The number of young people being diagnosed with eating disorders is increasing at a terrifying rate. Charity Beat saw a 78 per cent increase in the number of people contacting it for help in September 2020 compared with February, and Tara Porter, acting lead clinical psychologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, told Tes last October that “all through the summer, the referrals did not stop. They just kept coming, coming, coming.”

It’s an issue that teachers are aware of, and are trying to tackle on the ground. But how many of those involved in the support and intervention being put in place have considered how much of a role young adult fiction has to play?

More:

• What schools can do to support students with anorexia

• Anorexia at primary school: what to do when you suspect it

• ‘I never thought I’d be able to stand up and speak about my anorexia in front of 1,200 people’

For 18-year-old Jenny Tan, it was the glamorisation of thin and starving characters in young adult fiction that triggered her to begin to starve herself. Here, in an open letter to authors, she calls on them to stop including destructive stereotypes in their books. English teacher Hetty Steele, in turn, responds to Jenny, and sets out how she thinks teachers can support her call.

Fears that some young adult fiction is triggering anorexia

The student perspective: ‘In young adult novels, starvation is everywhere’

When I was 15 years old, I wanted to be like the female heroines I’d read about in books: cool, confident, effortlessly beautiful. Twig-thin and utterly unrealistic.

My mission to starve myself began in May 2018. It wasn’t until March 2020 that I received my diagnosis of anorexia. I hid the truth, because I thought it was normal. You see, in young adult novels, starvation is everywhere.

I began reading young adult fiction as I started secondary school. These books are not the entire cause of my illness, but the continual references to size and starvation have undoubtedly affected how I see myself. They are still major triggers for me, even though I have been in recovery for over a year. 

Of course, I can’t claim that books are solely responsible for the current rise in eating disorders, body image issues and low self-esteem  - and not all young adult books contain these triggering references. The theme of starvation seems to be most common in science-fiction and fantasy novels - but all genres have repetitive mentions of size.

Raising awareness of the destructive stereotypes in young adult fiction is an overdue necessity, and I hope to make a crucial starting point in the fight to make all books, and all forms of media, more sensitive to mental health and its effects.

The destructive stereotypes

So what are the destructive stereotypes present in these books? The first is the skinny stereotype: every protagonist seems to be thin, whether they are tall or short, male or female. By writing protagonists who are always thin, you set up the implication that thin people are the only people worth talking about, which, in turn, creates a pressure to become thin if you want good things - getting the love interest, having adventures, defeating the bad guy -  to happen to you.

The second is the starvation stereotype, which can be broken down into two main parts: oversimplification and glorification. Oversimplification occurs when the act of starvation is presented as an easy, accessible hobby like reading or stamp collecting. It can be carried out on a day-to-day basis with very little effort involved, and those who are starving often refuse to eat even though they have not consumed food for days, in favour of pursuing their next adventure. This is wrong: when you are starving, nothing becomes more important to you than food. Without food, you can’t do anything.

Glorification is even worse: in many books starving characters are overtly and shamelessly praised for their looks. They are strong because they can fight monsters with no energy; they are beautiful because they’re so skinny they should be dead. By glorifying starvation, it becomes a desirable and admirable activity with no connection to pain or illness or coffins in the ground. In reality, a person who is starving will feel cold and tired all the time, experience constant shivering, dizziness and obsessive thoughts, leaving them quick-tempered, irritable and antisocial. There is nothing “beautiful” about the body of a starving person - and when you look like a walking skeleton, you’re not much fun to hug, either.

Losing weight through starvation, as presented in these novels, seems to be an obstacle that the protagonist is required to conquer before they can achieve fame and glory. But the truth is, losing weight is bad. 

I understand, of course, that these books are fiction, so they’re not meant to be factually accurate - but there is a difference between factually inaccurate information and lies that can have extremely destructive consequences. It is painful for me to see how starvation is oversimplified and glorified in these novels. I nearly lost my life when I starved myself for two and a half years. It wasn’t easy, fun, funny or pretty. Like any serious illness, it destroyed me internally as well as externally. Starvation kills. That is the truth.

