Every college has a few dirty little secrets it keeps hidden in the closet. or in Duke's case, the bathroom. I transferred to Duke from a "pot school" where it is usually easier to obtain marijuana than alcohol. Even the Princeton Review website makes known the profusion of hippies and weed at Appalachian State. Consequently, it is a school that watches many freshmen fail out when they opt to wake-and-bake rather than go to class.
The student body at Duke seems to be missing this kind of candor when it comes to addressing its problem of eating disorders. My first week here, I stepped out of the shower mid-day when I heard a girl getting sick in the bathroom. Concerned, I asked her if she needed any help. There was no reply.
When I told my roommate about the incident, she told me that it was probably just someone purging after lunch.
"Is that. a normal thing here?" I asked surprised at her casual reply.
She raised her eyebrows and responded, "Oh, yeah."
I learned that it was not uncommon to come across a girl doing such things in a bathroom at Duke, so I quickly became desensitized.
Three months later, I was at the bus stop on a Friday night when I witnessed two girls-one abominably drunk even though it was only eight o'clock-stumble off the bus and walk over to a bench. The drunken girl was mumbling about eating too much and started trying to purge herself right there.
Her friend's response: "We can't do that in public."
These "supportive" friends disturb me much more than people I see or hear purging themselves. At the gym one day, I heard a girl talking to her friend about a recently failed relationship. She decided she would feel better if she made herself sick there at the gym.
"That's what I did when this happened to me," her friend said.
Since when does friendship entail supporting a mentally and physically degrading spiral into life-threatening illness? Hearts are broken and lives are changed every day, and none of us can control that-much less make it disappear. A girl was looking for a quick fix to her broken heart in the gym, and her diabolical friend convinced her that there was one.
There certainly is a feeling of consolation when a friend walks by your side through misery, but this consolation is all smoke and mirrors when you create your own unhappiness. I have discovered there are many myths about college students, including the one about being more independent and thinking for ourselves.
This is true to some extent, but I have also found a counterpart to this observation-some people just become more manipulative while appearing independent and, like quicksand, draw everyone around them into their self-defeating lifestyles. Eating disorders are so concealed behind false confidence that it's hard to tell who falls victim. Illness and sham come hand in hand.
Just last weekend my boyfriend and I were walking through a dorm when I heard a purging sound yet again.
"I don't understand," he said. "What the hell makes those girls so unhappy?"
And then I started to think. Manipulative friends aside, what does make so many otherwise intelligent, normal girls succumb to self-starvation and binging? Does walking to class surrounded by girls draped in designer clothes every day create a sense of inferiority? Is there a guy who they honestly think is worth dropping a few pounds for at the expense of their health? And if he is worth it, why would he care in the first place?
I may be asking the wrong questions, but the problem still remains. I decided that I'm not going to ignore a girl purging in the bathroom anymore. What kind of friends or community are we to accept something so self-corrupting for such artificial, fleeting objectives? A quick fix is never going to come along for some problems we face in life, and taking the easy way out will render no real solutions.
Eating disorders are not fashionable; they are illnesses in the worst sense of the body and the mind, and we as a Duke community should challenge this fraudulent fad out of hiding and away from the mentality of its misled followers.
Mallory Pickard is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
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