After being annoyed at the media and told by the third time that they can't do an interview with me unless I give photos at my thinnest, I retaliated and wrote this reply:
I have to admit that I am unhappy with your answer and very disappointed. As a Beat ambassador I am dedicated to promoting awareness and showing the positive side of recovery but with the women's weekly magazines' attitudes this can not be done.
I would like to point out that your agency will possibly not work with Beat in the future. I know I can say for me and the rest of the ambassadors that we do not give any photos out of us at our thinnest. We understand the media needs to show readers that we were ill but why would we make it up about having an eating disorder? We are fed up of the media concentrating on weight. Eating disorders are not all about weight. We really want to give stories that show recovery can happen but as usual the media has failed us.
I am sorry as I really wanted to do an interview with you to show that I am an example of recovery.
Regards
Rachel
Let me know what you think!
I completely agree with this. Eating disoder stories that focus on weight and photos of how thin someone was at their thinnest just promote a lack of understanding within the general community of eating disorders in general. When I was at my sickest I would read these stories, and focus only on how low the individual managed to get, and somehow turned it all into some sick competition; completely ignoring the sentences about how they had almost died.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the editors who allow these stories to be published really understand the full extent of what they're doing.