Scarlett Pomers on recovering ET [Entertainment Tonight] reported that 17-year-old "Reba" actress Scarlett Pomers had entered an eating disorder clinic to deal with her extreme weight loss... her weight reached an astonishing low of 73 pounds... "My weight was something I could control. I began excessively dieting and over-exercising [as much as six hours per day]."

She also admitted she was looking online at many of the pro-anorexia Web sites: "I was shocked by the sites at first, but it sucked me in. I was checking them every day." The TV star's mother urged her to seek help and enter a facility for eating disorders. Scarlett's message to the approximately 1.5 million other women suffering from the disease? "Eating disorders will rob you of everything... it becomes your whole life! So ask for help, it's scary, but you get through it." > from article “Scarlett Pomers' Brave Battle”, ETOnline January 18, 2006

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Felicity Huffman [‘Lynette Scavo’ on “Desperate Housewives”] has revealed she suffered from eating disorders throughout her late teens. She says, "I was bulimic and anorexic for a while, just hating my body. As an actress, I was never thin enough, never pretty enough. My boobs weren't big enough." Huffman credits having two kids and turning 40 for helping her to come to terms with her body at last. She adds, "I think I've always had a 40-year-old body, and now that I'm actually there I'm like, 'Hey, pretty good.'"

But the actress insists her past eating disorders and dissatisfactions have had their use - in helping her prepare for acting roles, like in sex-change movie Transamerica. She explains, "The self-loathing that goes along with bulimia or anorexia helped me understand (character) Bree's internal journey."    [imdb.com 23 Nov 2005]     > related page:  body image

By the time I was in college I’d had an eating disorder for years, not with the level of self-awareness I might have had today. In the seventies, no one was talking about young women starving themselves -- not yet. In college I finally had a name for what had happened to me, and I began to realize that my relationship with my emotionally distant, critical, and terribly unhappy young mother had been not only painful, but damaging – in some ways annihilating.

Anorexia had become a surrogate mother, a consuming if not embracing one, a set of exacting standards that I could, with effort, satisfy, as I could not satisfy my real mother. It was the religion I chose, the one I thought I’d invented, with my own doctrine of self-deprivation. Kathryn Harrison - from "In Her Own Words" section of her site kathrynharrison.com > She is the author of memoirs and other writing, including a new novel : ENVY

In her 13th summer, Jane Fonda began seriously hating her own body. (This "disembodiment" resulted in bulimia... and an addiction to Dexedrine that persisted well into Fonda's 40s. It was not until [after 1997], she writes, that she was able to "reinhabit" her body.) yearning for the emergence of an authentic self I wasn't sure existed," she writes. > from review by Susan Salter Reynolds [LA Times April 5, 2005] of Jane Fonda's memoir - My Life So Far

She was unable to acknowledge anything positive. So great were her unrealistic expectations, it was impossible for her to feel joy or satisfaction in what she had accomplished. By ignoring these fragile buds, by not watering, nurturing, and turning them to sunlight, they turn to dust.  You're used to seeking out the imperfect and because you're not yet in the habit of recognizing the fruits of your labor, they dwindle on the vine.  What remains are the weeds of destructive, negative, unrealistic thinking. These thoughts can and do take over your mind and your heart. Unrealistic expectations make you believe you'll never succeed, every effort is for naught, you are forever destined to fail.

If you give too much credence to your real or imagined failures and not enough to your attempts, your interim successes, and your accomplishments, you will become the failure you think you are. Were your parents critical and judgmental? Are you too hard on yourself? You may have internalized their voice. Create your own positive voice. Think of the reasons you want to reach your weight loss goal (or any goal), not the reasons you don't want to remain at your present weight. > from article Unrealistic expectations can cause failure -  by Caryl Ehrlich - excerpted from her book :   Conquer Your Food Addiction

One of the things that struck me at fashion shows is how great these incredibly thin women look in photographs but how in real life it's too thin... They would be more attractive if they were a little heavier. And I actually don't think this desire to be rail thin is as pandemic aesthetically as the fashion world presents it to be. I don't think men prefer women to look like that; in fact, I think it's a unique kind of fetish. I understand the impulse, though. For women there is a great fear of losing control of your body and becoming overweight. If you are pregnant, no matter who you are, you do lose control and it's quite a shock.

And then to have to deal with the aftermath. You ask yourself, what am I going to do with this body? Is it going to come back? Will I change? It's very frightening.... .....Uma Thurman from "Re-made in China " by Michael Specter, Nov 2003 Vogue -  excerpt posted on Style.com

**related pages:....identity...x/  "Being Blond" section on body image: page 3

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I also starved myself for the first time at 10 years old at ballet camp and one of the contributing factors was because I was terribly homesick for my mother and didn't know how to handle those feelings of separation. 

So much of our life is based on the separation process from our parents and how we deal with it. ... 

