A "Beauty Mark" Story

After watching the video “Beauty Mark,” I realized many things that I did not know, not only about female athletes but of other women as well. Diane Israel, the protagonist of the video, is a psychotherapist that works with men, women, and teenagers who have problems because they want to be thin. What she did not realize was that she also had those types of problems. It is commonly accepted that physical activity can be a healthy habit, but it has also been shown that exercise is best used in moderation. Exercise is a physical stress that can be dangerous if not performed in a reasonable manner. Overtraining is a state where an individual pushes her body through intense workout with insufficient recovery time or pushes their body to the point of failure. This is what Diane did for many years.

Overtraining can lead to what is known as the Female Athlete Triad. This condition is marked by three conditions: a negative caloric balance, menstrual cycle irregularities, and loss in bone mineral density. This, however, does not only occur with female athletes but with non competitive women. A negative caloric balance occurs when more energy is used up by your body than is taken in through diet. You basically don’t eat enough (some women do not eat at all) and exercise excessively so your body loses calories and energy. Eventually most women become too thin. Diane stopped eating when she was twelve! She said that she felt “lost, scared, and angry…afraid of being teased, of not being lovable, of not being good enough…afraid of being fat and afraid of being stupid.” The way Diane felt and saw her body, and the way she treated her body are symptoms of anorexia, which she did not even know she had.

Another symptom of anorexia is amenorrhea, the absence of menstrual cycles. This leads to the second condition of the Female Athlete Triad. A negative caloric balance can lead to irregularities in the menstrual cycle. It should be no surprise that the menstrual cycle might shut down if the woman’s body is not in a healthy state. This is what happened to Diane. She did not get her menstrual cycle until she was 30! When the menstrual cycle is irregular or absent, it is likely that the reproductive hormones are not being produced or secreted at normal levels. Normal levels of these hormones are essential for maintaining healthy bones. Unhealthy bones lead to osteoporosis or low bone density, which in turn leads to bone fractures, especially stress fractures. Diane’s anorexia kept her from growing up. She had 17 stress fractures and she ran on broken metatarsals for years. She did not eat enough so her bone density was like the bones of a 70 year old woman. She said, “I just trashed myself… I felt like trash… I trashed myself and didn’t eat.”

The drive to be thin can be very dangerous and some women do not realize the bad things that they are doing to their bodies. In the video, Paul Campos, the author of “The Obesity Myth” comments on the notion that “everyone is supposed to be thin, blonde, and 21 for their entire lives and they are committing some kind of a crime, apparently, if they don’t make all their efforts to do that.” Diane said that she did not know a lot of people who felt good about themselves for being who they were, so she decided to make a film about how beauty is portrayed in our society and how difficult it is to feel good about our bodies in our culture. What she did not expect was that she would have to face her own “demons” along the way. That was her story and I think that many of us learned from it and can try to avoid it or help someone that is going through the same situation.

Miriam Mendez
KIN 338I Section 3018
T/Th 9:30-10:45