Definition: "People with anorexia nervosa have a distorted body image that causes them to see themselves as overweight even when they're dangerously thin. Often refusing to eat, exercising compulsively, and developing unusual habits such as refusing to eat in front of others, they lose large amounts of weight and may even starve to death."

Review 

In Laurie Halse Anderson's novel, Wintergirls, Lia Overbrook is a teenage girl that has struggled with Anorexia Nervosa for several years, even though she has been in therapy, rehab, and on medication in the past. No one has been able to help her, only she can help herself, except every time she looks at food, she sees the number of calories. No matter how hungry she is, the voice in her head tells her she's too close to her goal weight, and that she doesn't need it. Lia eats and drinks only when she needs to, such as before she drives, because a few months back, she got into a car accident after she fainted behind the wheel.

According to Kathleen Restifo in her article Portrayal of Anorexia Nervosa in Young Audlt Literature, there are four majoy psychological reasons why girls turn towards Anorexia: food, body image, sexuality, and the mother-daughter relationship (1988, p. 210). Lia's major reasons fall within two of Restifo's categories, the mother daughter relationship and body image. We see a lot of the body image problems through the fact that she is constantly setting new goal weights for herself, lower each time, anywhere from 95 lb to 75 lb. She and her old friend, Cassie, had a competition going to see who could be the skinniest. The reader can also get a sense for why Lia begins feeling self concisous about her weight. When thinking about her dancing days, Lia recalls her dance teacher prodding her chin and fat areas once she'd started growing, and taking away her dance solo. It is obvious that having someone else point out her physical flaws didn't help Lia's self esteem issues, and led her to want to lose weight.

Another stress factor that the reader can guess had triggered Lia's weight loss is her strained relationship with her mother. Lia makes it very clear that her mother is much more of a doctor than a parental figure, and can be rather overbearing on top of being very busy. The reader is able to figure that the mother wasn't around very often for Lia, and that when she was, she was very health conscious. This obviously had a negative side effect for her daughter, who now sees any food put in front of her as the number of calories she would be putting in her body.

Teens struggling with Anorexia will be able to relate very well with Lia, especially teen girls in general who struggle with body image. It is easy to understand where Lia is coming from and why she does what she does, even if the reader doesn't have an eating disorder. She's just a girl in pain, and that's her way of coping with it. This is why teachers can also get help from this book in terms of how they can assist students like this, it is able to put them in the minds of a student. Lia doesn't need told she has a problem, she knows that. What she needs is an open environment who is willing to help her lovingly and let her know that she can be both skinny and healthy, but she does have to weigh a little more in order to do that. It also shows us that monitoring her constantly isn't going to help either, she needs room to grow and get through this on her own.

Another reason why this can be benefical to students is becasue they can see the two sides to Anorexia Nervosa. On one side, we have Lia, who struggles throughout the novel, but eventually finds herself needing the proper help. By the end of the novel, she's in a recovery program, doing much better and eating food on a regular basis. She became healthy again. On the other side, tennagers can also see what happens when they don't get help. Lia's friend Cassie is found dead at the beginning of the novel. She was bulimic and her esophagus ruptured from how often she vomited her food back up, her stomach was also messed up, and started showing necrosis. Cassie is the ugly side of eating disorders and what can happen if students continue with them.

 This book is an accurate portrayal of a student with eating disorders, but it's important that teachers be careful which books they choose to use or have in the classroom. For example, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies and Pretties features Tally, who goes from scorning the girls who starve themselves to pretty in the first novel, to purging herself after eating because she feels to fat. However, this is simply glazed over in the book and not properly described, and is not a very good portrayal of true mental illness for the classroom. It follows the stereotype, but does not necessarily do anything to help a student deal with their own disorder.