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How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia
She devoured their memoirs and magazine articles, committing the most salacious details of their cautionary tales to memory--how little they ate, their lowest weights, and their merciless exercise regimes--to learn what it would take to be the very best anorectic. When she was hospitalized for anorexia at fifteen, she found herself in an existential how can one suffer from something one has actively sought out? Through her own decade-long battle with anorexia, which included three lengthy hospitalizations, Osgood harrowingly describes the haunting and competitive world of inpatient facilities populated with other adolescents, some as young as ten years old. With attuned storytelling and unflinching introspection, Kelsey Osgood unpacks the modern myths of anorexia, examining the cult-like underbelly of eating disorders in the young, as she chronicles her own rehabilitation. How to Disappear Completely is a brave, candid and emotionally wrenching memoir that explores the physical, internal, and social ramifications of eating disorders and subverts many of the popularly held notions of the illness and, most hopefully, the path to recovery.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2013
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October 28, 2015
It's definitely time for me to give up on this genre. Again I really started out wanting to like this book, and I was interested in reading a candid analysis of the eating disorder treatment subculture. In the end the author does what I find so frustrating in all the other memoirs--generalizes her experiences as THE universal recovery experience. I can appreciate that she is trying to remove the glamor of illness and provide criticism, but she does so without complexity or nuance (let alone compassion), essentially ascribing all eating disorders to cases of "wannarexia" gone too far, inspired by memoirs with tips and "thinspiration," and the vanity of overprivileged teen girls who intentionally cultivate the illness and love being hospitalized. Her "research" consists of reading the memoirs that inspired her to become ill rather than anything peer-reviewed or so much as an interview. She eventually admits that she is "writing out of a desire to illuminate a subset of a problem," but this doesn't come across in the manuscript. We are left with the implication that this is how it is for most everyone with "modern anorexia."
Toward the end I was trying figure out what the author was getting at, and this seems to sum up the book: "Perhaps what we need to do is actually *restore* some of the myths about anorexia, namely, that it's a problem of vanity, or resurrect some of the stigma that surrounds it, in hopes that we move away from radically accepting it."
That might be useful for the particular subset Osgood is writing about, but in failing to present a more diverse, multicausational portrait of eating disorders, this falls very, very short of ideas that are applicable beyond her chosen archetype. She focuses on exhibitionist and (dare I say) borderline traits. But where are the people who work real jobs, hide their illness, or weren't raised in nice families who can finance multiple hospital stays? She acknowledges toward the end that we've all heard there is diversity in eating disorders, yet her memoir lists page after page of rich teenage girls throwing temper tantrums (in contrast to the "pathetic" older patients. And predisposing risk factors and traits are completely out of the discussion, I imagine because this would "legitimize" the illness... Not to mention how hospital culture could influence behavior inside them, while outside there may be people with different stories.
The above statement, among many others, may be gutsy--if not audacious--but sounding edgy or bold doesn't do anything to support an argument. Frankly, statements like this are downright damaging. It's nothing groundbreaking to back up old stigmas and myths. Why we'd like to take a big leap backward in mental health education, and counter the uphill efforts in recent years to reduce harmful stigmatized attitudes, is beyond me. Studies have shown again and again that stigma does nothing but make psychological problems, their treatments, and public education far worse.
I was initially hopeful to see some intelligent criticism of the general discourse in recovery memoirs, and there are some really great insights here and there. But in the end this seemed like just another entirely simplistic reading. Osgood criticizes memoir writers as she tries to set the record straight--not exactly an unworthy cause, if not self-important--but in the end she falls into the trap of, yet again, universalizing her experience and presenting an egocentric view of the "essence" of an entire diagnosis, as if a trivial explanation can be generalized. I like that she wants to deglamorize anorexia and is willing to call out some bullshit, but I don't think a return to old stereotypes or reducing the problem to dramatic displays and adolescent whims is the way to do it.
I also find the premise unnerving. Osgood sets out to overturn all the other memoirs out there, but what exactly is compelling about her book on its own? It seems to only be written as a rebuttal, which is fine enough I guess; but for a compelling literary piece that would stick with me longer, I want to see something new here, not just a rejection of other ideas (and, perhaps worse, a call for a return to the old). If she is writing to young girls who are reading memoirs for tips, or writing to her former self, then she does what she sets out to do. But I imagine there are many others with diverging stories, and her generalizations serve to stigmatize, shame, and silence. It downright invalidates other narratives. I also think this book could be potentially damaging if friends or family members are reading for understanding or education.
On the surface, this reads like a reasonable reply to "pro anorexia" forums, but I'm concerned that it also reduces eating disorders to no more than these attitudes. Pop media articles are already all over how terrible websites are converting our children to illness; this just reads as a more sophisticated version of that old diatribe. There is a lot more going on, but we get the opposite message as we read each decry against other writers and each description of yet another exemplary fitful teen (and I can't help but wonder if any of their stories were more complex, or if these displays were a product of the hospital environment or anorexia; although the complexity is what the author is arguing against). Perhaps if the author had better defined the scope of her work (and its limits), I would have had more patience as a reader.
Toward the end I was trying figure out what the author was getting at, and this seems to sum up the book: "Perhaps what we need to do is actually *restore* some of the myths about anorexia, namely, that it's a problem of vanity, or resurrect some of the stigma that surrounds it, in hopes that we move away from radically accepting it."
That might be useful for the particular subset Osgood is writing about, but in failing to present a more diverse, multicausational portrait of eating disorders, this falls very, very short of ideas that are applicable beyond her chosen archetype. She focuses on exhibitionist and (dare I say) borderline traits. But where are the people who work real jobs, hide their illness, or weren't raised in nice families who can finance multiple hospital stays? She acknowledges toward the end that we've all heard there is diversity in eating disorders, yet her memoir lists page after page of rich teenage girls throwing temper tantrums (in contrast to the "pathetic" older patients. And predisposing risk factors and traits are completely out of the discussion, I imagine because this would "legitimize" the illness... Not to mention how hospital culture could influence behavior inside them, while outside there may be people with different stories.
The above statement, among many others, may be gutsy--if not audacious--but sounding edgy or bold doesn't do anything to support an argument. Frankly, statements like this are downright damaging. It's nothing groundbreaking to back up old stigmas and myths. Why we'd like to take a big leap backward in mental health education, and counter the uphill efforts in recent years to reduce harmful stigmatized attitudes, is beyond me. Studies have shown again and again that stigma does nothing but make psychological problems, their treatments, and public education far worse.
