In an effort to educate students about keeping a positive body image, Body Project interns are hosting campus events for Eating Disorder Awareness Week Feb. 23 to 27.
According to senior Body Project intern Emma Walser, the awareness week is important because the topic of eating disorders is not widely talked about on campus, but it is something students should be more comfortable discussing.
“I know for a lot of people, they will see a friend going down a path, and it’s really freaking them out, but it can be a hard discussion to have,” Walser, a dietetics major, said. “We don’t want people to be so afraid of having that conversation, so letting people know that it is still happening at the college level and is still something that needs to be addressed is important.”
According to campus counselor Lisa Fix-Griffin, the counseling office has received fewer calls from students with eating disorders in recent years since she started at Bradley in 2008.
“It seems like I’m seeing fewer people with eating disorders, in a way that concerns me,” she said. “I’m sure they’re out there. We would even get more calls from concerned friends in the past asking for us to do an outreach and we are not even getting too many of those.”
Fix-Griffin said students also don’t understand how eating disorders develop.
“If you don’t like to eat food, but you eat it anyway, you have that mentality but you don’t physically act on it,” Wroblewski, a business management and administration and history double major, said.
Senior Body Project intern Melissa Wroblewski said the national theme for the week is “I Had No Idea” because a major problem is a student could have an eating disorder or be developing one and not be aware of it.
“There’s a misunderstanding of what puts a person at risk,” she said. “If you restrict your food intake, that increases your chances of developing [an eating disorder]. That in and of itself doesn’t do it, but it sort of pulls the trigger if you have those genes or certain personality traits that predispose you to that.”
To help this problem, Fix-Griffin said she hopes the awareness week will reveal the dangers of dieting.
“I think it’s such a diet obsessed world and thinness obsessed that people dabble in those behaviors not realizing that that’s where it could lead,” she said.
While the Body Project interns said eating disorders affect both males and females and the awareness week is aimed at both groups, Fix-Griffin said females are more subject to developing an eating disorder and tend to bond around dieting.
“It’s not helpful, but we fall right into [bonding over diet trends], and we need to stop doing that because it’s not helpful to us,” she said. “We can all take responsibility and pay attention to how we are talking and change our sisterhood to where we are really more there for each other. It takes a lot of work though, it’s a whole culture change.”
Students can wear blue or green, the National Eating Disorder Association’s colors, to support the awareness week. The Body Project interns are handing out informational cards during the week to students they see wearing the colors.
The interns are ending the awareness week with a trivia game today in Michel Student Center from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be prizes for the winners.
For help or more information, call Health Services at (309) 677-2700.
