I’m going to get tarred and feathered for this.
I didn’t think that Marie Claire article was that bad.*
Let’s say you’re an outsider. You’ve never heard of food blogs before.
Then suddenly you hear of someone writing one. “You do what? You take pictures of what you eat and post it online?”
Having never heard of this before, it sounds quite bizarre. Especially if you go on to explain that you post every thing you eat, three times a day.
Even more bizarre? To have a conference about blogging about what you eat.
So now let’s go on to say you’re a reporter. You need to write about this blog phenomenon, so you start researching by examining the “big blogs”; you dig through old blog posts, search for the entries with the most hits or the most comments.
Of course you’re going to stumble upon the more controversial ones.
And you’re probably not going to read on a daily basis and get to “know” these people. It’s certainly doubtful you’re even going to meet these people to find out what they’re really like.
As a reporter, you should know that not everybody comes off the same in print as they do in person, but you brush this aside.
So, with many blogs to examine, a conference to attend, and an article to write, you skim for the “good stuff”. Like I said, it’s no shocker that you’d come across popular posts- which doesn’t always mean popular in a positive sense- controversy is popular too.
You come across an entry that talks about someone pouring salt over their dessert so they don’t eat too much. You find another entry that where someone says they’re hungry, right after an entry where they ran double digit miles.
You know what you’d be thinking. *Danger, danger* bulbs flash in your head. Disordered eating is staring you in the face. You’re a reporter- you have to share this. You have to let those blog readers know that this isn’t normal behavior.
And you’re right. You do.
**Here’s where me being objective ends.**
[And the un-objective me says that article blowed.]
As an outsider, I too, would say these blogs are contributing to disordered eating and promoting poor body image. Especially if those are the only posts I’ve read. But I’m lucky enough to actually know many of these girls the reporter is writing about. I shouldn’t really say writing. I should say smearing.
If this is the article that needs to be written, it could’ve conveyed an equally emphatic message without names. Honestly, I think it could have more impact without names. Although now it will have huge impact because everybody that knows these bloggers is going to talk about it and well, any publicity is good publicity.
Bottom line? I don’t think it was necessary to trash these girls and their blogs. For the number of people that are negatively affected by them, 100s more are inspired and motivated. Seeing how a “real” person handles being healthy can have more of an influence than reading how you “should” be healthy.
But on the other side of the fence, some behaviors demonstrated on blogs is in fact disordered. Disordered is the wrong word. I don’t know the right word.
But it depends on who’s doing the behavior, why they’re doing it, and who’s reading about it. Nobody would blink twice if a woman weighing 300 pounds dumped salt on her dessert when she was done if she was trying to lose weight. But a healthy 20 something that lost college weight and suddenly it’s an eating disorder? Everything needs context before judgment.
So I say the article wasn’t that bad, because I’ve seen disordered behavior on blogs. And I’ve seen some of it in person too. But that doesn’t mean each and every food blogger has an eating disorder or is encouraging others to do the same. Just because someone does something on a blog doesn’t mean you can or should yourself (hello, not everyone can run marathons or mile repeats at a 6 min pace!) Make decisions and smart judgments for yourself- nobody else can do it for you.
They aren’t writing these blogs and saying DO THIS. They’re saying this worked for me. Readers need to take responsibility for their own actions.
Rant. Over.
I think….
The issue of sponsorship and big companies paying for things is a whole different bag of lemons. Bag of lemons? Who says that.. Oh I meant can of worms.
[P.S. I think the girls specifically mentioned in the article were unabashedly slammed for the wrong reasons and can imagine how they’re feeling right now. They didn’t deserve it. The reporter literally ripped them a new one, and whether you’ve met them or just read them, you know it was a low, low blow.]
*If you don’t know what I’m talking about: an article was written about how food bloggers have eating disorders. I debated joining in the hubbub but obviously I went for it…. I have to say if I didn’t know the who the article was talking about, I probably wouldn’t have blinked twice.
Thoughts?
{ 44 comments… read them below or chime in }
i completely agree with you on every point here. I’ve been trying to become more of a “healthy living” blogger for a while now and not gonna lie, there’s a feeling of inadequacy that lies somewhere under my surface in my blogging persona. Granted I’m smart enough to stop training for a marathon when every run causes me pain, and I’m too much of a food lover to even try to remember to photograph my food before I eat it (a large part of the reason I’m struggling with my blogging persona/niche). But I never once thought of these girls as not…normal or “disordered”. I have often wondered why I can’t motivate myself to run more, or on occasion when i work 3 jobs in one day beat myself for not getting a workout in (which is why i’m up at 6am right now) but even my dysfunctional comparison isn’t their fault (i’ll be the first to admit that). Her pointing the finger at them for every blogger with an eating or exercise disorder seemed unnecessary. I read each one of those blogs and think they are motivating and inspiring, because what they’re doing, even if there might be some effed up habits (really who throws salt on food so they don’t eat it?) is pretty amazing – and like you said for every girl that’s taken it the wrong way, there are hundreds of others that are inspired and motivated to get their butts off the couch and having the ability to do that? To motivate so many people by sharing your life is an amazing thing.