I was initially hopeful to see some intelligent criticism of the general discourse in recovery memoirs, and there are some really great insights here and there. But in the end this seemed like just another entirely simplistic reading. Osgood criticizes memoir writers as she tries to set the record straight--not exactly an unworthy cause, if not self-important--but in the end she falls into the trap of, yet again, universalizing her experience and presenting an egocentric view of the "essence" of an entire diagnosis, as if a trivial explanation can be generalized. I like that she wants to deglamorize anorexia and is willing to call out some bullshit, but I don't think a return to old stereotypes or reducing the problem to dramatic displays and adolescent whims is the way to do it.
I also find the premise unnerving. Osgood sets out to overturn all the other memoirs out there, but what exactly is compelling about her book on its own? It seems to only be written as a rebuttal, which is fine enough I guess; but for a compelling literary piece that would stick with me longer, I want to see something new here, not just a rejection of other ideas (and, perhaps worse, a call for a return to the old). If she is writing to young girls who are reading memoirs for tips, or writing to her former self, then she does what she sets out to do. But I imagine there are many others with diverging stories, and her generalizations serve to stigmatize, shame, and silence. It downright invalidates other narratives. I also think this book could be potentially damaging if friends or family members are reading for understanding or education.
On the surface, this reads like a reasonable reply to "pro anorexia" forums, but I'm concerned that it also reduces eating disorders to no more than these attitudes. Pop media articles are already all over how terrible websites are converting our children to illness; this just reads as a more sophisticated version of that old diatribe. There is a lot more going on, but we get the opposite message as we read each decry against other writers and each description of yet another exemplary fitful teen (and I can't help but wonder if any of their stories were more complex, or if these displays were a product of the hospital environment or anorexia; although the complexity is what the author is arguing against). Perhaps if the author had better defined the scope of her work (and its limits), I would have had more patience as a reader.
June 14, 2017
If you're just looking at the back-cover copy or various other blurbs, it's very hard to tell what this book is about, so I'll try to summarize briefly. This book is about the culture of anorexia—not just about the disease itself, but about how the many books, movies, articles, websites, and TV shows about it affect and even harm women and girls in the name of education and awareness. It's also about how the culture of inpatient eating disorder programs can actually lead to competition and comparisons among patients, possibly making them worse instead of better, and about the language we use concerning those who suffer from eating disorders and how detrimental it can be. Finally, the book is a memoir of the author's own anorexia, although she tries valiantly not to give any "triggering" information—i.e., information about her lowest weight, or her eating plan(s) when she was sick.
I don't have any personal experience with full-blown eating disorders, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on this, but I thought this book was unique and quite valuable. I've read some of the more famous eating-disorder books (Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher, being the most famous), and I've seen Lauren Greenfield's documentary, but until recently it had never occurred to me that texts like these would be absorbed by patients and become an actual part of their experience with their disease. Osgood also frames the addiction aspect of anorexia in a throught-provoking way—what other addict, besides an anorexic person, actively strives to become the "best" addict they can be? These are only some of the issues the book addresses—there's a lot going on here. The book is also entertaining, in the best possible sense; it moves swiftly and gives you a lot to think about.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the book is also problematic in some ways. As I said, Osgood tries not to be triggering, but there's really no way avoid that pitfall entirely. When she names famous anorexic women—not famous in the Mary-Kate Olsen sense, but famous among other anorexic women, I couldn't help but be curious and Google them. I quickly realized that this led down a rabbit hole, where Google images of one anorexic woman engendered images of others, some painful to look at. Could be very triggering to a different type of reader, no? Then, too, Osgood admits late in the book that, although she considers herself recovered from anorexia, she still struggles with the issues sometimes. But by then I already knew this, just based on how she depicted the few overweight women portrayed in the book—always with revolting imagery that made it clear Osgood still has some issues surrounding weight. This is a very small part of the book, but it was very telling for me. Other reviewers have complained that Osgood seems to see her own experiences as universal when they aren't, although this particular aspect didn't bother me—it comes with the territory of writing a memoir, in my opinion. Why do we write autobiographically at all if we don't think there's something universal about what we've been through?
So yes, this book is complicated, but it's a complicated subject and wouldn't be served by a simplistic treatment, even if such a treatment were possible. But I think this is a necessary book, and it's one I would particularly recommend for people who've absorbed a lot of the cultural artifacts addressing eating disorders up to this point—and that's many of us.
I don't have any personal experience with full-blown eating disorders, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on this, but I thought this book was unique and quite valuable. I've read some of the more famous eating-disorder books (Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher, being the most famous), and I've seen Lauren Greenfield's documentary, but until recently it had never occurred to me that texts like these would be absorbed by patients and become an actual part of their experience with their disease. Osgood also frames the addiction aspect of anorexia in a throught-provoking way—what other addict, besides an anorexic person, actively strives to become the "best" addict they can be? These are only some of the issues the book addresses—there's a lot going on here. The book is also entertaining, in the best possible sense; it moves swiftly and gives you a lot to think about.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the book is also problematic in some ways. As I said, Osgood tries not to be triggering, but there's really no way avoid that pitfall entirely. When she names famous anorexic women—not famous in the Mary-Kate Olsen sense, but famous among other anorexic women, I couldn't help but be curious and Google them. I quickly realized that this led down a rabbit hole, where Google images of one anorexic woman engendered images of others, some painful to look at. Could be very triggering to a different type of reader, no? Then, too, Osgood admits late in the book that, although she considers herself recovered from anorexia, she still struggles with the issues sometimes. But by then I already knew this, just based on how she depicted the few overweight women portrayed in the book—always with revolting imagery that made it clear Osgood still has some issues surrounding weight. This is a very small part of the book, but it was very telling for me. Other reviewers have complained that Osgood seems to see her own experiences as universal when they aren't, although this particular aspect didn't bother me—it comes with the territory of writing a memoir, in my opinion. Why do we write autobiographically at all if we don't think there's something universal about what we've been through?
So yes, this book is complicated, but it's a complicated subject and wouldn't be served by a simplistic treatment, even if such a treatment were possible. But I think this is a necessary book, and it's one I would particularly recommend for people who've absorbed a lot of the cultural artifacts addressing eating disorders up to this point—and that's many of us.
