Karen Morris had never spoken to such a large group of people about her history with eating disorders. Over the past year, she had participated in a few lobby efforts on the state and federal level to encourage government to make eating disorders a public health priority, meeting in small groups with elected officials or their staff. Karen and I met in January at one such event, when we both attended the Virginia General Assembly lobby effort with the National Eating Disorders Association. The effort was successful; Virginia will soon be the first state in the US to study eating disorder prevalence and the cost of eating disorders to the state (you can read the bill Senator Puller introduced here).
While undoubtedly a victory, there's still much work to be done. Eating disorders currently have the highest mortality rate out of any mental health disorder – upwards of 20%. If that statistic upsets you, it should. Eating disorders are preventable, and effective treatment exists. The fact that anyone is dying from a preventable disease is problematic, let alone in such high numbers. One of the many reasons this is the case has to do with social stigma. The average person doesn't know much about eating disorders, and what little they do know is often influenced by sensationalized media coverage. The ideas that an eating disorder is a disease of vanity, a choice, or strictly a woman's disease all play a role. In a country where dieting is normalized, combined with our culture's misplaced correlation of health and thinness, it's no wonder the early signs of an eating disorder can be missed.
Enter Richmond artist Susan Singer, who has spent the past two years painting nude portraits of women of all shapes and sizes. Since September, she's had weekly art shows at Crossroads Art Gallery with a different theme each week, such as body modification, birth stories, surviving domestic/sexual assault, and of course, eating disorders.
Nudes? In an art gallery? Oh my!
Susan truly has painted a diverse group of women in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Through the paintings, something really incredible happens. So much time is spent critiquing our bodies and identifying supposed "imperfections" that we usually don't stop to appreciate anything we actually like about our bodies (what a concept!). Put onto canvas, though, the very idea of imperfections vanishes, and we're left with the stunning and unavoidable reality of the beauty that is the human (and, in this particular case, female) body.
This realization was a huge part of Karen's recovery. She was friends with Susan and knew of this project, and called her up one day and said, "I want you to paint me nude." Just making this request to her friend was monumental, as she was less than three years into her personal recovery. Prior to this, Karen had spent nearly 30 years embattled with her eating disorder. Everything changed when she made a comment to her then-17 year old daughter concerning the amount she was (or, more accurately, wasn't) eating.
Her daughter spun on her heel, and told her point blank that she needed to get her own eating issues sorted out before she tried to speak to anyone about theirs. After somehow hiding her disordered eating from most of her family her entire life, she wasn't prepared to be called out in such plain terms. It would be another six months until she admitted she actually had a problem and needed help.
Susan Singer next to one of her paintings.
That's why the painting was such a big deal. The original intention was to create a painting without her face, just her body. Out of all the photos Susan took to decide on one to paint (some of her models were photographed over 300 times), the one they liked best included Karen's face. Despite her apprehension, Karen agreed, and upon seeing the finished work, she was completely awestruck by what was on the canvas. After 30 years of hating her body and trying to manipulate it into being the way she thought it should be, she was granted a view of herself not through a mirror, but through an artist's eye and paintbrush. This opportunity to see herself through someone else's eyes was cathartic, and helped her develop a further sense of self-love and positive body image she never thought possible.
It seemed a natural fit, then, for Karen's story and painting to be the focus of one of the art shows. Speaking to a crowd of over 100 people, Karen opened the event by talking about her recovery and the role Susan's art has played in her self-acceptance and new-found positive body image, describing it as almost going through puberty again. Karen now works as a massage therapist in the very same clinic as her eating disorder treatment team, specializing in working with clients who have had traumatic experiences that have disrupted their relationship with their bodies, from eating disorders to sexual abuse. Karen speaks about her unique therapeutic approach as a method to help people live in both their mind and body, saying that often survivors will reach a healthy place managing their emotions and behaviors but still have a lot of issues and anxiety concerning their bodies – a disparity her practice strives to mend.
Karen and I now serve on the Junior Board for the Eating Disorders Coalition (EDC), a grassroots organization that has worked for over a decade to achieve parity for eating disorders through lobby work and other methods to help hold insurance companies accountable. Most people don't realize that specialized eating disorder treatment can be so expensive – an inpatient facility can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 per day. Given the cost of treatment, insurance companies will make every excuse they can to avoid paying for treatment, often with fatal results. EDC board member Kitty Westin, whose daughter Anna died from anorexia after being denied coverage in 2000, successfully sued her insurance company for wrongful death (you can read more about Anna Westin here). More recently, lawyer Lisa Kantor won a case for a client in California who was also denied treatment. While these victories do help create precedent, real change will come on the federal level, which is still gaining momentum. To help with this cause, all proceeds from the show on October 22 went to the Eating Disorders Coalition.
There were two other presenters in addition to Karen: Rachael Laura Stern of the Eating Disorders Activist Network and Kathleen MacDonald of the EDC & FREED Foundation. Both shared about their experiences with eating disorders and their recovery. It would be very difficult to summarize both talks, but they were both fantastic. This was the first time I'd ever heard Rachael speak, and I was very moved by her story and attitude. Concerned by how quickly she was growing as an infant, her parents and doctor put her on her first diet at only six months old. Her adolescence was spent focused on watching her weight, going to see dieticians, and exercise programs. This overt concern over her body image and weight contributed to what became a full-blown eating disorder. Her story is a perfect example of how subscribing to societal constructs of body image and beauty, instead of focusing on health and being comfortable in your own genes, can contribute to disordered eating behavior.
I've heard Kathleen speak quite a few times before, but this was probably my favorite talk I've heard her give. At one point, she asked the audience (which, given the focus of the show on women's bodies, was about 99% female) if they had ever wanted or attempted to change certain parts of their bodies.
Most, if not all, raised their hands.
Then she asked what people had tried to change. Random voices from the crowd called out:
"My arms!"
"My thighs!"
"My feet!"
"Boobs!"
After seemingly every part of the body had been called out by various audience members, she asked another question:
"What have those attempts to change your body brought you?" A silence fell over the crowd. Someone called out, "Unhappiness." Then another: "Misery and self-hatred." Kathleen spoke awhile about how it isn't necessary to conform to societal standards of beauty and how she learned to appreciate herself without comparing herself to anyone else.
She made one final point that really resonated with me: that if any of us lost the various body parts that had been called out through some tragedy, be it a foot, arm, or leg, we'd suddenly wish we had them back and have a newfound appreciation for them. It reminded me of something I read from Thich Nhat Hanh, where he was talking about how people in general spend so much time thinking about what they don't have that they never stop to appreciate all that is right in their lives. He used the analogy of healthy teeth: no one stops to think how happy they are to not have any toothaches, but once a tooth starts hurting, all we can think about is how much we wish we could return to the state of not being in pain. He concludes: "A non-toothache is a very good thing to have."
Too much love to put into words: (from L to R) Karen Morris, Kathleen MacDonald, Rachael Stern, and myself after the event.
The final art show in Susan Singer's 'Beyond Barbie' series is Thursday, November 3 at Crossroads Art Gallery. You can purchase tickets online here.
Matt Wetsel is a Richmond-based writer and eating disorder advocate. You can follow him at his blog, …Until Eating Disorders Are No More. For more on Karen Morris, visit www.akarentouch.info.