I love my roommate. She's an awesome person who offers to cook for me and bake me goodies. It's just too bad she's more concerned about feeding me than actually feeding herself.
She's a normal person who spends an hour every morning putting on her make-up to go to school. And she's really quite beautiful-- a typical girly-girl. From my experience with people, starving oneself is a part of the package of being considered pretty and dainty (and, well, girly). She has this horrible relationship with food, where the less she eats, the more proud she feels. I used to hate it whenever she says "I have to force myself to eat" as if it were something good to say. I don't know how many conversations we've had where she's tried to tell me "everyone's worried about me because I don't eat. But no one can make me do anything." I felt especially peculiar last weekend when I came back to my apartment after having just visited my family for two days, when the first thing she said to me was, "I lost two pounds!" I used to think that she was just trying to show off in front of me (because I'm soooo not like that), but now, I'm not so sure. I think she needs help.
A part of me thinks she's normal, and that she's doing okay, and that it may be her way of doing things. And perhaps, that's what I'd like to think. But everytime I see her actions, like her rumagging through the fridge and then giving up saying "I'd rather smoke than eat something," combined with her insistence on telling me with pride about how little she ate that day, I'm not so sure I can just sit back and watch anymore.
But then again, I have no idea what course of action I should be pursuing. We're not particularly close, and I don't want to come off as intrusive.
But her situation has made me think about how it's utterly ridiculous that a part of being attractive in this culture manifests in so many ugly ways. Since when has smoking as a replacement for eating become attractive? I'm not sure, but my roommate isn't the first person I know to do that. Or how about starving oneself? To get into such annatural state of pretty thinness, a person would have to hear an awful lot of ugly sounding rumbles coming from their stomach. Would you still think it's attractive for a person to be thin, knowing that the person used harmful ways to attain that body?
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is that she needs to fix herself. Let her family worry about her health and just keep involving her when you treat yourself. Also, don't let her make you gain weight...when I went thru my eating disorders both bulimia and anorexia I tried to make people gain weight so I felt like I was a victor and way stronger than them...I would add extra butter and sugar...No one ever complained, but inside I knew my sabotage game.