“..but even my dysfunctional comparison isn’t their fault.” I love that.
Comparison’s a hard thing to avoid (& recognize) food blogs or not.
I’ve read blogger’s opinions on both sides and the original article and it’s very difficult to know what to think. Firstly, you never know if the journalist has fairly represented things or whether they have been taken out of context. Secondly, as someone who loves reading healthy living blogs, it’s difficult to look at this objectively. I do agree with you and think it was wrong to target the individuals in the article the way she did, but I have definitely seen bloggers with unhealthy food relationships. I have stopped following a couple of blogs because I personally thought they were medically underweight and was couldn’t reconcile this with the ‘I eat everything I want’ and ‘It’s my life, I’m healthier than a fat person’ protestations.
I think it’s made even more difficult by the fact that the notion of a ‘healthy lifestyle’ is so arbitrary and means different things to different people. I, for example, think it is unhealthy that so many bloggers neglect strength training, especially when they eat fairly low calories diets and inevitably pounds miles on the pavement. I’d be interested to see how many of these women end up with osteoporosis in their 40s, or even 30s. Intuitive eating is a great idea in theory, but when you are posting every morsel that passes your lips and tracking every mile run, I doubt this is really ‘intuitive’ at all.
I myself have lost a lot of weight in the last year and I am proud of this fact, I’m proud of my achievement. But I’d be lying if I said that I did it purely for health reasons.. sometimes I just wish all these ‘healthy living’ bloggers would admit that they eat and move the way they do so they can look good!
Good response to the article anyway, it was interesting to hear from someone [possibly] on the other side of the fence.
You bring up a great point about not reading blogs that aren’t really living healthy lives. It’s up to us to be responsible enough to decide whether to read or not.
You make some really valid points, especially looking at it from an outsiders’ perspective. The thing that bothered me the most — her conclusions notwithstanding — was that there wasn’t one quote from someone who had a positive comment on blogging or healthy living. Not one.
It’s easy to take a post here or there out of context but if you were to spend more than a few minutes perusing a blog, if you were to ask a couple of pertinent questions, if you were to at least consider what the ‘other side’ might believe, you would have a more well-rounded article.
I do think that this article was one-sided. I just started a healthy living blog myself and it’s possible to have one without having an eating disorder or promoting one. That being said, I do think there are bloggers that tend to take the “healthy living” to an extreme with very low calorie counts and excessive exercising. I used to be one of those people so I can’t necessarily read those blogs or they will trigger me. I do think that I could have respected this article more if they would have shown both sides because there are some GREAT bloggers out there. And Marie Claire is in no position to talk about promoting eating disorders.
Hey! I agree that it could go either way depending on how the reader wants to take it. I spoke with her at the conference and she herself was recovering from anorexia so clearly the blogging community must have been a trigger for her. Love the bag of lemons comment. We understood what you meant.
The fact that she was recovering from an eating disorder herself completely changes the view point of the article- I wish she had written from that point of view instead of just leaving that out of there. If I was in recovery, reading about and looking at food would definitely give me a negative impression of food bloggers, regardless of whether what they’re doing is healthy or not.
I also wish that she wrote from that point of view. It would have been a much more interesting article for me, and I think that it would have explained a little bit of her (obvious) strong feelings about the “big six” and their blogs. I thought that she made some valid points in the article, warranting further thoughtful discussion on the topic, but the opinion presented is very one sided. I think that this is what really contributes to the break down of the integrity of the article. Thanks so much for sharing – I loved your post! xo
From a journalistic point of view, there are a few reason’s the magazine article is flawed. The number one being that although the author gather quotes to support her claims, she did not get any to show the other side. It’s completely biased, subjective, and completely goes against everything I’ve ever been taught as a journalism major. It’s not just saying, “yeah, these girls may have a eating disorder, but they may not.” It’s blatantly attacking them, using their quotes out of context, and claiming things without goof reporting.
The author may seem like she took some time getting to know the “big six” or whatever she called them, but the fact is, she didn’t.