‘Think about what you are writing’

There is nothing I can do about the books that are already out there; but current and future writers, please pause for a brief moment and think about how you describe your characters. How often do you describe them as “thin”? Are there more worthwhile features and personality traits that you could focus on? And if you talk about starvation - if you must include it at all - are you presenting it in a sensitive, realistic light where the negatives outweigh the positives?

We don’t starve ourselves out of choice. It’s because we feel we have no choice. Because we believe it’s the only way anyone will notice us. Care about us. Recognise our worth. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are things we can do, as a society, to prevent the spread of eating disorders, to help people who are starving and suffering.

So please, think about what you are writing. Think about your readers and what they might be going through. Be mindful. In the future, maybe I will feel strong enough to read a young adult novel again. Maybe I will be able to face up to these triggers, stereotypes and lies.

But for now, there is only one thing I have left to say: I nearly died. I didn’t die. But not everyone is as fortunate as me. 

Jenny Tan is on a gap year, and will be studying psychology at the University of Surrey in 2022

The teacher response: ‘Don’t shy away from conversations’ 

It can never be said that young adult fiction shies away from the problems in society. Underage drinking, drug misuse, asylum seekers, friendship problems, confidence issues: flick through Crank, Hidden, the entire Jacqueline Wilson Girls collection, and Wonder and you’ll see, they’re all there. 

But, in teenage fiction, these problems aren’t promoted. Right? This is a safe environment where young people can confront their own demons at their own pace, padded by descriptive prose and hopefully some gripping characterisation. Right?

Perhaps not. When I read Jenny Tan’s account of teenage fiction, I was confronted by the reality: we have been living in naivety. Society’s acceptance of the waif-like heroine is so ingrained that I, for one, never picked up on its presence on the pages of the most popular of teenage fiction. Just a brief flick through one of the first books to hand on my desk revealed, on the very first pages of the epic Hunger Games trilogy, fierce survivor and warrior Katniss Everdeen described as “starving”. 

Clearly, something needs to be done about this. What part do we, as English teachers, have to play in addressing the situation that this young author has so eloquently brought to light?

Addressing the elephant in the room 

I think, first and foremost, we need to address the elephant in the room. Most of us feel if not comfortable then duty-bound to confront issues of race and female subjectivity in Of Mice and Men. So let’s have a discussion about why when Gerald first meets Eva Smith in An Inspector Calls, the first thing he notices about her is that she is “very pretty…young and fresh and charming” shortly followed by the fact she is “hungry”. 

Let’s make that a way into our GCSE English literature context lessons, and have the conversation about how we tackle not just perceptions of women in the 1940s, but perceptions of body image in both sexes, over centuries, in literature. 

When in Stave Two of A Christmas Carol, The Ghost of Christmas Past compliments Scrooge’s late sister Fanny with: “Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered… But she had a large heart!”, let’s explore works of art from the 19th century and discuss why there seems to be this discrepancy between how a virtuous, good woman (or man) is celebrated in literature, and how she is presented in the visual mediums of the day. It’s crucial, and it’s fascinating, and we need our students to be actively contemplating why authors are glamourising a lack of nourishment and portraying it as ultimately equating to happy, healthy mental and physical health.

As well as exploring the author’s use of language, and reflecting about the time in which it was written, we need to have open conversations about steps our students can take. As Jenny points out, there is nothing we can do about the literature that is already circulating. In the same way that it is perhaps unhelpful to label Shakespeare as an ardent “racist”, it is also probably counterproductive to encourage our students to view Dickens as actively promoting dangerous beauty standards. 

We want students, perhaps through the medium of their English language writing questions in this instance, to be aware of how the media present body image today. We want them to confront the impact it has, where it has come from, and what movements are underway now to counteract that glamourisation of a Kate Moss, heroin-chic, unhealthily underweight magazine ideal. 

Then and only then do we move from horrified observers to active participants in a literary shift. I hope Jenny’s piece - and the way in which she brings attention to the ridiculousness of the starvation narrative - can be the start of that change.

Hetty Steele is the subject lead for drama at The Bishop’s Stortford High School and a part-time PhD student at King’s College London

If you have any concerns that a student in your class might be suffering with an eating disorder, please get in contact with Beat, the eating disorder charity. The Beat Adult Helpline is open to anyone over 18. Parents, teachers or any concerned adults should call the adult helpline. 0808 801 0677 or email help@beateatingdisorders.org.uk