Wintergirls Essay

The setting of the novel Frost is taken in almost like the future but still present time. It is in winter during Christmas. The author Wendy Delsol wanted to make the book have a lot of mystery going on. There was always something new happening in almost every chapter, it left you with more things. It left you with wanting to know more.

Thesis Statement: It is important to understand eating disorders and the types of eating disorders to overcome them and seek the proper treatment.

Wintergirls is a novel by award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson. The story follows an 18 year old girl named Lia who struggles with the complexity of high school, an internal battle with anorexia, the death of her bulimic best friend and overbearing parents step-parents. Though it is a lengthy and exasperating journey with many plights, in the end, Lia is able to accept the fact that she needs help, start a new journey on the road to recover, and begin to heal wounds with her family.

In 2013, 48,5 million Americans lived in poverty. That is more people than the total population of Spain. Most Americans know about the American dream, being able to use your full potential and becoming successful, non independent of your social class. But for many, the American dream has turned into the American nightmare.

As illustrated in this novel, eating disorders are about a lot more than just food. The novel

The book “Wintergirls” tells the story of a girl named Lia. As Lia lives her daily life she is forced to deal with her ex-best friend's suicide, her parents divorced, cutting and anorexia. Both Lia and her ex-best friend Cassie struggle with maintaining a positive body image; Cassie attempts to being the skinniest girl in the school by throwing up after every meal and Lia starves herself in order to be skinny. Before Cassie died she atmented to call Lia thirty-three time and Lia did not pick up the phone leaving her feeling guilty throughout the book. Lia does not get along with her mother so she lives with her father, his wife Jennifer and her daughter Emma. Throughout the book she tries to keep her weight loss a secret so the won’t send her to the doctor or a mental hospital. Lia adores her sister Emma and views her as the only good thing in her life. As Lia continues to push herself to eat less and exercise more she begins to see Cassie as a ghost. Lia reaches a tipping point when she passes out in the same motel room Cassie died in; as Lia is slowly dying she realizes that she wants to live. Lia goes to the hospitable and begin to eat and rest and slowly becomes”a real girl” again.

* 5) Consider the gender expectations of the Ozark community in which Ree lives. Does she succeed by abiding by traditional gender roles or by rejecting them? Both? Neither? Explain.

“Dying to be Thin,” produced by PBS, is a documentary that examines the troubles that persons who are affected by eating disorders go through and the constant, daily struggles they face with health and body image. The film tells the story of a number of young women who battled mainly anorexia and bulimia and mixes a variety of ages to give a “during” and an “after” perspective. Many of the women in the video were ballet or some similar type of dancer. Dancers, by their own account, are encouraged to be thin. The issue really came to the forefront after a young ballet dancer from Boston died of heart failure at the young age of 22, with an eating disorder deemed to be the cause. The narrator goes on to introduce more young women and detail the potential illnesses that their eating disorders can cause. Chronic low blood pressure, kidney and liver damage, severe early osteoporosis, and heart failure are all common things seem in patients who suffer from eating disorders. Most patients have dangerously low body weights, body fat percentages, and, often, young women will experience amenorrhea, which is the loss of menstruation. All of the people in the video wanted to be better and were seeking a road to recovery. The video showed though, how difficult that can be since the eating disorders can be so wide ranging and have a number of different root causes. Often patients develop eating disorders as something that they have control over, in a world that they feel is out of their

Girls like Cassie who die from it. Girls like Lia’s recovery friends in New Season, that get help but are never helped. Girls like the ones from the blogs, who pass as ‘inspirational’ in their weight loss journey. Eating disorders happen in many different ways and it affects people in different ways. I think that while Lia’s story in Wintergirls deals with a lot of hard realities of an eating disorder and a mental illness.

Tragedies have been a large part of storytelling for many years. “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dexter Green was a hard-working child of fairly average upbringing. Dexter worked as a golf caddy, before quitting abruptly at the age of 14 due to the “brattiness” of an 11 year-old Judy Jones. After travelling through his college years in an esteemed eastern school, Dexter takes out a one-thousand dollar loan to open up a laundry business, and by the age of 27, he owns the largest string of laundries in the upper Midwest.

Wintergirls is a poignant novel about two teenage best friends, who go through a great deal of suffering that was initially encouraged by each other. Lia and Cassie both developed eating disorders over a pact to be “the skinniest girl in school” that was made when the girls were younger. Lia being an anorexic and Cassie a bulimic, both girls experienced plenty of hard times but Cassie got the worst of it. Cassie ended up dying in a motel room after an extended binge and purge session. Of course, Lia feels guilty for this tragedy due to the pact, not telling anyone about Cassie’s problem, and for not answering the phone the night of Cassie’s death. It’s not long after that Lia’s guilt of ‘destroying’ Cassie kicks in and Lia begins to lose it. Mental hallucinations start to take over Lia’s life and she can’t even go to the store without Cassie’s ‘ghost’ following her and blaming

In my research, I explored the world of eating disorders. I wanted to see if there was anything specifically encouraging eating disorders and if there was a way to stop it. Eating disorders affect the community greatly because often times, they go unchecked or unrecognized. As a recovered anorexic, I feel it’s very important to address this issue. It’s a very big problem that is often not addressed at all, or is seen as normal, like counting calories. I hoped to find a way to improve the way that eating disorders are viewed and explain to people about what defines an eating disorder, because many people will never know if it is not explicitly explained to them. My study’s purpose is to bring light into the dark world of eating disorders

II. [Topic Justification] Eating disorders are one of the most deadly mental illnesses in the United States (Farrar).

and most people may not even be aware that the way they eat could be

Wintergirls is a young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. It follows the story of Lia, an eighteen year old girl dealing with anorexia nervosa.