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*TW
this is a research paper. i had to apply psychology to literary fiction.my thesis is that the main character has anorexia. the author of wintergirls made sure lia's sympttoms were spot on. she is very descriptive.
Running Head: ANOREXIA IN WINTERGIRLS
The Application of Anorexia Nervosa in Laurie Halse Andersons Wintergirls
Fallon
Nov. 16, 2010
General Psychology and Written Communication 3
Abstract
Laurie Halse Andersons Wintergirls accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in the character Lia. A person must have severe body image distortion, a severe fear of gaining weight, and refuse to maintain a healthy weight. A woman must also have lost her period. Upon examination of Andersons novel, it is clear that Lia exhibits these symptoms.
Laurie Halse Andersons novel, Wintergirls, tells the story of two teenage girls named Cassie and Lia. Both girls suffer with eating disorders. Cassie has Bulimia. Lia has Anorexia. The girls met when they were nine, and are now eighteen. They are best friends, and inseparable until Cassie tells Lia they cant be friends anymore. After not speaking to her for months, Lia gets some horrible news. Cassie has died mysteriously alone in a hotel room. No one knows why. The rest of the book is about how Lia copes with the death of her friend, and eventually begins to recover from her eating disorder. Wintergirls accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in its main character, Lia.
Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder. It is . . . characterised by severe restriction of food intake and marked weight loss [sic] (Newell 2010 p 2). According to Newell, it is, along with other eating disorders, classified as a mental illness (2010). Anorexia can begin with dieting, but spirals out of control. The person has an intense fear of being obese, and becomes very thin (WebMD 2009). In order to be diagnosed with this disorder, a person must have severe body image distortion. He or she must have an intense fear of gaining weight. The person must have experienced substantial weight loss, or refuse to maintain a weight that is considered normal for the persons height and age. In order to be diagnosed, a woman must have lost her period for at least three months (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005).
According to the book, Assessment of Eating Disorders (2005), the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses 4th Edition says that a person diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa must have marked body image distortion. Lia certainly has this symptom. On page 82, she is recalling an incident that happened when she was in treatment. She was asked to draw a picture of her view of herself on a large sheet of paper.
I wanted to draw my thighs, each the size of a couch, on his carpet. The rolls on my butt and my gut would rumble over the floor and splash up against the walls; my boobs, beach balls, my arms, tubes of cookie dough oozing at the seams. . . . I had figured out that my eyes were broken long before that (Anderson 82 2009).
Throughout the book, she continually struggles with negative thoughts about herself. She repeatedly has very negative self talk. Lia calls her self fat, stupid, a b****, and an idiot (Anderson 2009). Many times, these thoughts push her toward starving herself or doing other self-destructive behaviors related to her eating disorder. In addition to her eating disorder, the main character injures her self by cutting (Anderson 60 2009). Throughout the book, Anderson begins many of Lias memories of her life with the phrase When I was a real girl. . . (Anderson 2009) Its as if Lia views herself as less of a person because of her eating disorder.
The DSM-IV specifies four major criteria for the diagnosis of AN. The most prominent is a refusal to maintain a minimally acceptable body weight for a persons weight and age (Assessment of Eating Disorders p 7 2005). In the book, Lia secretly buys a digital scale to replace the family bathroom scale. When she is alone, she strips down and weighs herself. This is her reaction. 099.00 pounds. I am officially standing on Goal Number One. . . . Goal Number Two is 095.00, the perfect point of balance. . . . At 090.00, I will soar. Thats Goal Number Three [sic] (Anderson 2009 p52-53). She continually exhibits this symptom throughout the book.
Evidence of an intense fear of weight gain must also be present for this diagnosis (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005). She also has this symptom. Lia is so afraid of gaining weight and being what she considers fat that she punishes herself. She also exercises excessively and does other things to punish herself for eating. At one point, Lia sits down to dinner with her family. She cuts her food up in tiny pieces, and eats potatoes and a few bites of turkey, salad and mushrooms. To punish herself, Lia causes herself physical pain. With every bite, I press my fingers into the cuts (Anderson 65 2009). In chapter twenty-five, she walks past a mirror and looks at herself. Negative thoughts fill her head. She thinks shes gaining weight, so she does two hundred crunches (Anderson 2009).
