... and the blitz of information about anorexia and related conditions in the aftermath of her death. The following line, from this website, is one I've heard repeatedly:

Mental health experts think that the feelings of being overwhelmed and powerless in adolescence can bring about a desire to maintain control in some realm of life, such as control of body weight. Being in total control of what enters the mouth can give the adolescent a feeling of powerfulness. Thus, the period of adolescence may be when anorexia manifests itself.

I will wager that the overwhelming majority of these anorexia-susceptible girls are white, middle-class, and oppressively over-regimented in their daily lives by authority figures (parents especially). Karen Carpenter was all of the above.

These websites would not exist without a market. Forget them, and concentrate, I think, on the aspects of society that make girls feel powerless.

Oh ... and lest we forget, for every girl we lose to anorexia or other forms of suicide, we lose nine boys.

Thanks for coming to my blog and leaving a very kind comment.

I agree with your views on this and teens get so obsessed with losing weight and not eating since they think it is cool not to eat and to live off air and water. There are also too many young girls living like this today.

I also remember Karen Carpenter and it was a very bad tragedy.

I was just thinking today about the girl who sat behind me in 8th grade math. She was-- plump. Quiet. Sad-looking, in retrospect.

Rather abruptly, she got thin. Very thin. Like a Roswell alien.
And wouldn't you know it? My 13-year-old self thought she looked great. She looked and acted completely different. I thought a new girl had arrived in class, until someone told me it was her.

One day, I was eating M&Ms in class and I noticed she was watching me intently. I offered some to her. She shook her head.

But she kept watching me and I felt bad for her, so I poured some out onto her desk and smiled at her, thinking she was just shy. And I told her how pretty I thought she looked, and she grinned and flushed and looked away.

She ate them slowly, throughout that class. The bell rang and I trundled off to my next class.

But she fainted.

I didn't hear about it until the next day's class, when she told me that those M&Ms had been the first thing she had eaten in days.

I have, at various periods in my life, utterly failed to acknowledge the severity of a situation when confronted with it. It's like a wall of denial goes up, and I simply do not understand what is really being said. All I can hear is, "It must be an exaggeration. It can't Really possibly be That bad!" This was one of those times.

After that, I think she was sent to counselling, and she filled out, at least a little.

And I never complimented her again.

What possessed me?

What possessed you in what? You were only being kind. You are not the only one who has never not had a clue. My friend in middle school lost alot of weight and we all complimented her as well. We all found out her secret was purging. Alot of the time their families are unaware. So I can see how their friends and peers could be blind to the situation.

It is a well kept secret until the damage is all ready done!

"Glamorization of eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia as a life style"... what is this God? What is in your mind when you choose to starve, girls? Some of you do this for beauty (as a misunderstood concept) and some of you do this because you are unsatisfied whit yourselves, want to hurt yourselves, or simply because... Well this "glamorization" is fake and you should know that, nobody says being fat is beautiful but better "fat" that dead. Don't you think? Perhaps i don't have the best choice of my words but the main point is that eating disorder is a serious problem, a wide world problem and it only depends on you to gain your normal life back by choosing to have a proper eating disorder treatment if it's not too late.

You shouldn't joke about anorexia ever, I had an anorexic friend working for a debt settlement agency, her condition got worse day by day, I lost touch with her, too bad.