14 DAY TRIAL // Anorexia and bulimia are life-threatening eating disorders and anyone who has them should seek professional help: this is the message a former anorexic, Melanie Monks, now aged 19, is trying to send out to the many girls in the UK starving themselves. Now running in a beauty pageant that will hopefully bring her among the Miss England finalists, Monks is trying to sound the alarm on the unseen dangers of celebrity culture and how it can do away with impressionable teenage girls’ confidence, as the Daily Mail points out.
Monks weighs 8 stone (approximately 50 kg) now, which may not be a lot but is definitely much more than the measly 5 stone (31 kg) she had a short while ago. She is an anorexic who is still recovering and who has realized the kind of damage she was doing to herself by not eating for days in a row. Her unhealthy relationship with food began after seeing a series of pictures of Nicole Richie on the beach, with her bones visibly sticking out, but she admits that she’d always considered Posh Spice Victoria Beckham somewhat of a role model as well.
Bullied at 13 for being “fat,” Monks came to believe she’d be accepted if she were thinner. Since she had almost no friends and certainly not much to lose, as she saw things at the time, she decided to lose weight – and was soon able to go by without food for as much as five entire days in a row. It wasn’t until her fingernails and her hair started to fall off, and the skin on her face to break out in unsightly spots that she realized she was literally starving herself into the ground.
“There were diets being recommended like lemon juice and kale at meal time – that’s an anorexic’s breakfast. When that’s all you see in magazines, you feel like you’re not good enough. […] It was a way of dealing with anger and upset, throwing food away and controlling that. I used to challenge myself, not eating anything for all day, then two whole days. I remember one day feeling so guilty because I had one small tomato. Eventually I was going up to five days at a time without eating. It’s a fake confidence, eating disorders,” Monks says.
“We’ve all been bombarded with images of these celebrities we admire aspiring to be really thin but it’s wrong and it’s a bad example to set. It’s simply not healthy. It’s a tough ride. I don’t think it ever goes away. I’m still in recovery but I’m definitely on the other end and I want to help other girls out. I want to show them that beauty’s not just about that. I may still be thin but I’m getting better, I’m active, I work very hard and I’m healthy,” she adds.
Right now, as a recovering anorexic, Melanie is thinking of starting a help group of sorts, which would offer girls in the same situation the advice and understanding they need to overcome the condition. As she sees it, there is no one more suitable to understand what they’re going through like an anorexic, which she will remain for the rest of her life.