The never-ending imperfection

Pro Ana, Pro Mia and other websites that are glamorizing Anorexia or Bulimia as a lifestyle rather than a disease have recently got a new boom. The first big boom these movements recorded was in 2006 as the 22 year old model Luisel Ramos shortly after a fashion show died; two months later the Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston Macan starved herself to death and a further 6 months later her sister also succumbed to Ana. The most attention-getting, however, was the death of Isabelle Caro in November 2010. The French model suffered from Anorexia since she was 14 years old and attributed her eating disorder to her manic-depressive mother who wanted her to remain a small girl. So, she stopped eating to counteract her physical development. Isabelle got very famous due to a fashion campaign by the world-famous Italian fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani who wanted to point out what twisted imagination our society regards as the idealized man or woman.

Having printed an anorexic woman on an oversized poster throughout the fashion capital Milan during the fashion week aroused a lot of criticism and as a result this campaign was prohibited in Italy and France. Though, after a public outcry the European fashion industry implemented some restrictions to models that are beyond underweight. Several models at the fashion week in Spain, for example, were not allowed to take part and also size 0 has been banned from the Catwalk.

Men, however, are at least as easily ensnared to become exaggeratedly health and fashion-conscious as women. Women are, of course, more inclined to lose weight and get anorexic or bulimic but to the picture of beauty neither women nor men are immune to.

There is this new phenomenon called “Manorexia” which is basically the same as the female version Anorexia. The problem, however, is that Manorexia is far more difficult to diagnose because these men look perfectly fit, with great bodies, still slim but not in an unhealthy way. Strict diets, laxatives and excessive exercising emaciate their bodies until there is nothing left than a heap of muscles on a skeleton. Manorexic men are generally difficult to identify, just their family or friends might notice an exaggerated lifestyle and the propensity to receive a perfect body.

One symptom that have all these diseases in common is the skewed introspection. That means no matter how “perfect” or how close you are at perfection you will never be satisfied with what you have achieved so far.

Having some friends that suffer from Anorexia and after some serious research at these pro-ana websites I think it is kind of ironic that people are starving themselves to death while a whole bunch of people die day by day because they have simply nothing to eat!

Innocent lambs with delicious intestinal tracks !

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

 

Having searched the web for some hours trying to find a food blog that I consider worth writing about I toppled over a forum where some people were entangled in some really stormy debates about food in other cultures. It started all with the impressive experiences of a guy in south-east Asia where he tried some really gross stuff like roasted feet of geese and soup that is made of swallow nests and stuff where the general “European” would shake his head in disgust. At first my reaction was quite similar to those who opposed totally to that kind of food but the more I immerged into that theme and the more I read about it some very interesting thoughts came up and made me think “Why not?”

He continued writing about that immerging in another culture doesn’t solely mean visiting all the sights, or national parks, or doing the common stuff proposed by a tourist guide but trying to think “foreign”. That means that being in south-east Asia, for example, eating insects, buying meat where a thousand of flies have sat before (although this I wouldn’t really recommend) is part of your everyday life. You shouldn’t shy away beforehand, even though you might be shocked what they consume on a daily basis or even how this food is traded. For our European standards cannot be seen as a global measurement since we live in an antibiotic-contaminated, sterile environment. But considering that the world doesn’t have all those standards and all the luxury like supermarkets filled to the bursting point, we should try to think out of the box and come off our high horse.

Thinking of all those meals provided by people from Asia or Africa which we might find disgusting at the very first, there is a lot of other stuff provided by ourselves that is at least as horrific. I proved it on my own in Italy, just because I didn’t want to be rude and to refuse but braided lamb intestines filled with mincemeat is not the dish I would have even imagined could exist. It does! But surprisingly enough it actually doesn’t taste that bad. I guess it’s more the imagination of eating the intestinal tract of an innocent lamb that makes us shudder.

Eating exotic meals doesn’t necessarily mean driving endangered species towards extinction. Of course, there is a lot of food provided that is ethnically or sustainably not advisable, but apart from shark fin soup or the meat of primates there are a lot of other things that are absolutely worth taking into consideration. The discussion at this forum ended up by saying that experiencing different kinds of food is not just to prove oneself as open-minded or even courageous but it will broaden your horizons, it may change your view on this culture and it might also influence your personality and the way you approach your life in future.