March 6, 2020
The author seems very concerned with copycat behaviours - people newly anorexic following in the footsteps of those who write about it, within books or blogs. This seems to have put a lot stress on what the author she feels she can write, and I found what I read to be insufficient for someone hoping to learn about the issue, plus uncomfortable and disjointed.
February 3, 2014
The only thing good about this book was how it directed me to not read Wasted. I immediately returned the shaming book and bought Hornbacher instead.
February 9, 2018
The irony of this book is that Osgood tried so hard to show why her memoir was going to be less triggering/damaging/salacious than the others but she ended up providing me with a fairly comprehensive list of books I would rather read. I immediately bought Wasted and am reading it now, finding it both more of a deterrent to disordered behaviour than How to Disappear Completely, and more of a compelling read.
It's frustrating to read a book with such an admirable goal - Osgood wanted to deconstruct the culture around thinness and food and how deeply harmful it can be while drawing from her own experiences, without being triggering or using the details of her disorder to quietly brag about how sick she was - fail over and over to be anything other than a bloated, self-centered, scathing dismissal of all other previous sufferers who dared to speak about their disorders. I do think there is a tendency in writing about eating disorders, especially in fiction, especially by authors with no experience with an ED, to try to make it horrible but to only succeed in ticking every horrible box that somebody moving into an ED finds appealing. That's worthy of critique and examination, and unfortunately is something that Osgood doesn't manage to avoid. This book reminded me of the outpouring of well-intentioned documentaries and docu-series in the mind 2000s that unwittingly exposed thousands of people to thinspo, pro ana, and a whole host of resources for tipz n trickz.
I think it would have benefited from some more editing to give it structure and a clearer sense of purpose. You know what she was trying to do, because she tells you... kind of.... I can tell she passionately wants change that will help young people be protected from AN. She is well researched and I definitely agree with her views that our media is hungry for details - like low weights - that take stories meant for awareness and turn them into potential triggers or manuals. But her tone is off putting and she circled her point for much longer than necessary, talking around and around it until about 88% of the way through when she finally started to try to nail down a point. Ultimately I found the first 80% of the book disorganised and unhelpful in terms of where it aimed its criticisms and solutions suggested. Osgood's writing is still reasonably enjoyable. When it lapses into anecdote instead of lecturing and quoting it can be pretty engaging. But she doesn't mesh the two elements together very well. If you read without expectations quite as high as mine were for a book with such a good concept.
I originally had an almost 3000 word list of things that I found frustrating, confusing, and contradictory about this book but in the end I just... give up...
It's frustrating to read a book with such an admirable goal - Osgood wanted to deconstruct the culture around thinness and food and how deeply harmful it can be while drawing from her own experiences, without being triggering or using the details of her disorder to quietly brag about how sick she was - fail over and over to be anything other than a bloated, self-centered, scathing dismissal of all other previous sufferers who dared to speak about their disorders. I do think there is a tendency in writing about eating disorders, especially in fiction, especially by authors with no experience with an ED, to try to make it horrible but to only succeed in ticking every horrible box that somebody moving into an ED finds appealing. That's worthy of critique and examination, and unfortunately is something that Osgood doesn't manage to avoid. This book reminded me of the outpouring of well-intentioned documentaries and docu-series in the mind 2000s that unwittingly exposed thousands of people to thinspo, pro ana, and a whole host of resources for tipz n trickz.
I think it would have benefited from some more editing to give it structure and a clearer sense of purpose. You know what she was trying to do, because she tells you... kind of.... I can tell she passionately wants change that will help young people be protected from AN. She is well researched and I definitely agree with her views that our media is hungry for details - like low weights - that take stories meant for awareness and turn them into potential triggers or manuals. But her tone is off putting and she circled her point for much longer than necessary, talking around and around it until about 88% of the way through when she finally started to try to nail down a point. Ultimately I found the first 80% of the book disorganised and unhelpful in terms of where it aimed its criticisms and solutions suggested. Osgood's writing is still reasonably enjoyable. When it lapses into anecdote instead of lecturing and quoting it can be pretty engaging. But she doesn't mesh the two elements together very well. If you read without expectations quite as high as mine were for a book with such a good concept.
I originally had an almost 3000 word list of things that I found frustrating, confusing, and contradictory about this book but in the end I just... give up...
November 8, 2014
I'd had some great luck recently with reading Anorexia recovery accounts. Going Hungry and Gaining were life changing. I read the back and was really interested in How to Disappear Completely. However, upon reading it I found it difficult to get through, not in that "telling hard truths for personal growth" way but in that "holy crap this is triggering the daylights out of me" kind of way.
Initially it seemed like a solid premise and presents as being overall pro-recovery. She talks about her struggles with the competitiveness of Anorexia, which I very much related to. I approved of her choice not to detail her diets and rituals since I tend to find those triggering. Then she spent a chapter detailing pro-ana websites and their history, quoting directly from them. I know she and I seem to have ideological differences on the desire to develop anorexia but well, it's her point of view and she's entitled to have it. Honestly, she started to lose me at the Wannarexics section. She had just spent a part of the book talking about the problems with labeling and diagnosis, which I also found problematic. She falsely reports that EDNOS was taken out completely, when really it was just changed to OSFED (Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders). Then she details a list of people to be called out and judged as wannarexics. I get that her premise deep down may have been that the idea of wannarexia is another construction of anorexic competition but her list and the judgement apparent in the tone directly undermines it. I was also extremely put off by her tone and language choices.
She revisits the idea that she had to prove that she was really sick, or "the best anorexic" and to me this feels like another expression of this. My experience of reading this was a person trying to win a contest for how sick she was and judge others as sicker or less sick. I don't know the author's intent but her tone comes off throughout the book as judgmental, full of scorn for those of us who weren't real anorexics.
I think what really bothered me was that Osgood states her truth as universal in many ways. There's a lack of acknowledgement that her view and relationship with her ED isn't everyone's. I recognize that this is a memoir, her ideas about her life, so I may just be being a rigid jerk. But I couldn't get to the experience and found her writing hard to follow at times. It wasn't as positive a reading experience as I had hoped with would be.
