Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: eating disorder

  • The Barbie doll syndrome

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “In all the years I’ve been a therapist, I’ve yet to meet a girl who likes her body.”1– Mary Pipher, PhD, clinical psychologist In 1959, the Mattel toy company introduced a doll in the US that was not modeled on a baby or small child, but rather on a young adult. The…

  • Learning to eat at thirty

    Hannah Harpole Bern, Switzerland   “Chai” photo by Hannah Harpole My hippie parents indulged me as a picky eater. At two I proclaimed I was a vegetarian. Around the age of four, I survived solely on yogurt, refusing all other nourishment. I do not exactly know when this morphed into a combination eating disorder of…

  • The elimination game

    Kelley Yuan Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA   Anorexia nervosa. Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière. “Un cas d’anorexie hysterique” 1900. Xylophone ribs and sunken cheeks. A body desperate for food paired with a mind determined to starve. Here lies anorexia nervosa’s cruel paradox, of a body betrayed and a brain allowing it to waste away. The protest…