Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no matter how hard we push ourselves and stress over our weight, it will never be “perfect.” The concept of body weight today has become similar to the concept of a Utopian society. It will never be everybody’s idea of perfect, considering the concept of perfection is merely a concept, and can’t be defined.
Standing at 5’2”, weighing in at 92 lbs, naturally thin Yale student, Frances Chan was faced with the choice: gain weight, or lose out on her opportunity for an Ivy league education.
According to the National Post, the student’s problems all began in the beginning of her third year of school, when she made a visit to the student health center concerned about a lump on her breast. The staff of the health center expressed concern over her low BMI suspicious that she may be anorexic. They put fear into her mind that if she did not start to put on weight, she could be forced to leave college if she got sick. In attempt to put on weight, Chan started to binge eat. She was eating up to three to four scoops of ice cream before bed, in addition to cookies. She also stopped walking up stairs so that she would not burn any extra calories.
She stated, “If this carried on, I was going to develop a real eating disorder. I resented eating at all.”
Concerned about her health and suspicious she had already suffered from an eating disorder, the student health center nearly pushed her into an actual eating disorder. Although she promised and insisted time and time again that she was eating regularly and well, they did not believe her. She went from eating well to eating and thinking about eating clogging her thoughts and too much of her time.
Although college health centers should take action if they suspect a student to be suffering from an eating disorder, they should never pry or harass. If a student was suffering from anorexia, forcing them to eat junk food would not help them recover, but only make the disorder worse. Or? What do you think?