Initially it seemed like a solid premise and presents as being overall pro-recovery. She talks about her struggles with the competitiveness of Anorexia, which I very much related to. I approved of her choice not to detail her diets and rituals since I tend to find those triggering. Then she spent a chapter detailing pro-ana websites and their history, quoting directly from them. I know she and I seem to have ideological differences on the desire to develop anorexia but well, it's her point of view and she's entitled to have it. Honestly, she started to lose me at the Wannarexics section. She had just spent a part of the book talking about the problems with labeling and diagnosis, which I also found problematic. She falsely reports that EDNOS was taken out completely, when really it was just changed to OSFED (Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders). Then she details a list of people to be called out and judged as wannarexics. I get that her premise deep down may have been that the idea of wannarexia is another construction of anorexic competition but her list and the judgement apparent in the tone directly undermines it. I was also extremely put off by her tone and language choices.
She revisits the idea that she had to prove that she was really sick, or "the best anorexic" and to me this feels like another expression of this. My experience of reading this was a person trying to win a contest for how sick she was and judge others as sicker or less sick. I don't know the author's intent but her tone comes off throughout the book as judgmental, full of scorn for those of us who weren't real anorexics.
I think what really bothered me was that Osgood states her truth as universal in many ways. There's a lack of acknowledgement that her view and relationship with her ED isn't everyone's. I recognize that this is a memoir, her ideas about her life, so I may just be being a rigid jerk. But I couldn't get to the experience and found her writing hard to follow at times. It wasn't as positive a reading experience as I had hoped with would be.
March 10, 2017
A long lecture on not romanticising eating disorders in which the author does exactly that. Yawn.
September 5, 2016
Author Kelsey Osgood actively pursued anorexia. She describes how, at the age of fourteen, mesmerized by books about eating disorders, she set out to become anorexic. Mission accomplished. Bravo! (I'm being snarky people!) In the process she discovered anorexia is not as glamorous as it once seemed.
Osgood spends a fair amount of time criticizing other eating disorder centered "literature" for its romanticization of the disease. Her contention being that such fare fosters eating disorders. Although I do think anorexia is often portrayed in an attractive manner, I do not think such fare can cause an eating disorder. My belief is that the disease is biologically based. To be sure, it can be influenced by the media and other such factors; these may even be the catalyst that sets a diet in motion, but one must have a predisposition in order to develop a full-blown eating disorder. The problem is, for the most part, Osgood's own book does exactly what she purports to be against. Despite her stable recovery How To Disappear Completely often reads as a love letter to her own battle. The tenderness and even affection she still clearly feels for her years spent cycling through various institutions is evident. To her credit, she never gives the oft "triggering" numbers so sought out/despised numbers in terms of weight or calories. However, the overall nostalgia she feels permeates her writing.
Osgood spends a fair amount of time criticizing other eating disorder centered "literature" for its romanticization of the disease. Her contention being that such fare fosters eating disorders. Although I do think anorexia is often portrayed in an attractive manner, I do not think such fare can cause an eating disorder. My belief is that the disease is biologically based. To be sure, it can be influenced by the media and other such factors; these may even be the catalyst that sets a diet in motion, but one must have a predisposition in order to develop a full-blown eating disorder. The problem is, for the most part, Osgood's own book does exactly what she purports to be against. Despite her stable recovery How To Disappear Completely often reads as a love letter to her own battle. The tenderness and even affection she still clearly feels for her years spent cycling through various institutions is evident. To her credit, she never gives the oft "triggering" numbers so sought out/despised numbers in terms of weight or calories. However, the overall nostalgia she feels permeates her writing.
October 22, 2015
Premise-wise, Osgood sets out to do something that is far too uncommon in this type of memoir: she seeks to tell her story without numbers and in a way that will not be triggering, that will not glamorise eating disorders. I've read others that set out to do the same (if less explicitly), but they are unfortunately the exception rather than the rule. (I'll add, since I've read a metric fucktonne of these, that I'm pretty desensitised, but that doesn't mean I don't notice.) So I love that that's what she's trying for.
But does she succeed? I'm not so sure. For someone determined to avoid triggers, Osgood spends a lot of time talking about them. For the most part her approach to not sharing triggering details of her own experience seems to translate into limiting all details of her own experience. At the same time, a tremendous amount of the research portion of the book is about triggers, and triggering books.
Osgood knew about anorexia before she ever became ill, and to her this is apparently a mark against her; even in the book she is struggling with the question of validity. She doesn't measure her illness in terms of weight, but she does measure it in terms of how many times she was in hospital (and where). It feels in places -- and of course I have no way of knowing if there's any truth to this -- that she's still trying to 'prove' her anorexia so that she can let it go (p. 139).
But I'm less concerned with how Osgood portrays her own illness than I am with how she portrays others. She is, by the time of writing, distanced from any desire to relapse or any pro-ana sentiment, but to the extent that she comes off as disgusted by her former fellow patients. Angry, sometimes. Not always, and not in all of her discussions of other patients, but often enough to be noticeable. They seem to be the manifestations of all that is wrong with eating-disorder memoirs and fiction. She questions whether individuals were anorexic or just wannarexic; she implies a hierarchy of illness.
And -- I'm sorry, but it has to be said. I cannot imagine finding myself described, in a book like this, as 'flabby', 'plump' (both p. 110), or 'chubby' (p. 144). (The last is in reference not to someone she knew but to a photo in a book of a girl in treatment for an eating disorder; I've read that book, and what the hell? While we're at it, the 'elderly woman' -- from the same book -- she describes in the same breath was 48 when that picture was taken.)
I read this in mid-late 2013 and then again in early-mid 2014 because I wanted to be surer of what I thought about it. It's an interesting book and an interesting take, but most of the good points are lost somewhere in the wandering and in the really problematic points. I wanted to like this a great deal more than I actually did.
But does she succeed? I'm not so sure. For someone determined to avoid triggers, Osgood spends a lot of time talking about them. For the most part her approach to not sharing triggering details of her own experience seems to translate into limiting all details of her own experience. At the same time, a tremendous amount of the research portion of the book is about triggers, and triggering books.
Osgood knew about anorexia before she ever became ill, and to her this is apparently a mark against her; even in the book she is struggling with the question of validity. She doesn't measure her illness in terms of weight, but she does measure it in terms of how many times she was in hospital (and where). It feels in places -- and of course I have no way of knowing if there's any truth to this -- that she's still trying to 'prove' her anorexia so that she can let it go (p. 139).