In order for a person to be clinically diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa, he or she must also be underweight (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005). Lia is also severely underweight. She is eighteen, five feet five inches tall, and she only weighs ninety-nine pounds (Anderson 2009). As illustrated by the quotes from pages fifty-two and fifty-three, she has no desire to get to a healthy weight at this point in the book. Lias doctors require her to be weighed by her stepmother Jennifer on a regular basis. Her weight is recorded in a small notebook kept under the sink, and the results are called in to her doctors once a month (Anderson 2009). The Assessment of Eating Disorders book addresses a patients reluctance to provide full information. . . . they may claim they weigh more than they do do-and consume excessive amounts of liquids or carry concealed objects when they are weighed [sic] (Assessment of Eating Disorders p 6 2005). During one at home weigh in; Lia reveals she has secretly sewn quarters into the pockets of her robe to fool the scale (Anderson 2009).
Lia is also extremely afraid of anyone knowing how thin she actually is. She is so afraid of her step mother seeing her naked that she actually waits for Jennifer to leave the house before showering. I want to strip and boil myself, but if she sees me naked, shell freak. If I get in the shower wearing my robe, shell freak harder (Anderson p 48-49 2009).
`Assessment of Eating Disorders says that a woman who has begun her menstrual cycle must have experienced a loss of her cycle for at least three months in order to be diagnosed (2005). She also has this symptom. According to Wintergirls, Lia lost her period during her freshman year of high school (Anderson 2009).
Assessment of Eating Disorders also mentions two subtypes of Anorexia Nervosa. These subtypes are the binge/purge subtype and the restricting subtype. The book says that most people diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa fall into one of the two subtypes (2005). Lia falls into the restricting subtype.
For much of the book, she only allows herself to consume eight hundred calories per day. She eats less if she can get away with it (Anderson 2009). Lia so meticulously keeps track of calories that she knows the calorie amount in every piece of food she consumes. To hide her severe calorie restriction, she goes out of her way to make it seem like she has eaten when she has not. Early on in the book, she warms up leftover stuffing complete with ketchup so the smell fills the house. She spreads ketchup on her mouth, scrapes the untouched stuffing into the trash, and sets the dirty plate on the kitchen counter. Later, she brings her friend, Elijah, pizza. When he offers her some, Lia lies and tells him she has already eaten (Anderson 2009). She also convinces herself to starve and denies being hungry to herself and others around her. She has this mantra that she repeats to herself to convince herself to not give in and eat. Whenever shes hungry or stressed, she repeats the thought strong/empty/strong [sic] (Anderson p 68 2009).
Early on in the book, it is clear that Lias condition is anything but a secret. Within the first few chapters, she goes to see the school nurse. It is obvious that the nurse knows something about Lias history. The nurse checks Lias vital signs and insists she eat or drink something if shes going to stay in the office. Reluctantly, she drinks a small amount of orange juice (Anderson 2009). Both Lias parents and her step mother are aware of her behavior. Her mother Chloe is so concerned that she suggests to Jennifer that Lia should move back in with her. Lia never comes out and says she has Anorexia, but she recalls memories of being in inpatient treatment centers several times throughout the book (Anderson 2009). This leads the reader to conclude that she had gotten a diagnosis of some sort of eating disorder at some point before the beginning of the novel.
The exact cause of Anorexia and other eating disorders is unknown. However, there are some theories. Newell notes that there are many things that can contribute to a person developing an eating disorder. She cites personal factors, social pressures and family pressure as possible contributing factors (2010). According to WebMD, a person is more likely to develop an eating disorder if he or she does a job or a sport in which appearance is important. On her way to Cassies funeral, Lia passes a flower shop. She stops and looks up into the second floor window at the dancers in the studio above. For the first time, she mentions she was a ballet dancer when she was younger (Anderson 2009).
WebMD also mentions that stressful events are likely to contribute to the development of an eating disorder (2009). Anderson made sure Lia dealt with a lot of stress. Her parents divorced, and her father married her step mother as soon as the divorce was finalized. For most of the book, she is still adjusting to the newness of living with her step mother, father, and new step sister, Emma. Lia and her mother do not get along for much of the book. Prior to Cassies death, she and Lia had a fight and did not speak for several months. At Cassies funeral, Lia mentions that she and her classmates have been to more than their fair share of funerals.