Obviously, it affected mine and played itself out through the addiction of an eating disorder. In addition, I never felt a sense of well being inside my own body, call it your temple, call it your home. 

And then of course, perhaps there was something even more literal about being home, that I had to come terms with to become healthier.

I wrote this memoir to save my life. I actually started writing Homesick when I was 16 years old after a 4-month stay at an eating disorder clinic, where I was treated for anorexia bulimia nervosa. 

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Over the years, in an attempt to control my life and appearance through unhealthy measures, I had driven myself into the ground -- my body literally fell apart. 

Barely able to move, I was driven to share my cautionary tale hoping to document a story of destruction and recovery to help myself well as others. 

Writing became my survival mode, and the ultimate tool for my greatest healing.

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-- Genuine control is not about trying to stop the rain, the snow, or the sunshine. It's about making rainbows, snowmen, and sand castles.

-- Genuine control is not about attempting to change what other people think, do, and feel because I know what's best for them. It's about deciding how I react to what others think, do, and feel because I know wha's best for me.

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Why would someone who seems to have the world at her fingertips stop eating? Why are eating disorders such a problem? Are young performers at more of a risk for body image issues than adult performers?  ///

Psychological experts have found that many of the personality traits which make children great athletes or performers are the very same characteristics which make them more susceptible to eating disorders; 

the most common being: perfectionism; the desire to please; the ability to ignore pain and exhaustion; obsessiveness and the burning desire to reach their goals.

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Studies have shown that the rate of anorexia nervosa in this group is ten times that of the general population and due largely to these professions in which thinness is a prerequisite for success.

At 16, Duff is two years younger than Olsen - who last month checked into a clinic to be treated for the eating disorder - but [she] can already empathize with Olsen, because she's fully aware of the demands forced on rising talents to look glamorous.

She says, "It's the pressures put on young celebrities. You open a magazine and it's all about someone being too skinny or too fat, no longer pretty, having the wrong hair color or not making it into the most recent popularity poll.

("I don't) pretend to know what Mary Kate is going through, but I can understand a bit of it on a certain level.

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But she has assured fans she will never succumb to anorexia: "I love food too much. I eat sensibly, but I do love to eat."

  [imdb.com 14 Jul 2004]

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"I had been on this insane diet for almost 17 years to maintain the weight that was demanded of me when I was modeling," says Otis, 34, a California native who moved to New York to pursue modeling at age 15. 

"My diet was really starvation. I am not naturally that thin, so I had to go through everything from using drugs to diet pills to laxatives to fasting. Those were my main ways of controlling my weight."

"I had my first seizure, and I had to go in for heart surgery," says Otis, who at 5-foot-10 occasionally weighed as little as 100 pounds. "My doctor felt that the main contributing factor was so many years of malnutrition, especially during my formative years, even before I got into modeling."

"What has worked for me is therapy in conjunction with nutritionist who specializes in eating disorders that I see every two weeks," Otis says. ///

"We have to get to kids younger," Otis insists. "Hopefully the kind of educational programs we're creating with NEDA can be installed in the school system. We have to educate people that the images they see are airbrushed and doctored."

"If you could see a before and after photo, you'd be amazed," Otis says. "Most of us don't look that way. We come in many different shapes and sizes, and we need to support each other and our differences. Our beauty is in our differences."

from article : Carre Otis models healthy eating - By John Morgan, Spotlight Health with medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D.

On Deborah Norville Tonight, MSNBC, June 24 2004, Carre Otis said she continues to work with eating disorder counselor Carolyn Costin - 

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Smith relates to Lisa's need to break out from a family mold.

Yeardley (pronounced YARD-lee) Smith was born into a family she calls "WASPy," upper crust and reserved. Smith's father was a Washington Post correspondent whose work kept him away from his daughter. 

Her mother was a true "Yankee" who urged her daughter to push her feelings down deep inside. So Smith found two avenues of release: bulimia and theater.

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"I would feel endorphins and this great sense of victory." She uses almost the same words to describe her first few times onstage. "I win!" she recalls thinking when the audience applauded.

Dear Dr. Dorie:  I started losing weight and received lots of praise.? I cut back to eating only 1 meal a day, and now I have lost too much weight.? I know I need to eat more, but I am terrified of gaining weight. - Too Thin 

Dear Too Thin:  Because compliments about weight loss feel good, it can be easy to do whatever it takes to lose more weight. However, your situation illustrates what can happen by taking the ‘weight loss games’ to an extreme. 

It sounds like you may have an eating disorder, or at least be well on your way to developing one. For a proper diagnosis, you need to see your physician and also a mental health professional.

A recent study revealed that 50% of women on college campuses either have eating disorders or are severely obsessed with eating, exercise and weight.

Eating disorders do not discriminate; they affect all ages, all races, all socio-economic groups, and occur both in women and men. 

It is estimated that about 6% of serious eating disorders cases die each year.