Three founders, three eating disorders. This ad found us anyway.
All three of us Plainspeak founders -- true to our roots as perfectionist millennials -- have had an eating disorder.
Though the cases varied in duration, type and severity, and though we have done our best to make peace with the younger versions of ourselves trying to grow up amongst heroin chic imagery on one side, and the promise [read: pressure] that We Could Be Whatever We Wanted on the other, the truth is that all of our experiences came with physiological side effects that we still deal with today.
We'll spare you the details of stress fractures from hitting a wedding dance floor too hard, or breaking a tibia getting off a chairlift. We'd love to see a certain dentist's second home, funded by our incessant visits.
I'll speak for myself here (Sara and Rach are more chill than me) but wearing one's body into middle age is humbling enough. To be sitting in an orthopedists office waiting for an osteopenia diagnosis caused by undernourishing our growing selves, while simultaneously scrolling through ads that harass us to "lose those last 10 pounds" is absolutely maddening. I -- no joke -- just got this ad served to me on instagram while writing this.
What the fuck, Willow?
2 comments
WTAF! I think we’re making some progress and then BAM! It feels like we never left the 90s. This is problematic on so many levels and I am just here to double tap and heart this post.
Thank you for saying this. I struggled with an eating disorder as a teen, and even though I have done a lot of work to heal, those thoughts never fully go away. They can still creep back in, and messaging like this can be incredibly harmful. I am so grateful to Plainspeak for speaking up and calling attention to how harmful this kind of advertising can be.