The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
12 — Wednesday, February 3, 2021
statement
Starvation by
any other name:
BY ABIGAIL SNYDER,
STATEMENT
COLUMNIST
How spring break diet culture enables disordered eating
M
y favorite book begins
by painting a vivid im-
age of frozen, foggy
city streets, and as piercing gusts of
wind push the temperature outside
my window into the single-digits, I
can’t help but put forth my version
of the same: it is damn cold outside.
It was damn cold yesterday, it will be
damn cold tomorrow and it is going
to be damn cold for the foreseeable
future.
Bleak is certainly the word that
seems most fitting.
It is the frigid heart of Michigan
winter, and when every day is this
gray and this gloomy, who among us
can be blamed for wanting to escape
to sunny sands and warm beaches?
Spring break trips seem to be the
solution. Group spring break trips
targeted specifically towards college
students (and especially towards stu-
dents who participate in Greek life)
market themselves as an opportunity
to do just that. Companies such as
JusCollege and EF Ultimate Break of-
fer trips that they say are the ultimate
college travel experience: a picture-
perfect spring break, with nothing to
coordinate — just sign up, and you and
your friends are all set to head off to
places like Miami, Puerto Vallarta or
Cabo San Lucas.
These trips are marketed specifi-
cally to college students as an oppor-
tunity to go on spring break with ev-
eryone they know — not just one or
two friend groups, but entire social
circles, entire organizations; not just
ten or even twenty people, but hun-
dreds of people.
It may sound like the ideal setup,
but it’s also a daunting situation to
walk into.
I know it would be for me.
I remember the first time I felt self-
conscious about my body. It was the
end of fifth grade, and my elementary
school was throwing the graduating
class the annual pool party. I knew I
couldn’t wear the Speedos I wore to
swim practice, so my mom and I went
bathing suit shopping at Gap Kids, and
I came home with a purple-and-teal-
striped bikini and a yellow one-piece
with sunflowers on it — that way I
could have options, my mom said.
In the store, I really could have
gone either way about which suit to
wear to the pool party. But I got home
and started to worry about which one
to wear. I ended up going with the
one-piece. I told my mom it was be-
cause I was too pale for the bikini, and
that I’d have to work on my tan before
I could wear it around my friends.
That wasn’t the truth.
The truth was that, at 11 years old,
I was already self-conscious about the
way my body would look in a bikini.
And that was just my fifth-grade pool
party — I can count on one hand the
people who were there that I’m still
close to.
But hitting the beach in roughly the
same amount of fabric as that yellow
one-piece on this side of the growth
spurt? With everyone I know at this
university — the guy I like, the girls I
hope will be friends for life and every-
one they know here, too — looking at
me?
As my fifth-grade self would have
put it, you’d have an easier time teach-
ing London Tipton how to drive. The
PRNDL? Sure, no problem. But a
beach filled with people whose valida-
tion I want so, so badly? Excuse me, I’m
just going to look for Miley Cyrus in
this room that Hannah Montana is in.
I knew I wasn’t alone in this senti-
ment. I spoke about these types of ex-
periences via Zoom with several wom-
en who went on spring break trips
similar to those aforementioned. The
women’s names have been changed
(denoted with asterisks) to protect
their anonymity in order to allow them
to speak about this sensitive issue free-
ly.
I spoke with Heather, an LSA senior
who went on group spring break trips
to Miami and Cabo her freshman and
sophomore years, about her experi-
ence.
“It was a lot — being around every-
one we knew for those four days in just
a bikini,” Heather said. “Then there’s
the fact that it was going to be remem-
bered for so long because of the pic-
tures, and because people judge you on
how you look. Looking back, it was so
stupid, but it was such a thing.”
Lisa*, another LSA senior, also
experienced the social pressure that
these spring break trips can create,
saying that it can be easy to fall into
self-comparison with everyone else
on the trip.
“It was intimidating knowing that
we were spending four days in this
environment,” she said. “Being at the
darties (day parties), and being by the
pool, knowing that there were gonna
be girls who were gonna be so skinny,
and then me — I wasn’t comfortable
taking my sarong off. It was just an in-
timidating atmosphere, knowing that
we would be in bikinis for five days
straight.”
But spring break isn’t supposed to
be intimidating; it’s supposed to be
fun. More specifically, it’s supposed
to be the “time of your life,” and when
real life isn’t matching up to that per-
fect picture, it’s incredibly anxiety-
inducing.
Advertisements like this one end
up perpetuating that sort of stress,
presenting these spring break trips
as a chance to have the best time ever
— a chance, in other words, to “peak.”