And honestly, with the crap that most fashion magazine put out these days, and the way most magazines make women feel like they’re not enough, makes me think that Marie Claire should have thought twice about printing this article.
There, I said it.
BTW- great post!
Few corrections (should have reread my comment!!)
gathered not gather.
good not goof.
and the last sentence makes no sense, but you get the idea!!
Yup, I totally agree that it wasn’t a fair piece of journalism, no matter what you take from it. And from the little I’ve seen of that magazine, the models in there are NOT good examples of being healthy.
I probably am going to be further off the fence than you by saying this but I think the reporter shed some hard truths on our world. All but one of the big 6 are not health professionals, many of them have blogged about weight loss in the past, and there are a number of times when I have felt that their blogs now feel slightly artificial because of their corporate sponsors. I think that there are a number of women who looks at these blogs and try to emulate their lives… didn’t we all start our own blogs for similar reasons? I think that just posting pictures of what you eat and talking about the hardest 16 mile run is not a definition of healthy living, because realistically that involves a lot more balance. We all know the ED blogs, and if those women are looking at the big 6 and emulating their lives, we’re going to continue to get a bad rap.
Of all the blogs mentioned in the article I read HTP the most and I have to say that I do not believe that Caitlin promotes an unhealthy lifestyle/disordered eating and exercise lifestyle. She promotes intuitive eating rather then calorie counting, she does not obsess over losing weight (I have come across a lot of blogs that chart every 0.3lb loss) and used running and marathon training as much more then just a means to maintain her weight.
Yes these bloggers do get upset if they are hurt and might continue to train with an injury. But they are no different then hockey players and other pro athletes that compete when they should be sitting on the bench. Sometimes determination doesn’t always make for the absolute best decisions.
I think the article might have needed to be written (the topic is valid) but in my experience there are many more blogs out there that could have been used as an example of a dangerous mentality.
I just wrote my own post about the topic but I am actually glad the article was written. I think it has opened the doorway for a very important discussion about the impact bloggers have as media.
I honestly AGREE with this article. Some of these bloggers (not all) are definitely triggers for eating disorders, as they over exercise and under eat. To me, that isn’t an example of healthy living. Too many vegetables and not enough carbs is not good for someone training for a marathon. Also, putting restrictions on dessert after running double digits is ridiculous. Something needs to be done about this, and i’m happy this article was written.
As an avid reader of many healthy-eating blogs, I have had many moments when I think “wow, is that healthy?” The words and information are fine in 99% of the articles I read, but I think that the very act of meticulously detailing every single thing you eat is bound to have an affect on ones relationship with food, and it’s up to every blogger to check with themselves that they’re remaining balanced. I guess it applies to many different kinds of blog – we *all* have to work to make sure that we’re not getting obsessed!
I don’t read women’s magazines anymore – I just found that after fourteen years of reading them, I was seeing the same tired articles rehashed, with the same lame prejudices – men don’t do housework; women love shoes; this is what every man likes in bed; blah. So, I’m not really surprised that yet another article is lazy, sensationalist and ill-informed.
However – the very idea that someone would include HTP in such an article really p*s me off. Caitlin is so inspiring – in fact, she was the person who got me into the health blog world. I’m hovering at just under 200 lbs and alternate between 1200 calorie a day diets to just not giving a damn, and it’s people like her who have made me step back and actually consider my health in the whole process. I cook almost everything from scratch now, and we have a Diet Coke-free house.
“the same lame prejudices – men don’t do housework; women love shoes; this is what every man likes in bed; blah. So, I’m not really surprised that yet another article is lazy, sensationalist and ill-informed”
You’re right. No need for us to be so surprised. And I’m glad you’ve found the positive in healthy living blogs and been able to use them to improve your own health!
I agree there was room for a serious discussion on the effect of these types of blogs on those with eating disorders, et al, but unfortunately I’m not sure that will happen in any serious way because of the way it was written.
You cannot put forth a professional matter for consideration by attacking people’s personal characters. It’s not effective. It’s not professional. It’s not ethical. Period.
I agree. The magazine threw a really good opportunity for an article with serious impact & discussion by writing such a libelous piece.
I just feel bad the author felt the need to go down this path… being ethical isn’t that hard.
As I have said in other blog posts on the same topic, while the article was mean spirited and some (if not all) of the quotes were likely taken out of context, I believe this article needed to be written.
I will say I respectfully disagree with your position on it being the readers’ responsibility to sift through these blogs and decide what tips to take as gospel and which to dismiss. When a blogger chooses to put their content on the interweb, no matter whether or not they have a degree in health or nutrition, many people will view them as an expert, especially the more followers and corporate sponsors they have, freebies they receive and the book deals/columns in health magazines they are granted.
