essay, “The Origins of Anorexia Nervosa”, the reader is educated concerning how anorexia was first discovered and the reasons it appeared. Young girls first refused to eat simply because of the marital pressures placed on them at an early age or simply to gain attention. Anorexia was a polite way to be defiant to ones parents. Food was so associated with love and caring in the Victorian era that a refusal to eat was seen as a refusal to accept love. Love was then poured on the young woman to somehow reverse how she obviously felt.


In our modern era, I think that the association between love and food has diminished to almost no connection at all. We see the showing of love with the giving of food in older generations but the younger generations show no trace of such affection associated with food. We see food as an indulgence, not as something that brings us together and shows our affection for one another.


Young girls now associate food with being overweight, not with affection. The reasons for Anorexia have shifted. Young girls refuse to eat now because food is seen as a bad thing that will make you fat. It is seen as a bad thing, not a good thing. However, the same rings true through the history of Anorexia. Young women manipulate their food intake to get what they want. In the Victorian era, young women wanted to be lavished with attention and they refused to eat to obtain that. Now, young women want to be known as having a “perfect” body, to be as slim as possible. They achieve this by refusing to eat.

Antiques

My mother used to collect antiques. Our house used to be filled with them. Everything from portraits of the President Washington and his wife, Martha, to old mirrors added a sense of history to our home. I loved it. Eventually she came to the conclusion that there is hardly any importance to material things, that something that was here a hundred years ago was no more important than something ten years old. She has slowly gotten rid of several cherished pieces of furniture.


However, I have hoarded several things that now make up the furniture in my bedroom. I love the history contained in antiques. I love that the mirror that hangs on my wall not only reflects my face today, but also reflected the faces of people long gone. That same mirror hung on the wall of someone else’s home, reflected the history of their family. I love to think of the secrets each thing holds. My dresser not only holds my clothes, but also held other’s clothes dating back heavens know how many years into the past.


I feel as though everything that I use, from my nightstand to my bed has a history, and has a past. By my using it I am only adding to that memoir, only adding years to its life. People may think I am ridiculous. Maybe I just love history too much, but I love the feeling that my life is somehow tied to the lives of those who lived so long before my birth was even thought of.

Functional Families

What really makes a family “functional” or “dysfunctional”? I believe that there is a fine line between the art of “functioning” and NOT “functioning” as a family. I believe that every family has aspects of both a functional living situation and a dysfunctional living situation.

Each family is completely unique. We all have separate values and aspirations, different motives and priorities. Every family has a different type of glue that holds them together. However, I believe that every family shares a common bond of love.

It is how we nurture our love for our family members that determines how “functional” a family is. Let’s face it. Although we love our family, we do make mistakes. We forget how important they really are to us. We lose sight of the importance of keeping their best interests in mind. I believe that if we cherish the love we have for our family, that we will be able to function as a family unit. However, when that love becomes second place to our own selfish wants and needs, we lose the ability to smoothly operate as a family.

Casual Homework Evening.... With ACDC

 I sit here, in my spandex leggings, horse camp staff T shirt, bare feet and messy hairdo, all wrapped up in blankets and bobbin my head to ACDC.  This is the way I do my homework. I have papers strewn on my bed, my Prentice Hall textbook sitting placidly next to my laptop, waiting for me to pick it up, to be productive and get something done. My laptop feels hot even through the blankets covering my lap. My ears are starting to ache from my ipod headphones.

 My power hours are from 4:00pm to about 10:30pm. This is when I like to write. In the back of my mind I can hear myself worrying about assignments due, tests to study for. I look around at my room, clothes scattered across my floor, and I start to get anxious. My sister Susanna is trying on outfits in her room. She and I are going away for the weekend. I have to clean, do laundry, and get all my homework done before tomorrow morning at 8:00am. She comes in my room every five to ten minutes to ask if this or that looks okay. I am distracted in my response.

My ipod changes to Alabama. A slow song.  My mood instantly changes. It is strange how music can affect your mood so quickly. One minute, ACDC is screaming “TNT” in my ears and my stress level escalades. Then next Alabama sings “How do you Fall in Love?” and my breathing eases, my typing on the computer becomes less jarred and more fluid. I was doing math homework at school and overheard some nursing students discussing how music can affect patients. Music releases endorphins and those endorphins ease pain. It makes sense. Certain music can make your body relax, can make you concentrate, and can make you feel different emotions.

As I complete assignment after assignment, as the music eases the worry in the back of my mind, I start to look forward to the weekend ahead. It gives me that extra push to get everything done, and do it well. I just don’t think I will turn my playlist back to ACDC.

Would you let YOU'R Mom see your Facebook?

Online social networking can sometimes be tricky. It is so easy to misrepresent yourself online because you are never held accountable for the person you portray on the internet. However, I try to be as genuine on my Facebook account as I am in person. The question asked is whether or not we would allow our parents to be “friends” with us on Facebook. Personally, I feel that the person I am on my Facebook is the same person that I am to my mother. I would have no problem with her viewing my profile. Actually, I show her pictures on Facebook of my friends or members of our family. She is familiar with what I post online simply because I am always saying “Oh, hey Mom! Come and see this!”

My mother refuses to sign up for Facebook. She says that most of it is a waste of time. I can see her point. Some people get carried away with how much they post to their pages. She laughs and cracks jokes at people who document their whole day through their status. However, she is not above sitting next to me on the couch and scanning through my newsfeed with me. My mother is from the age of handwritten letters and phone calls, not facebook. I think she refuses to get her own account simply because it would be hard for her to adjust to. I try to explain to her that it is a nice way to keep up with people, she argues that you can just call somebody and ask how they’ve been.

I think that the younger generation loves facebook simply because it is basically social multitasking. We have become a generation of multitaskers. We hardly ever do just one single thing at a time. The idea of being able to catch up with our all of our friends at once, in a fast paced manner seems practical and convenient to us. We like to be able to log in to our accounts, scroll down our newsfeed see what “everybody” is doing within a few minutes. We like to be able to carry on different conversations all at once.

As nice as Facebook is, I think that we can all agree that there is nothing like a personal phone call, a handwritten letter, or a face to face chat with a friend. Facebook can sometimes seem impersonal whereas old fashioned methods of communication have a nostalgic comfort and closeness attached.  I try to take the best of both worlds and use the old and the new in my social networking.