A Battle with Bulimia and the Blue Pinafore

**Trigger warning: this post contains mention of eating disorders and potentially triggering language**

Amelia was 15, decked in a preppy white collared top with a royal blue pinafore, walking towards her favourite store in the school cafeteria. She was one of the rare ones as she wore her school uniform with pride because the ones adorned by kids from other high schools were simply put, “too basic”. In the midst of ordering a bowl of fishball noodles from her favourite canteen vendor, she overheard murmurs from a fellow classmate, “So fat, but still eating like a pig,”. Chuckles followed from girls standing in line behind her. She didn’t know it back then, but that moment was the beginning of Amelia’s topsy-turvy relationship with food for the next 6 years.

It started out with the act of completely ridding carbs like rice and noodles from her diet because Google told her so. Before she knew it, Amelia was diving down the rabbit hole of Tumblr, home of an entire community of teenagers with unhealthy obsessions with food. It was effortless, clicking on popular hashtags like “#ana”, “#bulimia” or “#thinspiration”. Soon she found herself spending hours scrolling through images of bony torsos and skeletal limbs, reading comments from girls encouraging one another to stop eating or throw up.

“After that day, I went home, looked into the mirror and started crying because I realised how disgusting my tummy looked under that hideous, blue pinafore,” she said.

After carbs, Amelia tried cutting meat out from her diet for a couple of weeks. Her connection with food is reminiscent of being in an actual relationship with another human being. She has always been a food lover, and having to “break up” with it was an incredibly tough move.

At first, she stopped going to the cafeteria during recess and chalked it up to “wanting to study”. Hiding in the library alone with textbooks and foolscap papers for show, she would spend her 45-minute break scrolling through the Tumblr app on her phone.

“Looking up the hashtag ‘#thinspo’ was my go-to,” she said.

It hit her one day that she had to eat like a proper teenager in school when a classmate asked if she was anorexic in the presence of all the other girls in class. She needed a solution, fast. Amelia spent another night on Tumblr and it dawned upon her that there was a possibility of being able to eat to her heart’s content and still remain skinny.

Binge-eating involves the consumption of several thousand calories per meal, far surpassing the regular amount of calories a person should eat in a day. Purging, on the other hand, can comprise of self-induced vomiting, laxative abuse and more. Amelia’s twisted secret to losing weight whilst maintaining the facade that she was eating like a regular teenage girl was Bulimia Nervosa – an eating disorder characterised by both bingeing and purging.

“After my classmate asked if I was anorexic, the first thought that came to my mind was, ‘Joke’s on you, ever heard of bulimia?’, as if it was a happy, well-kept secret the girls didn’t know about. I knew I had to stop them from thinking I had an eating disorder, not because I didn’t want them to think I was ill or whatever but because I didn’t want them to know my secret to ‘success’, to being thin. Which is screwed up,” she said.

The girls stopped speculating about her sudden weight loss after watching Amelia eat “normally” again, some even starting complimenting her figure, jawline, protruding collarbones and whatnot. Little did they know about the routine that Amelia had fallen into after school.

Every weekday after class dismissal, Amelia would walk 15 minutes to the nearest McDonald’s, buy 3 upsized value meals, all coke zero, walk 20 minutes back home – despite it being a 7-minute bus ride – and devour the food she bought as soon as she got home. With her parents at work and her brother in school, no one could hear her vomiting in the bathroom, though she would try to conceal the horrible sounds by turning on the tap and playing loud rock music from her phone.

After which, she would wipe the tears that formed as a result of purging from her eyes, clean up the bathroom and log onto Tumblr to read more “tips and tricks” from blogs that actively promoted and glorified eating disorders.

Over the years social media platforms have since banned a number of pro-eating disorder terms such as “#thinspo”. Unfortunately, it has also led to the increase of purposefully misspelled variants of the original hashtags such as “#thinnspo” and “#thinsperation”.

“Even at my weakest, I had this secret online community spurring me on. These blogs literally post things like, ‘Don’t you dare give up, just one purge and you’ll feel better” or ‘Your stomach isn’t grumbling, it’s applauding’,”

She suffered in silence and perpetuated the diet-binge-purge-repeat cycle for 6 years. It was only when her father passed away when she was 21 that she felt the need to seek help.

“Imagine eating meals meant for a family of 5 by yourself and drinking 1.5 litres’ worth of Coke Zero every single day. Then imagine forcing yourself to throw it all up at the end of each meal. After my dad passed away I realised I had to stop my bullshit, so I told my mom everything,” she said.

Her mother took her to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), where she was warded for 13 days. Amelia is currently an outpatient seeking monthly treatments at the IMH and is recovering well. She has also actively removed herself from triggering content on social media, though her actions still haunt her today.

Platforms like Tumblr and Instagram have since adopted official approaches to pro-eating disorder content such as making problematic posts harder to search or stumble upon. Research have also shown that individuals being steered towards more body-positive materials and health information resources are on the rise.

“If you asked me to show you my uniform (from high school) last year I think I’d let you see it and then secretly rip it to shreds and throw it out when you’re gone. But now, when I look at it, I just think back and regret all the years I’ve lost to my ED. Those are supposed to be the best years of my life that I’m never going to get back,”