One of the things that upset me most about the article that has barely been addressed is that it failed to show a positive example of health blogging. All health bloggers are not created equal and those of us who don’t follow the obsessive and frankly, rather dull “log every meal and mile ran” format deserve to be recognized by stepping outside of the box set by more popular bloggers and making a conscious effort to ensure the content they post onto the blogosphere does not express a punitive and obsessive attitude towards health, weight and exercise.
You make a good point about people viewing these people as experts even when they’re not. Didn’t really think about it that way
I still think it’s up to us to decide what’s healthy or not for ourselves on an individual basis.
Fantastic POV. I support everyone’s opinion. There is a lot to still be said about this article, good and bad. Talk about a healthy discussion brewing.
Heck yes.
I absolutely agree with you. I think that the blog world really can be a trigger for some people because it’s hard to remember that every single BODY is different. Every person is different. Some people struggle with food and their attitude towards eating and exercising. Some people need to eat more. Some people need to eat less. Everyone who writes a blog is going to eat and workout differently and what works for one famous healthy blogger is not necessarily going to work for all of her readers. In fact, it definitely won’t. It’s definitely an interesting topic to delve further into, but the Marie Claire lady went about it in entirely the wrong way and ended up just sandblasting a lot of girls who truly didn’t deserve it.
when i first read the article, i thought it wasn’t all that terrible, but then i’m reading everyone’s reactions, and i guess what bothers me the most about the article is that the girls were misled into believing what the article would be written about.
she contacted them about one thing, but the article turned into something else.
Yup I was thinking the same thing. I’m glad I wrote this before reading everyone else’s reactions so I can remember exactly what I first thought. Having heard lots of perspectives now, it’s really more about issues with journalism tactics than anything else. Is your article really that good if you have to lie to your contributors?
I agree that many many bloggers are disordered. Heck, I was at first and honestly blogging just fed into it and made it worse. So, that’s not a secret about many of the blogs out there.
BUT, what makes me upset about this article is the fact that the reporter lied to the girls about what the article was going to be about and manipulated things that were said. She has her side she wanted to portray and completely ignored the other wonderful sides of these women’s blogs and she presented a very skewed perspective.
This is 100% how I feel and I couldnt of said it better. I do think we have a responsibility though to use this as an opportunity to improve our community.
Really well said, Heather and I agree completely. There are times when I have felt like some blogs I have come across get a little bit over-the-top in terms of obsession over calorie-counting and having had disordered eating issues in my past, I do not think these would be helpful. However, yes, I think the problem with this is the unfair, unprofessional nature of this sensationalist “article” which reads more like an op-ed.
It’s really unfortunate, but I feel confident that the support circle these girls have (the Big Six–though I had never actually heard that term for then until now….I must be behind the times….) will ultimately result in them getting more of a following and positive feedback than if the article had been all rosy and happy. It’s just unfortunate that a more balanced piece that looks at the very good and the potentially bad side of healthy food blogging could not have come out of this. But perhaps it will spark a debate that will lead to something like this in an equally popular women’s magazine.
Thanks for this post
What bothers me the most is that everyone is rallying around the “big 6″ and starting a Revolt against Marie Claire without addressing any of the issues.
First, the article was trashy. It was a smear campaign for sure and I totally agree with that.
But what about the issue of ED?? It’s rarely discussed on the blogs except for specific bloggers who are recovering from an ED. There needs to be a balance in both worlds.
I don’t know any of the”big 6″ personally so I have no right to judge what they do or don’t do. I just wish that instead of revolting against a trashy magazine article people have a balanced discussion about healthy eating and disordered eating. It’s important.
It’s also important for us READERS to be responsible readers and figure out what is healthy for US.
I guess I will be tarred and feathered too. I don’t want my opinion to be skewed as being pro-magazine article. I just think there are other issues to be addressed too.
Amen. I dont mind being tarred and feathered because of my post. Ive realized that Im done trying to conform to what I think I should sound like as a blogger. Im so much better at being myself.
And I like yourself
Me, too!
ditto some of the above commenters. i think that this is an important topic to be discussed honestly and openly, and the actual article was so biased that the dialogue is hard to get going (i actually blogged a response too). just because someone successfully lost weight doesn’t make them an expert on anything other than themselves and it’s naive (in my opinion) to think that people are overwhelmingly acknowledging that. throw me in the mix to be tarred and feathered; i agree with the dissent, just not the way MC went about it.
