Brittany Mackowiak had a fear of being fat.

This is what pushed her into a five-year battle with eating disorders.

Mackowiak suffered from anorexia, bulimia and also smoked to lose weight.

It all stemmed from pictures from popular culture.

Mackowiak said she saw movies and articles depicting the thin and glamorous.

“I always thought skinny looked better,” said Mackowiak.

The freshman communications major has been healthy for two years now after being treated by doctors and a brief stay in the hospital.

Dr. Susan Bordo presented “Not Just ‘A White Girl’s Thing’: the Changing Face of Food and Body Image Problems” Monday in the Martin Luther King, Jr. University Union Grand Ballroom. The 2008 keynote speaker for Women’s History and Awareness Month

addressed many of the issues and problems that Mackowiak faced.

“It’s something that really hit home,” Mackowiak said.

Bordo is a professor of English and gender studies at the University of Kentucky and has also written many books on the subject, including “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body.”

Bordo said when people think about body image issues and eating disorders, they usually think of white privileged heterosexual women.

She said they probably don’t think of someone who is black, Asian, Latino or male.

During her presentation, Bordo demonstrated how body problems include much more than just anorexia. Eating disorders include bulimia, excessive exercising, compulsive eating and plastic surgery.

Bordo also used slides to illustrate how the media shapes the minds of society.

The slides depicted magazine covers and spreads with lean, thin women of different races and also muscular men.

Bordo showed images that glamorized the hyper-skinny body and made the plus size model seem special or unique when really their size is the norm amongst women.

Bordo said the average model is 5’10” and 107 pounds while the average woman is 5’4” and 143 pounds.

“Their vision has been retrained,” Bordo said.

She said media images teach young girls how to see themselves, so they grow up thinking they’re not good enough.

Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, coordinator of women’s studies, said she hoped those who came would now think more about where their views of body image come from and question those views.

Then, she said, people will learn not to hold themselves to such a high standard.

Enck-Wanzer first saw Bordo while in the PhD program in Indiana University and instantly became a fan and wanted to bring her to campus.

“I’m an academic nerd that way,” Enck-Wanzer said.

Chris Mitchell, assistant professor in the theatre department and a women’s studies faculty member, has read several of Bordo’s work.

He said it was great to see her work come to life.

Mitchell said the issues Bordo spoke about are often addressed in the introduction to women’s studies class that he teaches.

“This idea of thinness bombards us,” Mitchell said.

He said images are digitally enhanced or air brushed which gives society unattainable standards.

Mackowiak said it is important for people to address these issues, especially on a college campus. She said girls only see one side – the magazines. They then think their body should look like the models in the magazines.

Mackowiak said she hopes someone else who might be dealing with body image issues, like she has in the past, took something away from Bordo’s presentation and change themselves.

Books Bordo has written:

My Father’s Body and Other Unexplored Regions of Masculinity.

Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images From Plato to O.J.

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body.

The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.

Women’s History and Awareness Month keynote speaker Susan Bordo talks about the public’s opinion of body image and how people from different backgrounds have different views of it Monday night in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University

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