With entire social circles on one trip,
by one pool, at one party, spring break
can become an opportunity to take
control of your social life. The trip
provides opportunities that a stan-
dard house party or tailgate might not.
Studies show that a desire for con-
trol can play a major role in the de-
velopment of eating disorders. And
when spring break seems more and
more like the perfect opportunity to
take control of your social life, com-
bined with a somewhat universal feel-
ing of social pressure, maybe it should
be less surprising that many women
develop disordered eating habits in
the weeks leading up to the trip.
Kendrin Sonneville, a professor
in the University of Michigan School
of Public Health, explained this phe-
nomenon in a Zoom call with me.
“The college years are a time of ep-
idemiologic vulnerability — that is, it’s
a time where people are more likely to
experience onset of disordered eating
or full-syndrome eating disorders,”
Sonneville said. “People who are al-
ready worried about how they look, or
people who are already intending to
do a spring break trip, they’re going to
see those images (in advertisements)
and think, ‘Oh gosh I really have to
take my weight and shape control ac-
tivities more seriously, I have to up the
ante, I have to be more extreme.’”
It’s important to note that disor-
dered eating is not the same as an
eating disorder. Disordered eating
behaviors are defined by the National
Institutes of Health as eating patterns
that are abnormal, but not to the ex-
tent that would warrant diagnosis of
a full-syndrome eating disorder. Ex-
amples of these habits include use of
diet pills, skipping or limiting meals,
fasting and self-induced vomiting. In
other words, these can be symptoms
of eating disorders but at a lower fre-
quency. Disordered eating can also es-
calate into a full-syndrome disorder,
according to the NIH.
These disordered eating behaviors
can become common in the build-up
to the spring break trip itself, Lisa says.
“I started eating really healthy, like
for lunch I would just have some tuna
and some cucumbers and when we
went out, we would binge, because we
were so hungry and we had starved
ourselves all day,” said Lisa. “Hor-
ribly, the week before (sophomore
spring break), I got this laxative tea
and drank that and took a laxative. I’d
never taken a laxative before, but I just
wanted to look good, and that was my
experience. Constantly, it was some-
thing I was thinking about.”
The group nature of the trips can
also be a factor in both initiating and
perpetuating these behaviors. Many
of the women’s friend groups live to-
gether and eat together, so peer pres-
sure becomes palpable, said Heather.
“Living with other girls who were
all going through the same thing, it
was a constant, constant conversa-
tion,” she said. “It just leads to a really
toxic environment, because if you see
other people only eating salads, and
you want to have a burger or pasta or
something, you think it’s wrong. So
even if it was just a couple people who
were really vocal about it, everyone’s
actions spoke loudly.”
Some groups even go beyond just
that atmospheric pressure and com-
mit to losing the weight together. It
can create a sense of group account-
ability that can be very persistent,
Traci Carson, who finished her Doc-
torate in Epidemiology through the
Public Health School last year with
a research focus on eating disorders,
told me over Zoom. The constant
conversation around body image
only adds to this, she says.
“The group thing can kick in, of
‘We’re all gonna do this together and
hold each other accountable,’” Car-
son said. “So much of our culture re-
volves around talking about our bod-
ies and talking about other people’s
bodies and making comments about
other people’s bodies, especially in
college.”
Carso also stressed that seemingly
innocuous or complimentary com-
ments on social media, which often
becomes flooded with spring break
photos once classes get out, can en-
courage women who are already
engaging in harmful eating habits to
continue on that pathway.
“You see it all the time,” Carson
said. “A woman will post a photo of
herself and the comments section will
be almost like making fun of her how
small she is or how skinny she is in a
way that’s intended to boost her ego
and intended to make her feel good.
But if that woman is struggling or on
the verge of struggling with restric-
tive eating and eating disorders, it can
just reinforce that she’s doing the right
thing and exacerbate those behaviors
because she’s getting those positive
feedback.”
Because of this reinforcement,
comments such as “omg FIRE”, “in-
sane” and “so hot” can lead to a nasty
cycle of more and more dieting and
eating restriction in pursuit of those
compliments.
“Those comments are so harm-
ful, and could end up contributing to
a very long period of getting stuck in
these patterns of restrictive eating and
loving that positive reinforcement,”
said Carson.
The self-comparison facilitated by
social media can also lead women to-
wards more restrictive eating behav-
iors. Hayley Friedman, an LSA junior
in recovery from anorexia nervosa,
spoke to me about this very concept
over Zoom. The availability of smiling,
dancing images of perceived cooler
girls having the time of their lives on
similar trips, just a few clicks away —
they’re too easy to find and too easy to
compare yourself to.
