CW: Disordered eating and mental health
From Feb. 26 to Feb. 29, the Claremont Colleges Eating Disorder Task Force hosted a series of 5C events for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (EDAW), a nationally recognized event aiming to educate about disordered eating.
Whitney Tawney, a registered dietician nutritionist who specializes in eating disorders and intuitive eating at the Claremont Colleges, was the main organizer of the events. She explained that their purpose was to destigmatize and raise awareness about eating disorders on campus.
“Typically, people feel a lot of guilt and shame when it comes to eating disorders and [they don’t] talk about it and feel like they can’t necessarily go get help,” Tawney said. “The more we talk about it, hopefully, [the] more people [will] feel comfortable enough to get help and to get support for what they’re struggling with.”
The events began on Monday, Feb. 26 with an “Eating Disorder Recovery Era” bracelet-making booth stationed outside of the Hub at Claremont McKenna College. Students were given materials to make bracelets with inspirational messages intended to help them through recovery.
Events continued on Tuesday, Feb. 27 with an “Eating Disorder Lunch and Learn” at Harvey Mudd College’s Shanahan Center. There, students could enjoy a free lunch while listening to a talk on eating disorders by Mejken Hernandez, director of regional outreach at Alsana and Robyn Caruso, founder and clinical director of AlignEd. Both Alsana and AlignEd are organizations which assist individuals through their recovery from eating disorders.
During the talk, Hernandez and Carusoe explained that eating disorders can impact anyone, regardless of their physical appearance. They emphasized that all individuals struggling with these disorders deserve help and noted that many times people in larger bodies are neglected the support they need.
“Eating disorders come in all different shapes and sizes and we really can’t tell [from the outside] someone who’s struggling from an eating disorder,” Tawney said, reflecting on Tuesday’s talk.
Wednesday, Feb. 28 kicked off with an athlete-focused event called “Performance Plate Workshop” in which Tawney taught students about nutrition. The event was organized in cooperation with The Hidden Opponent, a national nonprofit group that advocates and raises awareness for student-athletes’ mental health.
Tessa Stewart PO ’24 and Kat Lin PZ ’24, two student-athletes on the Pomona-Pitzer lacrosse team, are involved in The Hidden Opponent and helped organize the Performance Plate Workshop. Initially, the two had planned on leading the workshop exclusively for student-athletes to talk about nutrition. However, Tawney helped the two incorporate it into the EDAW events and opened it up for all students.
“When we were first planning this, it wasn’t really going to be that eating disorder focused, but I actually am glad that [Tawney] made that connection,” Stewart said. “I think it was helpful for me to see that because you sometimes forget that [athletics and eating disorders] are pretty connected.”
Stewart noted that many female athletes struggle with their body image. She said that Wednesday’s workshop, as well as the rest of the week’s events, sought to encourage a dialogue about these struggles.
“Diet culture is always sending us a very strong message that, especially as female athletes, we can’t get too big … [or] we can’t be too strong,” Stewart said. “We have to fit this ideal body type body image. The only way … to combat those feelings is sometimes to say them out loud and admit that you’re struggling with them.”
Later in the day, there was a therapist-led body grief group, which Tawney explained was meant to help students connect over difficulties they have faced in accepting their bodies.
“[The event was] to help students find community in the struggles that they may face from grieving over their bodies, over a lifetime of maybe wishing [they] were in a smaller body,” Tawney said. “Specifically, when we’re in an eating disorder and we’re having our bodies change, that can be really sad and uncomfortable.”
As a conclusion to the week’s events, a “Southern Smash” was held on Feb. 29 on the Bowling Green Lawn at Scripps College. At the event, students were invited to destroy weight scales.
“We [smashed] scales to signify that we are more than a number,” Tawney said. “And we’re kind of smashing eating disorders, diet culture, weight stigma and fatphobia.”
Reflecting on the week’s events, Lin suggested that they encouraged students to talk about eating disorders and to work together toward change.
“[Eating disorders] are largely a mental health issue as well as a physical one,” Lin said. “It’s very stigmatized and people don’t want to talk about it openly. I think spotlighting it through events is helpful because it’ll really get people talking about it. But [it] also shows we can combat this on an institutional level and also combat it openly and publicly.”
Tawney echoed a similar idea, explaining that hosting events such as these could help educate people and allow them to support others in their recoveries.
“I think having events and … talking about these things [will let] people know that you really can’t tell if someone is struggling,” Tawney said. “If we’re all a bit more mindful and [try] to create spaces that are more body affirming, then the more likely people are to … experience more success in recovery and also prevent eating disorders.”
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