“Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.”-EB White
I’m spending the week at the beach with my Grandma. She is a woman of 89 with the health and wit of 60 year old. I have a special relationship with Grandma and love spending time with her. I don’t hang out with her out of the goodness of my heart but I do it because she’s fun, I love her, and I connect with her. However, we don’t always connect. It wouldn’t be completely correct to say he’s stuck in her ways but more accurate to say she speaks without fully thinking sometimes.
I’m about to tell you about how her prejudice comments really let me down but first I want to tell you a little bit about her so you don’t get the wrong Idea about my Grandma’s character. Around the time I was born my Aunt, my grandma’s daughter was engaged to get married, she already had a few engagement parties and the wedding date was set. My grandmother and grandfather volunteered to pay for the wedding as they are always willing to do anything to make their family happy. The party was set to be at Holiday Inn on Rockville Pike, the meals, food, and entertainment were paid for and set. A mere two weeks before the wedding my aunt realized she was a making a mistake and couldn’t marry the man she was engaged to. When my grandma called the Holiday Inn to get her money back the hotel manger told her she couldn’t get her money back. My bold and big-hearted grandma said that’s alright the party will go and I’ll call the food bank and invite 200 homeless people. Now, the Holiday Inn did reimburse my grandma but she donated much of everything else that we could no longer be used for the wedding to charity. And she fully intended to invite the homeless to wedding-less event!
Now that you have a little of an idea of who my Grandma is I want to get down to the reason I am writing this. My Grandma has always been a source of encouragement and inspiration for me. So when I came to spend the week at the beach with her I was very excited to tell her all about running the Baltimore marathon and raising money for BEDA. Of course my grandma offered to donate before she even knew what BEDA was and was very happy I was running for charity. When I began to explain to her about BEDA, and show her my fundraising video, she thought it was great and offered suggestions about fundraising. I was happy and felt my grandma and I once again connected.
It wasn’t until I was watching a show with her later that evening when a beautiful but larger women appeared on the T.V. and my grandma turned to me and said “Amy those women need to go to BEDA “ my heart sank and I turned to her and said “And why is that?” She replied, “Because they need to loose weight” I was speechless. I told her she was missing the entire point behind BEDA and told her I needed to go for a walk. I was gone for a long time I was so frustrated I had a hard time gathering my thoughts. I usually call my sister to vent but I knew if I told my family about this encounter they would say oh Amy you know how Grandma is she is stuck in her own ways, but I’ve never bought that. No, were talking about an 89 year old woman who voted for Obama in the last democratic race. She is capable of change she just needs to understand why her comments are wrong, dangerous, and hurtful.
I slept on the issue and woke up and began to explain to my grandma that you can never tell a person has an eating disorder by looking at them. I explained that when people suffer from an eating disorder it’s not evident in their body size because the heart of the problem is psychological. I told her the illness in the minds of a bulimic, anorexic, and binge eater are the same, they are all suffering from lack of self esteem, drastically in need of self love, and are tragically torturing their bodies. I told her that commenting of people’s weight and judging them on their size feeds these unhealthy disorders. She began to speak about loved ones she believed had eating disorders still seeming to misunderstand the silent depression that accompanies these disorders. I was happy because I know she’s beginning to understand and I know she will think twice before turning towards me to comment on someone else’s weight. But the interaction really made me think how misunderstood BED is. People are more likely to look at someone overweight and judge them. There is more blame placed on people overweight for their size then their thinner counter parts suffering from anorexia or bulimia. But the pain, hurt and suffering are the same. I realized this was all the more reason to fight for BEDA because people need to truly understand BED and the psychological battle accompanied by those that suffer. Fostering understanding will take energy away from negative things like blame and prejudice put them towards beneficial things like education and self-belief. I know this because I know my grandma didn’t mean to be hurtful when she spoke she just didn’t understand.
Chevese Turner, Founder and CEO of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA)has been working closely with Amy to help raise money for the organization through marathon training read this blog and commented: “It takes a very long time to get the concepts around treatment of BED and to accept that someone who is overweight/obese can also have a psychological condition. It is also very difficult to understand that many people are not able to go on to live physically and mentally healthy lives until they come to a level of acceptance around their body, which may begin with diet and weight loss. This is the really tough part for clinicians because they want to help their clients and when the client insists that weight loss is the best thing for them, it makes sense to the clinician (for all the reasons we all know in terms of physical health). The kicker is that when we can help someone with their mental healthy by addressing their body image issues and acceptance around shape and size, they are more prepared to help themselves physically. It’s a difficult concept, but one that works if given the time TO work.”
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