I have always been the type of girl who goes everywhere with a happy face and talks about the works of Bohr and Einstein all day long. As a hardworking young Asian woman studying physics and computer science, nobody would suspect that I suffer from an eating disorder.
Trigger warning: Descriptions of eating disordered behavior.
An eating disorder is a chronicle. It is a long-lasting disease rather than solely the result of the immediate environment. I started dancing when I was four-years-old. I turned my attention to physics and math in high school, but I was told that I should be skinnier if I wanted to keep dancing. My parents are constantly teaching me to be “modest” and to work harder; I am always in all kinds of competitions, which inevitably makes me see the not-so-nice side of human nature.
There is a certain stereotype of eating disorder sufferers in society: teenage girls who are too sentimental and focus too much on being “pretty.” That is simply not true; even worse, it is very misleading for people who care about this cause and want to understand more about it.
Yes, I guess I care about the way I look, but this attention to my appearance is because I am made to feel that my body is all that I have to show the world. As an Asian woman in a male-dominated field, I constantly feel denied and invalided.
It can be hard to feel “good enough…”
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