Obviously, and I want to say this right at the outset: I have absolutely no qualifications in anything that relates to medicine or psychology, nor have I ever been, in any practical sense and to my knowledge, in close observation of anyone with any marked mental illness, other than depression and various addictions.
There's been a lot of kerfuffle about some sociopath plugging some so-called 'managed anorexia' pill. Best source to read about it is in this interview by the excellent Johan Hari
I've felt very uneasy about quite a lot of the kerfuffle. For a start, I feel slightly queasy about the general assumption that as anorexia is classified as a mental illness, that is a fixed and incontrovertible fact. Yet, homosexuality was classified by the World Health Organisation as a mental illness as recently as 1990. In some contexts addictions are treated thus, even when it can be clearly demonstrated that they are not - or not even addictions: such as a 19-year old male from a conservative Christian background labelled a sex addict for wishing to masturbate five times a day and being aroused by the sight of his half-naked cousin. Or women labelled and treated at considerable cost for 'sex-addiction' when the destructive behaviour is actually a manifestation of something different, more complex and much more profound. Drug addicts are regarded negatively as being agents of their own downfall and their parents blamed for poor parenting, not least by themselves.
I am also, on the whole, not one for using extremes as an excuse for banning moderation. For example, I wouldn't ban the sale of alcohol in shops and bars, despite what I have observed of the dangers of alcohol abuse and the destruction of alcoholism, but nor would I wave a bottle of whisky under their nose to taunt an alcoholic.
I want to avoid accusing 'the media' or 'people' of hypocrisy because the media is very diverse: those speaking out against something generally aren't those encouraging it in a different way, and even if individual people do happen to display double-standards, it may be because they're confused or torn, and probably not because they're malicious or hypocrites.
Given that anorexia is accepted as a mental illness, I don't think that marketing a particular pill is particularly significant. I know that people do seek out miracle pills for weight-loss (I know at least two who were given amphetamines from clinics, both in Clapham, coincidentally or not). It's almost like saying that because people get depressed, one mustn't have bad news, factual or fictional, on TV. Hmm, Eastenders, cot death. Don't go there: didn't see it.
I suppose what worries me is that while that vile little creature was getting his kicks and trying to make even more money from selling some pill from a website that people had to seek out, there is an awful lot more going on in all media which in my view is far more harmful. Terrestrial TV has run programmes - for sheer entertainment - of The World's Fattest Man and some competitive weight loss programme for morbidly obese people.
I suppose my instinct told me to despise the vile little man because of the absence of logic in his argument: basically, get thin and he'll pay you to shag him. It's part of a patriarchal view that women have to fulfil certain specific criteria in order earn the privilege of shagging a rather ordinary, nay unattractive man, whereas - gross generalisation coming up - ultimately, men aren't that fussy and it's women who get to do the choosing, except when men do the paying, which is an irrelevant point to most women. So, it's actually men who should shape up in order to be 'chosen' by discerning women.
I couldn't start to count the magazines that target women and girls in a constant message about dieting, get thin and so on. Celebrity magazines, Take A Break-style, magazines that aim to be a least partly cerebral, magazines about 'the home' and, of course, the fashion magazines. Echoed in the national newspapers and on the TV, in features as well as adverts. Get thin.
Stay thin.
Get thin.
Be obsessed by thinness.
Buy clothes for thin people.
Be thin.
Stay thin.
Don't enjoy your food.
Diet.
By this faddy diet book, this expensive food 'replacement'.
Be self-absorbed. Judge yourself by your appearance. Judge others by their appearance.
Be thin.
The body is everything. Neglect the brain. Be ignorant. Let your critical judgement decay. Be thin.
It is so mainstream, so embedded in the way we live our lives, it's almost impossible not to be affected by this. I've seen it written that younger and younger girls are becoming more and more obsessed by their body image and by a media-driven 'ideal' of a superthin woman.
Not that I'm advocating obesity. I am overweight. That is an indisputable fact. Not just because the scales say so. Not just because the tape-measure says so. Not just because it's obvious to anyone that looks at me. But for all of those reasons, and more. It is clearly in my own interests to start exercising again, having let it slip, and to re-assess what I'm eating. It is certainly not in my interests to embark on some crash diet 'rapid weight loss' eat only bananas for a week followed by lean chicken as long as you do it standing on one leg whilst incanting in tongues nonsense. I want to lose fat because of the health benefits in doing so, because I don't want to fork out for new clothes when my existing ones no longer fit me. And, to be honest, I want to look 'good', too.
But I just don't see how people can get all irate about one here-today gone-tomorrow tosser who may or may not be selling some pill which may further encourage vulnerable people into self-harm, and yet they stay quiet about the incessant brainwashing that your worth as a woman is measured only by how thin you are.
Johann describes him as a sociopath and from the little I know that would make sense. Yet, surely, sociopathy is also a mental illness, but one that we as a society, ironically, have no sympathy for. Arguably, a sociopath has as little control over and responsibility for their actions as does an anorexic. Maybe, as I say, I don't know. We must publicly display sympathy for someone who at least at some level and at some time has, like the addict, chosen to self-harm, yet many of us instinctively think of a sociopath as tantamount to evil.
New Statesman has a commentary which nicely dismiss claims to free speech based on illegality; someone being free to say something doesn't remove the right of others to criticise or condemn. I just find it unconvincing that selling a 'weight management pill' can cause someone to become anorexic, especially considering it is a mental illness. And regarding people with an existing condition, who should be avoiding 'triggers', shouldn't we focus more on the constant brainwashing by Big Business rather than the rather amateurish marketing attempted by one obviously very disturbed individual.
Perhaps if we confront the brainwashing of Big Business, we would also have to examine our won complicity in it and our own desire to be manipulated. Just because I understood and long ago accepted my curvaceous figure and my superior intellect, doesn't mean that just sometimes I'd like to buy that top and be satisfied with unchallenging pursuits.