I loved this. I spent 7 hours in a car today actually engrossed in all this controversy. I flew off the handle when I first read the article. I needed more time to process it. I read the facts, I researched the author.
Yes this was an attack on six blogs that I think have the least amount of disordered eating, if any at all. Of course there are small small instances that I raise an eyebrow its few or far between. I know these girls. I was privledged enough to share meals with all of you at HLS this year. And so maybe my POV is disfigured, mostly because I SAW with my own eyes the truth (yet again, so did the author), I can say she was wrong ingoing so far into the extremes of what she said. With things that were clearly false.
So maybe pouring salt on your dessert isnt healthy…but then again even if you need to gain weight, eating a full pan of brownies isnt healthy for you either. You need REAL food. Nutritous, just up the cals. This is something I think anyone would know if they are well versed in food blogs, food, ED…and in life.
Thank you for this. I love to see all sides of the issues. Im still upset that my friends were attacked and I feel they are owed an apology and the public knows the full truth. Straight from the person who denied them of that in the first place.
Excellent points. These bloggers are just being honest about what they do for THEM, not what I should. I’m smart enough to make my own decisions, as is everyone else.
Love your objective take on this… Especially the part where you stop being objective! Like you, I read all these blogs and was inspired to start my own recently. What an unfortunate article, though I’ve gotta say, these ladies’ blogs are going to blow up now from that article! Power to them. Bring on the page views!
I agree with your objective points for the most part. But Katie has been reading KERF for YEARS (she did an article on me for True/Slant) and she also ignored the 2.5 interview questions I supplied for her completely. You’d have to dig REALLY deep in some of the blogs to find the one time that these bloggers might have done something uncharacteristic of their usual habits. If you were a journalist coming to read for research, you wouldn’t need to “dig” so deeply.
I’m fully willing to admit that if I’d read the response posts before writing my “objective” views, I would have struggled to be objective in any sense. I was assuming she didn’t have an adequate view of your blogs and that she didn’t ask you any questions related to what she wrote about. Crap, you know what happens when you assume.
I agree that what may have been at the root of the article (that reading food blogs may have triggering effects for some people, leading to unhealthy behaviors) is not that bad. That said, however, I do not think the personal attack on the “big six” (who came up with that ridiculousness?) was called for, warranted, necessary, or even appropriate.
I wanted to throw in my own thoughts from the “outsider” perspective. About a year ago, I stumbled on some healthy living blog–I think it was ohsheglows?–after a series of links from a friend’s completely unrelated blog. Found a few recipes I thought were interesting, and since I have a desk job that involves sitting in front of a computer with plenty of down time, I started poking around her blog roll, which led to others and so on. I’ve been regularly reading a number of blogs–including “the big six” (good grief) since. I don’t comment, I don’t have my own blog or any desire to have one, I don’t have any real vested stake in these or any other blogs, and sometimes I find posts boring, irrelevant, or even lame. But I’m an avid athlete with an interest in fueling myself well and creatively, and so I keep coming back, and most of the time I find entertainment, worthwhile ideas and so on.
I was SHOCKED when I read the MC article. I had read these blogs, regularly, and had never formed an impression even close to what was portrayed by Drummond. Maybe I’m biased, because I live in an outdoor oriented mountain city where nearly all of the people I know are highly active, but the idea that any of these women are over-exercising seemed crazy. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve developed an interest in food-as-fuel, in eating in ways that make me feel good and happy (which includes indulging, FOR SURE), but the idea that any of these women currently suffer from disordered eating seemed crazy.
Maybe I’m not seeing the full picture. While I don’t have a vested interest in the HL blog community, I DO recognize that there are valid questions to be raised about what goes on there, what’s portrayed on blogs and how’s information is delivered–just as there are valid questions to be raised about what’s printed in MC and countless other mags each month. But that article did nothing to serve the cause of starting an open, honest, viable, meaningful dialogue–except to the degree that it got people talking at all, and that the BLOG COMMUNITY took it upon itself to engage in honest dialogue.
THANK YOU for posting this! I talked about both sides of the story and my concerns for the health blogger community, and disordered eating today. It is brave of you to say what you did. I do agree and want to point out that it was VERY unfair how they pin pointed those bloggers, and probably stretched the truth, was a little misleading in the article….but it was an issue that needs to be talked about….just not using examples of specific blogs that did not deserve the slander.
i think you make some really good points here and i agree with a lot of them. the only thing is the author isn’t an outsider – she’s a blogger herself, who triathalons and discusses her own eating disorder online in posts and comments: http://trueslant.com/katiedrummond/
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