Felicia Webb

For the last 2 years I have been researching and documenting the lives of several women sufferers, aiming to explain in a truthful, sensitive and powerful way the issues and emotions they experience. I hope my photographs will raise awareness of the complexity and severity of the problem, help dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding eating disorders, and counter some of the stigma. I want to encourage sufferers to look for help, influence politicians to provide funding for better treatment, and above all dissuade young people from believing that anorexia equals thin equals glamour.

In the Western world we live in an eating-disordered culture. Thinness is associated with desirability, wealth, success - the yuppification of body and soul. Starvation has become plan B - if I fail at least I’ll still be thin. There is a sense in which, to a greater or lesser extent, all women (if not men) are infected with the same anxiety about their bodies and food. We watch what we eat, we watch what others eat. We watch our bodies and theirs. We are rarely satisfied with what we see. At some time or other, don’t we all weigh our worth on the bathroom scales ?

Eating disorders are complex illnesses rooted in psychological and emotional distress, where food and eating are used as a means of trying to cope with seemingly insurmountable problems. Causes can include environmental and social pressures - family problems, sexual abuse, bullying, as well as genetic predisposition or an unwillingness to grow up. It begins as a vain effort to seize control of a life that seems to offer none. To stave off intense self-loathing by achieving weight loss. Anorexia provides a cape of invisibility, where pain, disappointment, fear, desire are all consumed and superseded by obsessive focus on food and weight. Except that it is never thin enough. You never get to enjoy being a weight and size that is probably the envy of your friends. And then anorexia takes over with a vice-like grip, robbing you of your control, a vicious addictive voice in your head pushing you ever further on the road to starvation, all the while persuading you that you are still a disgusting “fat cow”. Your friend has become your enemy. It hijacks your life, and reclaiming it is a battle - uphill all the way. The misery is often compounded by other psychological illnesses: obsessive-compulsive disorder, clinical depression, multiple personality disorder; and other self-destructive behaviors such as self-injury, cutting, drugs or alcoholism.

Jo is 24. The following is an excerpt from an old diary, reprinted with her permission. “What a different person I was a year ago. Two stone heavier for a start. But generally happy and OK. Back then I could never have visualised myself where I am today - half-starved, taking laxatives, sleeping pills, diet pills, anti-depressants, cutting my own body, wanting to die, wanting to live - wanting to hide away, crumble into tiny pieces - but at the same time wanting to shout and kick and scream. I used to think “When I am thin everything will be OK”, but it never is. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. But I’d rather be thin and miserable than fat and miserable. Any day.”