“That was something that I strug-
gled with for a really long time,” Fried-
man said. “I would constantly see
pretty, skinny girls … and I remember
especially in high school taking pic-
tures with friends or even just seeing
pictures on social media, and just be-
ing like ‘Oh my gosh I wish I looked
like that’ or ‘How did she do that’ or
‘Whoa, those abs.’”
Most people know that social me-
dia posts are usually heavily edited
and filtered, and that the people in
the photos are often sucking in, flex-
ing and posing the exact right way in
order for their body to appear more
ideal for the photo. Still, though, as
these techniques become increasingly
subtle and convincing, it can be hard-
er and harder to separate these imag-
es from reality, Friedman explained.
“That was definitely a really big
struggle for me — sometimes it even
still is,” Friedman said. “I’ll see a photo
— especially bathing suit pictures feel
like the be-all, end all, and it makes
it really difficult to see someone’s
picture-perfect photograph of them
posed in the exact right position,
flexing, whatever it may be, and then
you’re like ‘Oh my gosh, they look like
that always, and I don’t look like that.’
There’s such a disconnect.”
But even knowing that the discon-
nect is there doesn’t actually help that
much, because someway or another,
that girl you always stalk on Insta-
gram managed to make herself look
like that in that photo, and no matter
how much you remind yourself it’s
not real, the fact is that it feels real.
At least, it does to me.
I’ll see the photos, and I’ll wonder
what my life would be like if my legs
were that long, if my abs looked like
hers, if I could get my hair to do that.
And spring break is when I feel it the
most, because my friends are really
pretty, okay, and it’s the one week of
the year when many are posting those
photos at the same time.
The environment that spring break
can create on social media around
these trips can increase the pressure
to look a certain way, especially in pic-
tures, said Sandy*, a Music & Theatre
senior over Zoom. Sandy went on two
group trips, one sophomore year and
one junior year, during her time at
school.
“We all compare ourselves to each
other when we see those pictures,”
Sandy said. “I knew people who were
like, ‘We need to work out every day
so we can post pictures and look
good,’ and I knew she was comparing
herself to other people.”
All of these factors combined — the
trip “everyone’s” going on, the photos
“everyone’s” going to be posting, the
opportunity to take control of the so-
cial situation — essentially create a
pressure-cooker in the weeks leading
up to the trip. As the departure date
gets closer, the temperature inches
ever-higher and girls start to turn to
increasingly harmful measures to
achieve their “body goals,” Lisa said.
It involves a lot of workouts — “A
lot of girls, including myself, we got
Ross gym memberships, and you’d
go every day and see everyone there,”
Lisa explained — and not a lot of calo-
ries.
Heather recalls seeing friends re-
place everything possible with lim-
ited “healthier” options. Pancakes and
French toast at brunch are replaced
with fruit and yogurt. Pasta and tacos
are replaced by salads at the dinner
table. At pregames for parties, lem-
onade and fruit punch chasers are re-
placed with lime wedges. Late-night
cheesy bread from Pizza House and
wings from Mr. Spot’s are replaced
with carrots and celery.
And as things get more intense, she
said, even those “healthier” options
get replaced by nothing at all.
But these changes in diet actually
result in the opposite of their desired
effect, Dr. Terrill Bravender, the chief
of adolescent medicine and director of
the eating disorder center at C.S. Mott
Children’s Hospital, said over Zoom.
“The first thing is that your body
responds by going into what we think
of as starvation mode, meaning it
starts to metabolize itself,” Bravender
explained. “The first step in doing
that, physiologically, is not to burn fat,
it’s actually to burn protein, and so if
we go for a prolonged period without
taking any external nutrition in, the
first reaction of our body is that we
metabolize our muscles. That’s not
exactly the intention that most people
have when they go on a crash diet.”
If the dieting continues, it can cause
a wide variety of issues, Bravender said.
These can include slowed brain func-
tion, decreased heart rate and blood
pressure, weakened cardiovascular
health, a range of gastrointestinal is-
sues and lower immune system func-
tioning. Additionally, people who are
underweight have quicker and stron-
ger reactions to alcohol and can expe-
rience dizziness, nausea and fainting,
especially in warm, and/or crowded
situations — instances which are com-
mon occurrences during spring break.
Content warning: This piece
contains descriptions of
eating disorders
Read more at
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If you or someone you know is struggling or may be
struggling with eating disorders and/or disordered eating,
please contact one of the following resources for help:
National Eating Disorders Association
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa
and Associated Disorders
University of Michigan Eating Disorder Resources