Eating Disorders & Power
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

Aesthetic Realism comprehends the different ways women can hurt their lives. Studying this education, I've seen that central in whether a woman will strengthen or weaken herself is: what kind of power is she after? In his book Self and World Eli Siegel writes:

Power is not just the ability to affect or change others; it is likewise the ability to be affected or changed by others. If a person's power is only of the first kind, his unconscious will be in distress.

I learned that there are two kinds of power people are after. The power of respecting the world—being affected by and seeing value in people, books, world events, history—strengthens us and makes us proud.

But there is another power we go after which hurts and weakens us. It is the desire to have contempt, which Eli Siegel defined as "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self increase as one sees it." Women go after this kind of power every day in offices and homes as they try to "affect or change others," manage them while not being affected themselves—making them feel empty and ashamed. Studying the difference between these two purposes changed the direction of my life.

Like many women today, I wanted to have a big affect on others, particularly men, through the way I looked, while I remained cool, aloof and unaffected. I also went after power through physical strength—exercising, lifting heavy things without assistance, and participating in sports. But I didn't want to think about how much my body could actually do, and sometimes I hurt myself. With every year the way I went after conquering people and things hurt my mind and body.

I'll write about of one dramatic form this took in my life—the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia, which I suffered from for 10 years. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) reports that anorexia and bulimia are "life-threatening illnesses that afflict an estimated seven million women and one million men in our country." Because of what I learned from Aesthetic Realism, these disorders ended in me completely.

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