But I'm less concerned with how Osgood portrays her own illness than I am with how she portrays others. She is, by the time of writing, distanced from any desire to relapse or any pro-ana sentiment, but to the extent that she comes off as disgusted by her former fellow patients. Angry, sometimes. Not always, and not in all of her discussions of other patients, but often enough to be noticeable. They seem to be the manifestations of all that is wrong with eating-disorder memoirs and fiction. She questions whether individuals were anorexic or just wannarexic; she implies a hierarchy of illness.
And -- I'm sorry, but it has to be said. I cannot imagine finding myself described, in a book like this, as 'flabby', 'plump' (both p. 110), or 'chubby' (p. 144). (The last is in reference not to someone she knew but to a photo in a book of a girl in treatment for an eating disorder; I've read that book, and what the hell? While we're at it, the 'elderly woman' -- from the same book -- she describes in the same breath was 48 when that picture was taken.)
I read this in mid-late 2013 and then again in early-mid 2014 because I wanted to be surer of what I thought about it. It's an interesting book and an interesting take, but most of the good points are lost somewhere in the wandering and in the really problematic points. I wanted to like this a great deal more than I actually did.
March 20, 2018
I don't know how I feel about this one? So let's go on this ride together as I figure it out. I feel things for the author and her journey but at the same time I'm so annoyed by her for so many reasons, I don't even know where to begin. First of all, this is part memoir, part...dissertation about how people develop eating disorders? I guess? Which is weird because she went to school to get an MFA, not any sort of medical/psychology degree, and yet here she is Telling Us What's What.
I think my biggest gripe with this book is the author shitting on other people who have written much better memoirs than hers. She particularly feels the need to tear down Marya Hornbacher and Elizabeth Wurtzel, who wrote two of the most successful, revered books about mental illness that were super popular back in the late 90s/early 2000s when this author was coming of age. She blames Hornbacher for making girls anorexic, and about Wurtzel, she says:
"When I reread Prozac Nation at twenty-five, I was, for lack of a less eloquent phrase, 'grossed out' by Elizabeth Wurtzel's self-obsession."
I mean, says a woman writing a memoir about herself despite her own story being as basic as they come. Because unlike some truly memorable authors who have written about their accounts with anorexia in fascinating, insightful, and gut-wrenching ways, this account is forgettable and yet she sees and writes about herself as some brilliant wunderkind who was the first person to head down this path and write about it.
Her story is as unremarkable and boring as they come for this 'genre' and it's mostly because she refuses to really talk about anything in detail, lest she inspire a new generation of anorexic girls. So you get her babbling on and on about going into various hospitals and shitting on everyone she ever met in treatment, but you don't really get any depth or insight out of her so like...why write this thing?
The answer is because she has this brilliant idea that anorexia is a "communicable disease" that is not so much developed as some underlying pathology that is awakened when triggered by something (including something cultural like a book or movie), but rather that it's something any old person can "get" if they want it simply by reading books about it. ???? Again, she's not any kind of doctor, psychologist, or medical professional, and she clearly has done zero actual research into this aside from reading and pulling quotes from a few articles in the same way I used to pull quotes from books when writing papers in college, picking and choosing what best fit my argument even if they didn't really fit it out of context. So how can she just make these claims?
Oh, because for HER they're true. In HER story, she was a 14-year-old girl who was unsatisfied with her body and so she sought out books about eating disorders to use as guides, eventually helping her develop a full-blown disorder of her own. So because this is how things were for her, according to her book, this is the case for everyone in the world. #SCIENCE
While I do think there are many instances of people with eating disorders who are "inspired" by material they see, actual research has shown that a majority of these people were eating disordered to begin with and naturally gravitate toward these either because they seek them out out of curiosity and want to know more, or because they happen to catch something (in a magazine, on TV, in health class) and find themselves mesmerized and wanting more because they recognize themselves in it in some way.
I absolutely agree with the author's point that people learn tricks and tips from memoirs and TV movies. In addition to Marya Hornbacher, the author makes references to Kessa, Lori Gottlieb, "For the Love of Nancy," and many others you'd recognize from the ED lexicon if you've ever suffered from a disorder. But I think in many cases, people aren't seeking these things out SOLEY to learn "tricks and tips." If anything, they seek out memoirs and TV movies and novels about eating disorders because they finally find something they can relate to and this kind of media can make them feel like someone out there understands. Through this, yes, it's easy to pick up on habits as well, but I think it's suuuuuuuuper rare that someone with no predisposition for anorexia would randomly be like "I wanna be anorexic!" and go out and buy a bunch of memoirs to learn tricks that take her from fully healthy to someone with a full-blown mental illness. There are absolutely people who "want" to be anorexic, but unless they have those underlying personality traits that predispose them to the disorder, they're not going to be successful in "getting" anorexia because anorexia simply isn't something you "get" no matter how this author tries to convince us otherwise.
I actually picked up this book out of curiosity because it sounded like the author and I had a creepy amount of things in common. We're the same age from small New England towns, we were both morbidly fascinated with (and terrified of) the world ending in 2000, we both found Kessa at a young age (me, to the point where I had an altar ego, Ren, who was my "best little girl" self lol), we both went to Columbia, we were treated at some of the same places, and now, we're both writers who live in Brooklyn. I tend to love picking up books where I can find pieces of myself in the author because even if our journeys aren't identical, I still feel like I am connected with him or her, and that's what I thought this would be in the same way I connected with "Unbearable Lightness" and, back in the day, the way I connected with Kessa.
But instead, I found myself learning almost nothing personal about the author besides these basic facts, as she brought zero insight or understanding into her own personal journey as she attempted to turn her story into an example for some greater point she was trying to make but failed to. And on top of that, I had a hard time staying interested because every other flaw aside, the flow of this book is so disjointed and jarring, one minute you're watching her list everyone she's ever met with anorexia, trying to use their stories to fit her thesis, a minute later you're reading a rant about why Elizabeth Wurtzel sucks, and then after that, you're getting a bare-bones narrative about her time in treatment. It's just bizarre and doesn't work as a book. A series of blogs, maybe, but having read this, I would have zero desire to check that blog out.
