Meghan Trainor's Eating Disorder speech.

Okay so this happened weeks ago but I've only just read up on it properly, and quite frankly I am disgusted. Meghan Trainor sat in an interview talking about eating disorders, after her new song "all about that base" was released. I loved this song, a lot actually, thinking it was representing curvy girls finally telling them it isn't wrong to be a little bit bigger. FINALLY someone showing the other side, and although the use of the lyrics "skinny bitches" and making slim people feel inferior, the song was actually something so many girls could relate to and had a real feel good feeling about it. A song that should have been influential, and made girls realise there is more to your self worth than your weight. Obviously, critics said it could be damaging to girls by saying boys only like curvy girls, but in my opinion it was something revolutionary in its own way and should be welcomed with open arms. And then she went that step too far when she said this:

“I wasn’t strong enough to have an eating disorder…I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that’s not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, ‘Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately,”

Really Meghan?! "Strong enough" for an eating disorder? Using the term "Skinny bitches" caused enough controversy but I looked past it when I thought that it was okay because people slate fat people all the time, and maybe, just maybe, it's okay that one song made the tables turn. This, however, was just a step too far for me. Eating disorders are real illnesses, people make themselves really critically ill and some even die from it. Would she be not strong enough to have cancer either? Because lets face it, they're both illnesses at the end of the day. Psychological based illness are even worse, in my opinion, because you just cannot stop. Young girls, boys, women, men, so many people struggle their whole lives battling with food and their weight and it's not something you can change. If you have an eating disorder, you have to be ultimately as strong as you'll ever be to over come it. To eat when the voices in your head are talking you down not to, to stop yourself being sick when everything in your body is telling you that you have to. 

Thin people, curvy people, anyone can be a victim of an eating disorder. A good diet and fitness regime, that takes strength to stick to and you have to be a very determined person to keep that balance perfect through your life to remain healthy and slim. But an eating disorder, that doesn't take strength, in fact it makes you feel like the weakest person in the world. Giving into pressure from peers, from voices in your head, it's scary and possibly the hardest feeling in the world to escape. Strength comes from making a change, weakness is giving in, and there's nothing worse than feeling weak, vulnerable and insecure

Demi Lovato summed all this up perfectly in her response to Meghan:

 "Having an eating disorder doesn’t show “strength.” Strength is when are able to overcome your demons after being sick and tired for so long. There’s a wide misconception that anorexia and/or bulimia is a choice and you often hear people say things like ‘why doesn’t she just start eating?’ Or even ‘just stop throwing up.’ It’s the ignorance and lack of education on mental illnesses that continues to but mental health care on the back burner to congress even though this is an epidemic that is sweeping our nation, and causing more and more tragedy every day. Starving is not a ‘diet’ and throwing up isn’t something that only extremely thin men or women do. Eating disorders do not discriminate..Neither does any other mental illness. These are deadly diseases that are taking lives daily. So please, let’s be cautious of the words we use when discussing ED’s and other mental illnesses. <3"

People really are so ignorant to eating disorders, how they make people feel and how dangerous they really are. Making comments like Meghan did is not only ignorant but it's unfair and rude. She's never experienced it, and it most certainly is not something to make a joke about whether you have or have not. Addictions of all descriptions from alcoholism to drug habits, to depression and anxiety are all psychological illnesses which people, no matter how hard they try cannot escape. Robin Williams tragic passing after battling with depression caused an uproar of awareness, and now it's passed nobody seems to take it seriously anymore. It shouldn't take people dying and tragedies to make people realise that psychological illnesses are killers and should not, ever, be jokes about.

Meghan may have only been making a joke, but it is comments like hers which are destroying young girls self-esteems. A girl with an eating disorder hearing someone call them strong for doing it is only encouraging it! The sooner people realise how dangerous 'jokes' like this are, the better. We should all be working together to eliminate young girls feeling this way, not making jokes in passing about the people who are struggling the most.  So please, lets support these girls, not make it any harder for them until it is. Lets destroy eating disorders and never again make girls think they aren't good enough.