Weve all been here before. In fifth grade, it was Jimmy Meyers, leukemia. In eighth, Madison Ellerson and her parents died in a thirty-car pileup during a blizzard. Last year, it was a guy from the tennis team, the one who made State [sic] (Anderson p 84 2009).
Her eating disorder is so serious that she has been in treatment several times. On top of all of this, Lia has frequent, haunting nightmares about Cassie throughout the novel (Anderson 2009). It is not clear when Lia began her unhealthy behavior. However, it would be easy for one to see how she would turn to controlling her food intake and weight-especially if she felt that everything else in her life was spinning out of control.
In conclusion, Laurie Halse Andersons novel, Wintergirls, accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in its main character Lia. In order to be diagnosed with this eating disorder, a person must have severe body image distortion. The person must have an intense fear of weight gain. The person must have experienced substantial weight loss, or refuse to maintain a weight that is considered normal for the persons height and age. In order to be diagnosed, a woman must have lost her period for at least three months. Most people diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa fall into two sub groups of the disorder, the restricting subtype or the binge2 and purge subtype. Lia clearly exhibits all of these symptoms throughout the novel. The character is eighteen years old and five feet six inches tall. At one point her weight drops to ninety-nine pounds. Whenever she thinks shes getting fat, she forces herself to exercise. She is so afraid of weight gain that she causes herself physical pain whenever she eats. According to the book, Lia lost her period 3 years prior to the beginning of the novel.
References
Anderson L. H. (2009). Wintergirls. New York, NY: Speak.
Assessment of Eating Disorders. (2005). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Newell C. (2010). Early recognition of eating disorders. Practice Nurse. 39(12) 20-25.
WebMD (2009 Sept. 16) Anorexia Nervosa: Topic Overview. Anorexia Nervosa Health Center.
WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/anorexia-nervosa/anorexia-nervosa-topic-overview . (2010 Nov. 8).
this is a research paper. i had to apply psychology to literary fiction.my thesis is that the main character has anorexia. the author of wintergirls made sure lia's sympttoms were spot on. she is very descriptive.
Running Head: ANOREXIA IN WINTERGIRLS
The Application of Anorexia Nervosa in Laurie Halse Andersons Wintergirls
Fallon
Nov. 16, 2010
General Psychology and Written Communication 3
Abstract
Laurie Halse Andersons Wintergirls accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in the character Lia. A person must have severe body image distortion, a severe fear of gaining weight, and refuse to maintain a healthy weight. A woman must also have lost her period. Upon examination of Andersons novel, it is clear that Lia exhibits these symptoms.
Laurie Halse Andersons novel, Wintergirls, tells the story of two teenage girls named Cassie and Lia. Both girls suffer with eating disorders. Cassie has Bulimia. Lia has Anorexia. The girls met when they were nine, and are now eighteen. They are best friends, and inseparable until Cassie tells Lia they cant be friends anymore. After not speaking to her for months, Lia gets some horrible news. Cassie has died mysteriously alone in a hotel room. No one knows why. The rest of the book is about how Lia copes with the death of her friend, and eventually begins to recover from her eating disorder. Wintergirls accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in its main character, Lia.
Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder. It is . . . characterised by severe restriction of food intake and marked weight loss [sic] (Newell 2010 p 2). According to Newell, it is, along with other eating disorders, classified as a mental illness (2010). Anorexia can begin with dieting, but spirals out of control. The person has an intense fear of being obese, and becomes very thin (WebMD 2009). In order to be diagnosed with this disorder, a person must have severe body image distortion. He or she must have an intense fear of gaining weight. The person must have experienced substantial weight loss, or refuse to maintain a weight that is considered normal for the persons height and age. In order to be diagnosed, a woman must have lost her period for at least three months (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005).
According to the book, Assessment of Eating Disorders (2005), the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses 4th Edition says that a person diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa must have marked body image distortion. Lia certainly has this symptom. On page 82, she is recalling an incident that happened when she was in treatment. She was asked to draw a picture of her view of herself on a large sheet of paper.
I wanted to draw my thighs, each the size of a couch, on his carpet. The rolls on my butt and my gut would rumble over the floor and splash up against the walls; my boobs, beach balls, my arms, tubes of cookie dough oozing at the seams. . . . I had figured out that my eyes were broken long before that (Anderson 82 2009).
Throughout the book, she continually struggles with negative thoughts about herself. She repeatedly has very negative self talk. Lia calls her self fat, stupid, a b****, and an idiot (Anderson 2009). Many times, these thoughts push her toward starving herself or doing other self-destructive behaviors related to her eating disorder. In addition to her eating disorder, the main character injures her self by cutting (Anderson 60 2009). Throughout the book, Anderson begins many of Lias memories of her life with the phrase When I was a real girl. . . (Anderson 2009) Its as if Lia views herself as less of a person because of her eating disorder.
The DSM-IV specifies four major criteria for the diagnosis of AN. The most prominent is a refusal to maintain a minimally acceptable body weight for a persons weight and age (Assessment of Eating Disorders p 7 2005). In the book, Lia secretly buys a digital scale to replace the family bathroom scale. When she is alone, she strips down and weighs herself. This is her reaction. 099.00 pounds. I am officially standing on Goal Number One. . . . Goal Number Two is 095.00, the perfect point of balance. . . . At 090.00, I will soar. Thats Goal Number Three [sic] (Anderson 2009 p52-53). She continually exhibits this symptom throughout the book.
Evidence of an intense fear of weight gain must also be present for this diagnosis (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005). She also has this symptom. Lia is so afraid of gaining weight and being what she considers fat that she punishes herself. She also exercises excessively and does other things to punish herself for eating. At one point, Lia sits down to dinner with her family. She cuts her food up in tiny pieces, and eats potatoes and a few bites of turkey, salad and mushrooms. To punish herself, Lia causes herself physical pain. With every bite, I press my fingers into the cuts (Anderson 65 2009). In chapter twenty-five, she walks past a mirror and looks at herself. Negative thoughts fill her head. She thinks shes gaining weight, so she does two hundred crunches (Anderson 2009).
In order for a person to be clinically diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa, he or she must also be underweight (Assessment of Eating Disorders 2005). Lia is also severely underweight. She is eighteen, five feet five inches tall, and she only weighs ninety-nine pounds (Anderson 2009). As illustrated by the quotes from pages fifty-two and fifty-three, she has no desire to get to a healthy weight at this point in the book. Lias doctors require her to be weighed by her stepmother Jennifer on a regular basis. Her weight is recorded in a small notebook kept under the sink, and the results are called in to her doctors once a month (Anderson 2009). The Assessment of Eating Disorders book addresses a patients reluctance to provide full information. . . . they may claim they weigh more than they do do-and consume excessive amounts of liquids or carry concealed objects when they are weighed [sic] (Assessment of Eating Disorders p 6 2005). During one at home weigh in; Lia reveals she has secretly sewn quarters into the pockets of her robe to fool the scale (Anderson 2009).
Lia is also extremely afraid of anyone knowing how thin she actually is. She is so afraid of her step mother seeing her naked that she actually waits for Jennifer to leave the house before showering. I want to strip and boil myself, but if she sees me naked, shell freak. If I get in the shower wearing my robe, shell freak harder (Anderson p 48-49 2009).
`Assessment of Eating Disorders says that a woman who has begun her menstrual cycle must have experienced a loss of her cycle for at least three months in order to be diagnosed (2005). She also has this symptom. According to Wintergirls, Lia lost her period during her freshman year of high school (Anderson 2009).
Assessment of Eating Disorders also mentions two subtypes of Anorexia Nervosa. These subtypes are the binge/purge subtype and the restricting subtype. The book says that most people diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa fall into one of the two subtypes (2005). Lia falls into the restricting subtype.
For much of the book, she only allows herself to consume eight hundred calories per day. She eats less if she can get away with it (Anderson 2009). Lia so meticulously keeps track of calories that she knows the calorie amount in every piece of food she consumes. To hide her severe calorie restriction, she goes out of her way to make it seem like she has eaten when she has not. Early on in the book, she warms up leftover stuffing complete with ketchup so the smell fills the house. She spreads ketchup on her mouth, scrapes the untouched stuffing into the trash, and sets the dirty plate on the kitchen counter. Later, she brings her friend, Elijah, pizza. When he offers her some, Lia lies and tells him she has already eaten (Anderson 2009). She also convinces herself to starve and denies being hungry to herself and others around her. She has this mantra that she repeats to herself to convince herself to not give in and eat. Whenever shes hungry or stressed, she repeats the thought strong/empty/strong [sic] (Anderson p 68 2009).
Early on in the book, it is clear that Lias condition is anything but a secret. Within the first few chapters, she goes to see the school nurse. It is obvious that the nurse knows something about Lias history. The nurse checks Lias vital signs and insists she eat or drink something if shes going to stay in the office. Reluctantly, she drinks a small amount of orange juice (Anderson 2009). Both Lias parents and her step mother are aware of her behavior. Her mother Chloe is so concerned that she suggests to Jennifer that Lia should move back in with her. Lia never comes out and says she has Anorexia, but she recalls memories of being in inpatient treatment centers several times throughout the book (Anderson 2009). This leads the reader to conclude that she had gotten a diagnosis of some sort of eating disorder at some point before the beginning of the novel.
The exact cause of Anorexia and other eating disorders is unknown. However, there are some theories. Newell notes that there are many things that can contribute to a person developing an eating disorder. She cites personal factors, social pressures and family pressure as possible contributing factors (2010). According to WebMD, a person is more likely to develop an eating disorder if he or she does a job or a sport in which appearance is important. On her way to Cassies funeral, Lia passes a flower shop. She stops and looks up into the second floor window at the dancers in the studio above. For the first time, she mentions she was a ballet dancer when she was younger (Anderson 2009).
WebMD also mentions that stressful events are likely to contribute to the development of an eating disorder (2009). Anderson made sure Lia dealt with a lot of stress. Her parents divorced, and her father married her step mother as soon as the divorce was finalized. For most of the book, she is still adjusting to the newness of living with her step mother, father, and new step sister, Emma. Lia and her mother do not get along for much of the book. Prior to Cassies death, she and Lia had a fight and did not speak for several months. At Cassies funeral, Lia mentions that she and her classmates have been to more than their fair share of funerals.
Weve all been here before. In fifth grade, it was Jimmy Meyers, leukemia. In eighth, Madison Ellerson and her parents died in a thirty-car pileup during a blizzard. Last year, it was a guy from the tennis team, the one who made State [sic] (Anderson p 84 2009).
Her eating disorder is so serious that she has been in treatment several times. On top of all of this, Lia has frequent, haunting nightmares about Cassie throughout the novel (Anderson 2009). It is not clear when Lia began her unhealthy behavior. However, it would be easy for one to see how she would turn to controlling her food intake and weight-especially if she felt that everything else in her life was spinning out of control.
In conclusion, Laurie Halse Andersons novel, Wintergirls, accurately portrays the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa in its main character Lia. In order to be diagnosed with this eating disorder, a person must have severe body image distortion. The person must have an intense fear of weight gain. The person must have experienced substantial weight loss, or refuse to maintain a weight that is considered normal for the persons height and age. In order to be diagnosed, a woman must have lost her period for at least three months. Most people diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa fall into two sub groups of the disorder, the restricting subtype or the binge2 and purge subtype. Lia clearly exhibits all of these symptoms throughout the novel. The character is eighteen years old and five feet six inches tall. At one point her weight drops to ninety-nine pounds. Whenever she thinks shes getting fat, she forces herself to exercise. She is so afraid of weight gain that she causes herself physical pain whenever she eats. According to the book, Lia lost her period 3 years prior to the beginning of the novel.
References
Anderson L. H. (2009). Wintergirls. New York, NY: Speak.
Assessment of Eating Disorders. (2005). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Newell C. (2010). Early recognition of eating disorders. Practice Nurse. 39(12) 20-25.
WebMD (2009 Sept. 16) Anorexia Nervosa: Topic Overview. Anorexia Nervosa Health Center.
WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/anorexia-nervosa/anorexia-nervosa-topic-overview . (2010 Nov. 8).
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