An amazing friend and I went to the Spice Girls Reunion concert in LA on friday night. It was a blast, and I dont think I have had as much fun in recent memory. It was lie reliving my preteen years, but without the preteen akwardness.
The disenhartening part about it was my direct association with the Spice Girls and their eating disorders. I recall my eating disorder flaring around the first time I saw them perform when I was much younger. Unaware of Geri Halliwell's bulimia at the time, I soon found solace in her auto-biography that outlined much of her struggle. Later, we were all made aware of Victoria's struggle and soon after, Mel C's eating and exercise issue. So as a woman in recovery who is very aware of culture and beauty standards at a Spice Girl's concert, I was sure to notice weight and behaviour. A few of them looked very thin. It didnt make me covet their bones, but rather feel sorry for the pain they must be in. Having thousands staring at you while trying to be in recovery in a dress that hardly covers your rear end has got to be sob-worthy.
What does it mean that most of the "girl power" group of my childhood struggled with eating and food? I believe it means, as a feminist who suffered for so long, that nobody is immune, we all feel pain, we are all human.
It makes me love them more.
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6 comments:
it's awesome to see that you can empathize with these fabulous chicas, while at the same time separating their "entertainment on-stage skinniness" from the "real-life" look. It definitely humanizes us as a society when we see that people who entertain us have just as many flaws as we do. Recovery is an ongoing struggle. My roommate in college has bullimia and its a daily struggle for her. I commend you :-)
Great post - very poignant! The Spice Girls affected me the same way growing up but unlike you I can't seem to forgive them:) It makes me really angry that at least some of them are up to their same old antics despite having children.
I'm glad I found your blog from your comment on The Weighting Game - are you the same TwistedBarbie from the LifeafterED board? I was Charlotte on there too and was so sad when it went away:)
Good luck with your recovery!!
Hey Charlotte!
Yes, I was on lifeaftered for a bit. I am actually a post mod on webiteback.com and it has absolutely been completly vital to my recovery. If you are looking for a great community of empowered women it is deffinitely the way to go.
How are you? I dont really remember anyone from life after ed except Kelsey, who came over to webiteback. Remind me about you. I am maketeanotwar85 on AIM or twistedbarbie@gmail.com on MSN.
Peace, love and revolution,
Rachael
You know, I was going thru an ED at the height of the Spice Girls phenom in college and in retrospect, after reading this post, I think that maybe one of the things that so attracted me to their music was a subconscious acknowledgement on my part of their "perfect" bodies and what those bods entailed. I definitely didn't think of it like that at the time but now, it seems kind of obvious. Wow - we can really cloud our judgement when we set our minds to it, can't we?
Interesting to know.
OK I am years late on your blog.... sorry, every once in a while i peruse blogs of like minded people...
I have a spice girls (Geri Haliwell specifically) story.... I work at a children's hospital on the inpatient eating disorder's unit, so you can imagine, these kids are pretty sick... so, Geri Haliwell came to visit our unit and said to our kids: "oh, you girls don't look like you have eating disorders!!" CAN YOU IMAGINE??? I have to say I am just not a fan... she should be more considerate given her history. The kids all think we hospitalize them to fatten them, and she certainly didn't help things.... sigh, it seems no one knows what to say anymore.
I enjoy your blog.... and look forward to reading more recent posts!!!
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