a bitch about "skinny bitch"

when people say they like the book, "skinny bitch," i want to scream. or better yet, i want to take that book and make pretty confetti.

my mom bought me a copy a few years ago. you open it up and the inside cover says:

Skinny Bitch
A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!

there is so much that is disordered and wrong about this book's philosophy, it's not even funny. the introduction says it provides a way to "feel healthy, clean, energized and pure." wow, i am so interested to know what foods are dirty and fatigued. the authors go on to demand that you use your head; "healthy = skinny. unhealthy = fat." obviously a few college students skipped out on nutrition 101 in college, if they even went to college. they go on to call overweight people "fat pigs" and to talk in this brash, vulgar tone that's meant to be cool. they're elitist after all, you know, because they're skinny.

coffee is the devil and anyone who drinks it is a pussy and a slob. i am only on page 20, and just read, "you need to exercise, you lazy shit." wtf??

wait a minute. coffee isn't the devil after all; sugar is, according to the chapter entitled so. you shouldn't have meat or dairy or eggs. you are fat if you don't follow this diet and exercise and lifestyle program because it is written by... models who are experts on thinness. what an accomplishment.

it's great when people want to take charge of their health and eat well, but i am SO over demonizing food. maybe it's because i am recovered and i can't stand to damage a relationship- me and food- that i have finally come to peace with. i eat and drink all sorts of crap according to these skinny bitches. i have coffee every day, i eat processed cereals, meat, several glasses of milk a day, i have a couple of hershey bars a week, i love milky ways, etc. like my dietitian once told me, there are no good foods and bad foods. each one is an energy source; every food has a purpose. if you want to exclude certain foods or food groups for health reasons, that's your prerogative. but don't shove it down other people's throats.

in my mind, "skinny bitch" is just a glorified disordered eating manual. it's a great jumpstart for eating disorders, too. just take someone with the right genes and put them on a diet and you can have a severely sick eating disordered individual a few months later. it happens all the time. and this is why i am so terrified of diets; i am scared for other people. diets easily trigger people into eating disorders, and they often mimic eating disorders themselves. unless there is a medical purpose to it, diets are useless and they don't work. all you will succeed in doing is malnourishing your body. every girl who is fasting so she can fit into her bikini for spring break is compromising all the systems in her body for superficiality, and that is fucking scary. when does our health matter less than our looks? this is obviously true for many people because everyone and their mother is on a diet. and it's a really slippery road that can so quickly turn into something much more serious and harmful.