“We can look in the mirror and not see what everyone else sees. Even if we are a normal weight.”
– Brittany Jeffers, a 20-year-old UWM junior

Michelle Ellison has a hint of makeup on and leans forward when she talks: “I remember in high school having a cookie. Everyone was home so I couldn’t throw up. I ran seven miles to burn that cookie.”

Elllison, a 22-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate, speaks matter-of-factly and uses her hands to assist her words. She is a recovering bulimic who has struggled with the disorder for nine years. The first time she purged, at age 13, was when she had gone home to cool off after some problems with a boyfriend.

“I was at home eating some pizza and felt fat,” Ellison said. “I remembered reading an article in ‘Teen’ about a girl using a toothbrush to throw up. I tried it and it worked.”

The next time, she drank a bottle of cologne to throw up. Soon, her problem was out of control. Purging began to consume her life. She would throw up six to 10 times a day.

Recently her disorder has subsided — she only purges once every four months, she said.

Bulimia “affects everything in my life,” Ellison said. “Whether it be school or job — especially job.”

Ellison is currently serving at two restaurants, which she said makes it worse for someone with eating disorders. Being around all the food reminds her of her problem and makes it more difficult to concentrate on serving. But with all the people around, she finds it virtually impossible to purge.

Ellison is just a grain of sand in the gargantuan problem of eating disorders among high school and college-age women.

Eating disorders may seem gross or unbelievable to many people, but to some, they are a devastating obsession — a part of their lives that, among other things, allows them to feel a false sense of control in their lives.

One out of every four high-school- to college-age women in the United States suffers from eating disorders, said Pam Franklin, the director of intensive outpatient at Aurora Health Care.

Franklin leads a program that gives guidance and counseling to people of all ages who suffer from eating disorders. She estimates that 98 percent of the patients she sees are female and about 30 percent are college-age. She said 40 percent of her patients are older than college-age, with some in their 50s and 60s.

Franklin sees the transition from high school to college as being a trigger for many patients.

“(There are) vulnerabilities when entering college, or any life changes, eating, drinking, insecurities, emotional changes,” Franklin said. “Moving away from home, having different food to choose, want to make friends, date.”

Ellison was fully aware of those stressors, and did not allow them to affect her.

“I didn’t move away for college,” Ellison said. “I knew that if I went into a dorm, (my eating disorder) would get worse. (If) I was on my own, I would have no one to regulate me, no one to keep an eye on me. People would just laugh at me and think I was gross.”

Brittany Jeffers had anorexia throughout high school and into college. She is now a 20-year-old junior at UWM, but three years ago, when she moved away from home to attend Western Wisconsin Technical College in La Crosse, Jeffers found added stress that affected her eating habits.

“The first year of college makes it hard for everyone,” Jeffers said.

Family and friends were not there on campus for support, which compounded the problem and Jeffers began to skip meals regularly.

“Not having anyone around, (not eating healthy) was a stress response,” she said. “(It was) hard to catch myself. (In La Crosse) there was no therapy; they didn’t have anything.”

Jeffers sits upright and motionless while she speaks. She talks with little variation in her tone, giving the sense that she is talking about someone else. She tries to figure out why she initially succumbed to the eating disorder.

It was “a feeling of a need to please, perfectionism,” Jeffers said. “A desire for control. Being shy was a part of it.”

Jeffers and Ellison have insecurities that are common among those their age who have eating disorders.

“Eating disorders are part of a psychological process that people go through to gain control over their lives or gain acceptance in society,” said Pamela Schaefer, professor of a psychology of women class at UWM. “What is our standard of beauty? Extremely thin women. For some, this means being obsessed with weight.”

Independent scholar and lecturer Jean Kilbourne wrote about the impact of the media and advertising on the mindset of women in her essay “The More You Subtract, the More You Add,” published in “Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader.”

She sees advertisers as the ones who tell young women to buy certain products and appear a certain way in order to fit in and be successful. An attempt by a woman with a poor self image to remain as thin as possible is a way for that woman to try to gain control of her body and her life in general.

In late adolescence and early adulthood, young women experience many changes in their lives, including the transition from high school to college, and for some women, these changes make them feel desperately in need of control.

“(This is) the time of life when women are becoming aware of who they are, who they will be,” Schaefer said.

When Ellison was at her worst, she decided to ask for help. She met regularly with a therapist to discuss her problems, but her eating disorder remained for several years.

When her senior year of college rolled around, Ellison realized that she had to do something soon. She entered into a program that focused on group therapy. This group reinforcing technique allowed women of all ages who suffered from eating disorders to talk with and support each other. Group therapy enabled Ellison to understand that she was not alone in her battle.

Jeffers found a one-on-one therapy approach to be effective. By talking to a therapist alone, she was able to re-train her thought patterns. Positive thinking was necessary for her getting rid of the old disordered eating patterns.

Ellison just wants to be rid of the harassment her eating disorder inflicts on her mind.

“I don’t want to be constantly on a date and thinking of how (I’m) going to throw up,” she said.

Despite the thoughts of purging constantly in the back of her mind and the extreme difficulty involved with overcoming an eating disorder, Ellison keeps an open mind.

“It’s all on me,” Ellison said. “I’ve been able to tell myself ‘no’ for a long time. My getting better has to come with age, being confident comes with age.”

“I don’t think there is recovery, there’s always that temptation, desire in the back of my mind,” Jeffers said. “(I) still struggle today. We can look in the mirror and not see what everyone else sees. Even if we are a normal weight.”

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