I think my biggest gripe with this book is the author shitting on other people who have written much better memoirs than hers. She particularly feels the need to tear down Marya Hornbacher and Elizabeth Wurtzel, who wrote two of the most successful, revered books about mental illness that were super popular back in the late 90s/early 2000s when this author was coming of age. She blames Hornbacher for making girls anorexic, and about Wurtzel, she says:
"When I reread Prozac Nation at twenty-five, I was, for lack of a less eloquent phrase, 'grossed out' by Elizabeth Wurtzel's self-obsession."
I mean, says a woman writing a memoir about herself despite her own story being as basic as they come. Because unlike some truly memorable authors who have written about their accounts with anorexia in fascinating, insightful, and gut-wrenching ways, this account is forgettable and yet she sees and writes about herself as some brilliant wunderkind who was the first person to head down this path and write about it.
Her story is as unremarkable and boring as they come for this 'genre' and it's mostly because she refuses to really talk about anything in detail, lest she inspire a new generation of anorexic girls. So you get her babbling on and on about going into various hospitals and shitting on everyone she ever met in treatment, but you don't really get any depth or insight out of her so like...why write this thing?
The answer is because she has this brilliant idea that anorexia is a "communicable disease" that is not so much developed as some underlying pathology that is awakened when triggered by something (including something cultural like a book or movie), but rather that it's something any old person can "get" if they want it simply by reading books about it. ???? Again, she's not any kind of doctor, psychologist, or medical professional, and she clearly has done zero actual research into this aside from reading and pulling quotes from a few articles in the same way I used to pull quotes from books when writing papers in college, picking and choosing what best fit my argument even if they didn't really fit it out of context. So how can she just make these claims?
Oh, because for HER they're true. In HER story, she was a 14-year-old girl who was unsatisfied with her body and so she sought out books about eating disorders to use as guides, eventually helping her develop a full-blown disorder of her own. So because this is how things were for her, according to her book, this is the case for everyone in the world. #SCIENCE
While I do think there are many instances of people with eating disorders who are "inspired" by material they see, actual research has shown that a majority of these people were eating disordered to begin with and naturally gravitate toward these either because they seek them out out of curiosity and want to know more, or because they happen to catch something (in a magazine, on TV, in health class) and find themselves mesmerized and wanting more because they recognize themselves in it in some way.
I absolutely agree with the author's point that people learn tricks and tips from memoirs and TV movies. In addition to Marya Hornbacher, the author makes references to Kessa, Lori Gottlieb, "For the Love of Nancy," and many others you'd recognize from the ED lexicon if you've ever suffered from a disorder. But I think in many cases, people aren't seeking these things out SOLEY to learn "tricks and tips." If anything, they seek out memoirs and TV movies and novels about eating disorders because they finally find something they can relate to and this kind of media can make them feel like someone out there understands. Through this, yes, it's easy to pick up on habits as well, but I think it's suuuuuuuuper rare that someone with no predisposition for anorexia would randomly be like "I wanna be anorexic!" and go out and buy a bunch of memoirs to learn tricks that take her from fully healthy to someone with a full-blown mental illness. There are absolutely people who "want" to be anorexic, but unless they have those underlying personality traits that predispose them to the disorder, they're not going to be successful in "getting" anorexia because anorexia simply isn't something you "get" no matter how this author tries to convince us otherwise.
I actually picked up this book out of curiosity because it sounded like the author and I had a creepy amount of things in common. We're the same age from small New England towns, we were both morbidly fascinated with (and terrified of) the world ending in 2000, we both found Kessa at a young age (me, to the point where I had an altar ego, Ren, who was my "best little girl" self lol), we both went to Columbia, we were treated at some of the same places, and now, we're both writers who live in Brooklyn. I tend to love picking up books where I can find pieces of myself in the author because even if our journeys aren't identical, I still feel like I am connected with him or her, and that's what I thought this would be in the same way I connected with "Unbearable Lightness" and, back in the day, the way I connected with Kessa.
But instead, I found myself learning almost nothing personal about the author besides these basic facts, as she brought zero insight or understanding into her own personal journey as she attempted to turn her story into an example for some greater point she was trying to make but failed to. And on top of that, I had a hard time staying interested because every other flaw aside, the flow of this book is so disjointed and jarring, one minute you're watching her list everyone she's ever met with anorexia, trying to use their stories to fit her thesis, a minute later you're reading a rant about why Elizabeth Wurtzel sucks, and then after that, you're getting a bare-bones narrative about her time in treatment. It's just bizarre and doesn't work as a book. A series of blogs, maybe, but having read this, I would have zero desire to check that blog out.
April 4, 2014
Kelsey Osgood's eating disorder memoir a special one, because it is not only a commentary on eating disorder memoirs themselves, but it is a genuinely good criticism of recovery culture and modern anorexic life. Osgood strays as far from "triggers" as she can, making a point to never list her sick weight or caloric intake. Yes, one could say that the book is still upsetting to those with eating disorders, but I would argue that any eating disorder book is going to inevitably trigger the brain of someone with a pre-diagnosed condition. Still, this book is extremely moving at parts, and a MUCH safer read than the infamous (though beautifully written) Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher. I applaud Kelsey Osgood on an honest portrayal of her life with anorexia and also her well-researched, meticulously analyzed commentary on the culture of this disease.
March 9, 2014
Never having suffered an eating disorder (I love food way too much to abuse it), I have however read quite a few books on the subject. This author goes out of her way (many, many times) to explain why HER anorexia book is different than all the others. Obsessed with the book Wasted, she refers to it throughout the book (along with Prozac Nation, which, okay??) and explains how detrimental the other books are (unlike hers). She claims to not want to glamorize the disease and by never giving her weight or calorie intake, her book is helpful rather than harmful. Yet the title of the book? Is meant to grab an anorexic's attention like no other. She spends the majority of the time talking about her hospital stays and whether or not she felt like a "real" anorexic and the result is like an unsatisfying nap.
I've never been so thankful to have passed up buying the Kindle version for getting it at the library.
I've never been so thankful to have passed up buying the Kindle version for getting it at the library.
March 3, 2024
Could not get into this. The first part is chock a block theory-dense, and I get it — eating disorders are contagious, and talking about them can encourage others. Then the rest of the book is talking about it, apparently, but only in a good way which does not mention low point weights or the details of the starvation diet.
There were some interesting parts later on, as I skipped through the material, but ultimately I could not find my way into this text. As always, blame it on me, and my obdurate density.
