The National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is February 24th through March 1st, 2020.

Having been challenged with my own disordered eating, including Anorexia and Bulimia, working through my recovery process, it’s a time of sober reflection for me.

Image. Mirrors. What do we see? How true or false is it?

Although it was a bit before my time, March 6th, 1954 would substantially impact my life. This date marked the issue of The Saturday Evening Post, with its cover illustration of “Girl at Mirror,” by the famous American artist, Norman Rockwell. I first saw the cover when I was eleven, roughly, the same age of this young brunette captured in the illustration.

Journalist, Rute Ferreira remarked about Rockwell’s illustration, “…The girl looks apprehensively at the mirror. On her lap, we see an opened magazine showing a photo of the actress Jane Russell, who alongside the diva Marilyn Monroe, starred in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. At her feet, the girl has a comb, a brush and a lipstick… While in the corner of the mirror, we see a forgotten doll discarded without much care. These elements give us a clear message: the girl is no longer a little girl; she has discarded her dolls and wants to look as beautiful as the girl in the magazine. Even so, the girl’s apprehensive face, which is seen in the mirror, shows doubts…” (Daily Art Magazine, May 31, 2018, online entry).

When I first encountered “Girl at the Mjrror” at the age of eleven, it left one of two gigantic marks on my pre-adolescent psyche.

The second came from the diametrically different, yet equally core-shaking, introduction to the film, “The Exorcist.” Still, to this day, I regard it as one of the worst childhood decisions I made, as indeed, I over-identified with the pre-pubescent character, Regan, played convincingly by Linda Blair.

(Here’s my completely biased tip for youngsters: don’t watch this film in your formative years. Amongst the other anxieties, stressors and pressures, you really don’t need to factor in demon-possession, portrayed by Hollywood, as one of your adolescent hurdles, in my humble opinion).

Anyway, now, years later, I see how both core-shaking girl influences had more in common than I initially thought. Both girls were at crossroads. One looked in a mirror, pondering her sense of self; one messed with a Ouija board, which, apparently, summoned evil.

Both were faced with the challenge of what they life would- or could- look like. A great beauty? Possessed by evil spirits?

The Chinese character for the word, “crisis” combines both the characters for the words, “danger” (“Wei”) and “opportunity” (“Gee”).

I believe it can also apply to matters of personal growth and development. A person can argue they are one and the same, although with varying degrees of head spinning and split pea soup being spat at authority figures.

Both present the reality of danger and opportunity. Both leave us frightfully insecure about our humanity. Neither feel safe. Neither are free from harmful distortions. Largely because of image.

And both, sadly, can bring about untimely deaths of not only our physical bodies, but also our spiritual health states, dreams and potential for greatness.

Again, much of that peril rests in image. Believe the wrong one…and we lose ourselves.

Perhaps, you think I’m being overly dramatic, going so far as to call eating disorders a demon.

But if you’ve suffered from the likes of Anorexia or Bulimia, you probably see things much differently. It is Hell…and a battle of the soul.

And it doesn’t just affect the adolescent girl. It’s all of us. We each face the mirror; each of us deals with image messages. What do we see? What do we believe? What do we absorb? What do we aspire to be? What does that look like?

Thin? Unattainable? Confining? Superficial? Deadly? Soul-killing?

We see so much more than just our mere reflection. We can see death wishes, unrealized dreams and self-rejection.

Perhaps, this National Eating Disorder Awareness Week should remind us to look at, to examine, ourselves, beyond just gazing into a mirror.

We are all at the mirror. What do we see there?

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse