Zosia Mamet’s revealed she almost died as a result of an eating disorder as a teenager and that she still sees herself as an addict in recovery.
The Girls actress wrote at length about her secret past in her monthly column for US Glamour, calling it a private war that raged inside her. The piece is raw, honest and actually really helpful in understanding what its like to go through an eating disorder.
‘Do you have a secret? Is your secret something that could kill you, a silent gnawing feeling that's slowly melting you away, little by little, something deadly that nobody else can see? Mine is. And it is this: I've struggled with an eating disorder since I was a child. This struggle has been mostly a private one, a war nobody knew was raging inside me. I tried to fight it alone for a long time. And I nearly died,’ she writes.
Zosia’s disorder actually stemmed from someone commenting on her weight as a child, she says: ‘I was told I was fat for the first time when I was eight. I'm not fat; I've never been fat. But ever since then, there has been a monster in my brain that tells me I am—that convinces me my clothes don't fit or that I've eaten too much. At times it has forced me to starve myself, to run extra miles, to abuse my body.’
Her obsessive behaviours around food, made her ‘want to die’ by the time she was 17: ‘As a teenager I used to stand in front of the refrigerator late at night staring into that white fluorescent light, debilitated by the war raging inside me: whether to give in to the pitted hunger in my stomach or close the door and go back to bed. I would stand there for hours, opening and closing the door, taking out a piece of food then putting it back in; taking it out, putting it in my mouth, and then spitting it into the garbage. I was only 17, living in misery, waiting to die.’
After treatment to help her undertsand the illness, Zosia has endevaoured to fight against unrealistic ideals in our society for women and their weight.
‘Our culture delivers a real one-two punch: You want to control something, and then society says, "Hey, how about controlling the way you look? Skinny is beautiful." Your obsession feels justified. It's no secret that we live in a country with a warped view of beauty. "Skinny" sells us everything, from vacations to underwear, effectively.
‘But we need to be brave and expose this body type for what it truly is: a figure naturally possessed by, let's say, a mere five percent of women. We must demand that our media figure out another way to sell things to us.’
She also makes a valid point that women need to support each other in every day life when it comes to removing guilt from food, saying: ‘We are all a little bit ashamed of that second cupcake. Let's diminish the stigma. Let's remind one another that we're beautiful. Maybe you'll help a friend. Maybe you'll help yourself. And if you're reading this and you're suffering, please know you're not alone. Tell someone: The people who love you will listen, I promise. And you'll feel better’
Read the whole column here. And maybe forward it to a friend.
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.