There were some interesting parts later on, as I skipped through the material, but ultimately I could not find my way into this text. As always, blame it on me, and my obdurate density.
February 12, 2019
Absolutely the only book anyone should ever read about anorexia. I went into the book not knowing much and I left it firmly convinced that many of the ways society talks about anorexia are just facilitating the disease. The book is a very impressive combination of excellent information and personal story that made both parts easier to swallow. The only issue I had with it was it’s sometimes hard for me to read about medical stuff, so there were parts of the book that were incredibly tough to get through. Otherwise, a groundbreaking and well written book.
Read
September 30, 2023This is a difficult book to rate.
Honestly, I believe Osgood makes some good, controversial points. I appreciate that she was brave enough to discuss wannarexia and the method by which some people “deliberately” become anorexic — sometimes agonizing over it for several years with unsuccessful diets, until something clicks and the disorder sets in.
But I think Osgood’s personal insecurity colors her narrative. In my view, plenty of teenage girls try extreme diets and semi-jokingly say they want to develop anorexia. But only a tiny percentage of those girls actually develop it as a result. It reminds me of the relationship between marijuana and schizophrenia. A latent schizophrenic, with no symptoms, might innocently try marijuana and awaken his disorder. A latent anorexic, with no symptoms, might try an extreme diet and awaken her disorder too.
As such, I’m not convinced that Osgood’s “solutions” — stigmatizing anorexia, denigrating its sufferers as vain and vapid — will actually do any good. In my view, those “wannarexics” will develop the disorder whether we insult them or not. For what it is, this book is well-written and engaging, but it could be MUCH better with a bit of therapy and self-love under Osgood’s belt. I would like to see a more thoughtful analysis of anorexia that picks up on some elements here, elements Osgood recognizes but doesn’t know what to do with yet: the euphoria of starving, the OCD tendencies of anorexics, the perfectionism and high achievement rates, the connection of anorexia with religion.
I also think any book on anorexia is incomplete without an examination of race and privilege, but I don’t think Osgood is the right person to make that examination. Not because she herself is privileged but because I was not impressed with the un-self-aware way she addresses race here. Other reviews have touched on this; it’s a little jarring.
Honestly, I believe Osgood makes some good, controversial points. I appreciate that she was brave enough to discuss wannarexia and the method by which some people “deliberately” become anorexic — sometimes agonizing over it for several years with unsuccessful diets, until something clicks and the disorder sets in.
But I think Osgood’s personal insecurity colors her narrative. In my view, plenty of teenage girls try extreme diets and semi-jokingly say they want to develop anorexia. But only a tiny percentage of those girls actually develop it as a result. It reminds me of the relationship between marijuana and schizophrenia. A latent schizophrenic, with no symptoms, might innocently try marijuana and awaken his disorder. A latent anorexic, with no symptoms, might try an extreme diet and awaken her disorder too.
As such, I’m not convinced that Osgood’s “solutions” — stigmatizing anorexia, denigrating its sufferers as vain and vapid — will actually do any good. In my view, those “wannarexics” will develop the disorder whether we insult them or not. For what it is, this book is well-written and engaging, but it could be MUCH better with a bit of therapy and self-love under Osgood’s belt. I would like to see a more thoughtful analysis of anorexia that picks up on some elements here, elements Osgood recognizes but doesn’t know what to do with yet: the euphoria of starving, the OCD tendencies of anorexics, the perfectionism and high achievement rates, the connection of anorexia with religion.
I also think any book on anorexia is incomplete without an examination of race and privilege, but I don’t think Osgood is the right person to make that examination. Not because she herself is privileged but because I was not impressed with the un-self-aware way she addresses race here. Other reviews have touched on this; it’s a little jarring.
July 29, 2013
I read this book a couple of weeks ago and am still thinking about it. I usually steer away from memoirs but this book is so much more than that. The author, a recovering anorexic, spends more time writing about the why people become anorexic than rehashing her experience. Yes, she ended up in therapy and in the hospital, but it was her decision to anorexic that I think brings out the "why this book is different" and makes it well worth reading. Osgood says she just decided one day as a preteen that the way to feel special was to stop eating. This is apparently very prevalent in the Ana community, especially when they're together in therapy or the hospital. She makes a point that, unlike other addictions, and yes, she classifies anorexia as an addiction, other addictions do not have this same competitive sense. Alcoholics don't look other alcoholics and try to be a better drinker. Interesting point and one that I'd never considered. The writing kept me involved and wanting to know and understand more. While "enjoyable" is not exactly the right for this book, it was fascinating and informative.
January 25, 2020
Part memoir, part study, and part philosophy, Osgood invokes just enough interest for one to keep reading, but not enough for the work to be memorable. Osgood roundly critiques most ED-related literature she assesses, particularly focusing on Marya Hornbacher throughout the book. She comes off as holier-than-thou while repeatedly contrasting herself to Hornbacher and (in her mind) coming out the wiser. 3/5
February 19, 2014
While I commend Osgood on coming forward and telling her story about anorexia, I felt that this book was more of a critique on how anorexia is developing as being "trendy" and the new concept of "wannarexia". There is not much science to back up her arguments, and this book read more like a term paper than a memoir or personal account.
August 31, 2021
Read in July 2021: https://hollograms.blogspot.com/2021/...
March 17, 2025
Unread shelf project 2025: book 10.
August 27, 2019
2.5 stars. Osgood has lovely prose, and it does a decent job hiding that she doesn’t have that much to say. Few things are uglier to me than jealousy; even more so when it’s transparent; all the more pathetic when it isn’t even understood by the sufferer. Throughout, Osgood seemed to have just wanted to write a tell-all memoir full of all the juicy details she pays lip-service to decrying; her guilt about that desire leads to the tonal dissonance, the pseudo-academic breakdowns of anorexia in the modern age that are rather her casting aspersions on anyone and everyone who has dared to claim ownership of the disease. She tears down Hornbacher while clearly trying to ape her; she devotes several pages to self-indulgently comparing their writing styles, even. But while Hornbacher unapologetically owns her past, Osgood circles the drain, humble-bragging about her privileged upbringing one minute, waving off any notion of “specialness” the next. “Was it the transparency of her desire? The clumsiness of it? The immediate and seemingly prideful openness? And are these things that she could have, with time and practice, learned to eradicate?” she writes in one of her many vitriolic takedowns of fellow sufferers, blind to her envy, missing a fundamental spiritual self-awareness and trying to supplement it with an over-analyzed academic pantomime.
May 2, 2014
The author vows to be different in her memoir about her battle with anorexia and never tell you her lowest weight, thereby not encouraging "wannarexia" among her readers. Don't worry - she didn't need to supply the number. She made it clear that she was more than just a 'wannabe' - she was a true anorexic, complete with peach fuzz and the enviable NY treatment hospitals where 'true' cases end up. Even though she assures us she's over it, she's clearly still competitive, which is just sad. I wanted to like her. I wanted to root for her, but in the end I just couldn't. She made anorexia sound like a disease of privilege which - let's be honest - it is. Good thing her parents' insurance covered stints at those prestigious hospitals.
Even all that I can forgive the author. After all, she came back from the brink and should be commended. But I have a hard time forgiving her for slamming Lauren Greenfield, writer of "Thin" the book and documentary, for 'glamourizing' eating disorders and making money off of victims. I personally found Greenfield's documentary so disturbing it stayed with me for weeks. And as for making money off victims, this author did the very same thing by describing various hospital-mates down to the gory details.
Pass on this one.
Even all that I can forgive the author. After all, she came back from the brink and should be commended. But I have a hard time forgiving her for slamming Lauren Greenfield, writer of "Thin" the book and documentary, for 'glamourizing' eating disorders and making money off of victims. I personally found Greenfield's documentary so disturbing it stayed with me for weeks. And as for making money off victims, this author did the very same thing by describing various hospital-mates down to the gory details.
Pass on this one.
May 6, 2022
i think the first thing that disconcerted me when reading this was how white kelsey comes across in this, and it's often not self aware despite her attempts of acknowledging her WASPness. there is also this superiority of her tone over previous writers who have documented their struggles with eating disorders as if they could have had the insight that she has having seen the aftermath of books like wasted . ironically it almost fails in that regard— the details given to these proana websites , the list of symptoms, the circling back to the amount of her hospital stays.
kelsey is not a psychologist or an eating disorder specialist by any stretch of it and it shows in her analysis of how anorexia comes to be amongst its most vulnerable population. in addition to that there is so much contempt for the characters that are not like her (young and skinny enough) that its almost ironic that this is supposed to be a "better" version of other books about anorexia.
if its supposed to be a memoir it doesn't provide an actual insight into kelsey, and in the pursuit to be different we are left with a book that doesn't give a narrative that hasnt been given before.
the hornbacher bashing also left a bad taste in my mouth, whole lotta projection going on
kelsey is not a psychologist or an eating disorder specialist by any stretch of it and it shows in her analysis of how anorexia comes to be amongst its most vulnerable population. in addition to that there is so much contempt for the characters that are not like her (young and skinny enough) that its almost ironic that this is supposed to be a "better" version of other books about anorexia.
if its supposed to be a memoir it doesn't provide an actual insight into kelsey, and in the pursuit to be different we are left with a book that doesn't give a narrative that hasnt been given before.
the hornbacher bashing also left a bad taste in my mouth, whole lotta projection going on
August 6, 2016
Some of the reviewers argue that Osgood says that anorexia is not a disease - this is patently false. She doesn't say that at all - she says that what makes anorexia so insidious as a disease is that it often does not feel like one, that it can feel like a quest of sorts instead, and that aspects of our culture validate and romanticize anorexia. I think she made several excellent points, and some of it was quite interesting.
However, while I think that much of what she said was spot-on, I think that the book felt fairly incoherent at times, and repetitive in many places. I found myself skimming at times. I wish she had spoken a bit more about her experience and less about her opinions of others' experiences.
That being said, I'd certainly recommend this over many books that are out there about eating disorders, and I think hers is a new perspective that more people need to understand when it comes to the way eating disorders operate in people's lives and in our culture.
However, while I think that much of what she said was spot-on, I think that the book felt fairly incoherent at times, and repetitive in many places. I found myself skimming at times. I wish she had spoken a bit more about her experience and less about her opinions of others' experiences.
That being said, I'd certainly recommend this over many books that are out there about eating disorders, and I think hers is a new perspective that more people need to understand when it comes to the way eating disorders operate in people's lives and in our culture.
April 3, 2016
I really had to push myself to finish this book. I felt that she was condescending and VERY judgmental. She kept going on and on about Wasted which I felt was very rude to that author's work. She also kept bashing the documentary Thin which I felt was a WAY more accurate depiction of the disease. Seemed she was bragging that SHE would tell a true account of anorexia but instead it was this blurry, confusing account that was very preachy and not at all clear. It was all over the place with no clear focus. She made it sound that people consciously choose anorexia. Maybe if she focused on just talking about modern anorexia and not mixing in her story it would have been okay. I definitely do not recommended this book.
December 4, 2013
i read the ARC (after seeing it and nearly buying it new at b&n, i realized, upon looking at the author photo, that i had met this woman and gotten a signed arc at BEA - i just had to locate it)
so. i believe that kelsey osgood can write well. i just didn't, personally, like the way she organized this book. i just wasn't sure what the point was. she told some personal stories, but that wasn't even half of it. she seemed mainly to pontificate on what was good and bad about the ana books out there. she should have simply written the book she wants to see, without all the explanations.
so. i believe that kelsey osgood can write well. i just didn't, personally, like the way she organized this book. i just wasn't sure what the point was. she told some personal stories, but that wasn't even half of it. she seemed mainly to pontificate on what was good and bad about the ana books out there. she should have simply written the book she wants to see, without all the explanations.
July 16, 2022
I admire the attempt of writing a non-triggering book on the subject of eating disorders. I do not, however, admire the judgmental and snooty tone of the author’s writing. Also, not including numbers does not equal a non-triggering book. There were a few highlights, but all in all I would not recommend.
April 2, 2023
hmmmm - generally, I didn’t love this one although I really appreciated the author declining to use numbers or provide weight loss details. But it felt very privileged and subtly racist in how it described patients, and I’m not entirely sure what the author herself has learned. Interesting but over generalized
July 29, 2018
The author is undeniably talented but most of this book is her talking shit about other authors on the same subject and being judgey as fuck about the plight of other people under the eating disorder umbrella. I think she could have made much better use of her writing talent.
March 5, 2020
I really liked the way this was written, part memoir , part discourse. Honest, raw and real
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