As anyone who follows undressedskeleton, they have probably realized that in Taralynns mind, being fat is almost always equal to being unhealthy. She swears she just cares for “your health” but in reality, like most of the world, she’s just plain fat phobic. Now fat phobia is the insistence that being over weight means you are a lazy, gluttonous, slob. It’s the media sensation around the so-called “obesity epidemic”, and it’s the belief that being fat makes you undesirable and unworthy. I can’t put the blame all on her, it’s society that has shoved this down our throat since we were old enough to process what being fat was. But if she as concerned with the health and happiness of her readers like she claims, she should be dispelling these rumors and not regurgitating the same garbage that makes these young girls seek a better, thinner life in the first place.
Being fat isn’t bad, let’s get this out of the way. The fat acceptance movement has been growing, and more over weight people have been coming forward and expressing that not only are they happy the way they are, but they live healthy, active, fulfilling lives. Shocking notion, I know. But regardless of this, people are still bombarded with societies beauty ideals. Tumblr is FULL of photos of thin, waif-ish white women reblogged a thousand times over. Magazine are still printing articles about how to get “the perfect beach bod in ten days!” or “how to eat chocolate but stay thin!”. The emphasis on weight is astounding, and it’s effects can be devastating.
Taralynn is part of the problem, not the solution. Her “brief biography” http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/mystory is full of self loathing for her fat former self. Everything wrong in her life was directly correlated to her weight. She claims that as she lost weight, all her problems magically melted away with the pounds. This is so, so damaging to girls who feel like IF only they lost a few pounds, all their issues would be fixed. That life would be brighter and easier! So of course they are going to see how she did it. That is where the BIG issue of this blog take place.
First of all, Taralynn’s eating is disordered. There is NO DOUBT about this. Now, disordered eating doesn’t automatically mean someone suffers from an eating disorder. It does, however, mean that she is walking on the edge and could possibly fall off that cliff. And the same goes for the young women and men who follow her tips and tricks.
Undressedskeletons disordered eating habits:
Reading over her blog, I found it extremely triggering as someone who struggles with an eating disorder. So many of her “tips and tricks” read like they were taken directly out of a pro-anorexia how-to guide. Some of them:
Her portion sizes are very, very small. I understand that portion sizes are something that most people struggle with, but 120 calories for an entree is just not enough.
Squashetti!
Calorie 65 for 1 1/2 cup 18g carbs 4g protein 0 fat
HALF a CUP?? 65 Calories?? This is not an entree, this is a snack. I understand that she probably means to pair it up with side dishes but still, if her entree is 65 calories, I’d hate to see how many calories her side dishes are.
Skimpy Shrimp Cocktail
Calories 95 Fat 0 Protein 13 Carbs 15
Skimpy is right. FOUR SHRIMP. FOUR. 95 calories! This is madness. Four shrimp is NOT an entree, four shrimp is not filling or satisfying. But hey, it’s low in calories right? that’s all that matters in taralynns world
Calories for one egg half - 11 calories
Do I even have to say anything more? The fact that she is promoting these as entrees is scary and unhealthy.
another disordered eating habit Taralynn hands out as a “tip” is weird food combinations. Anyone who has struggled from an eating disorder has done this. It’s packing as much flavor into as few calories as you can. Some people smother everything in yellow mustard. Taralynns condiment of choice isn’t even a condiment, it’s SUGAR FREE JELLO PACKETS.
powdered sugar free jello on orange slices? Seems legit.
frozen yogurt cookies with greek yogurt and sugar free jello powder
Greek yogurt pops flavored with sugar free jello powder
Air popped popcorn with sugar free jello packets sprinkled on top
sugar free jello yogurt something or another
plain fruit with sugar free jello powder
kitty chow dusted with sugar free pudding powder
again, pops with greek yogurt and sugar free jello
carrots and sugar free jello powder
I do not have it in me to continue, but literally every other recipe contains sugar free jello powder in some form or another. She claims on her page that she uses sugar free jello powder to encourage people who don’t like fruit or vegetables to eat them, but she loves fruits and vegetables yet constantly posts about smothering them in this dusty powder. Why? Because it’s a disordered eating habit, that’s why. What nutritional value does SF jello HAVE that makes this health conscious girl coat almost every nutritional thing she eats in it? It’s just adding (a minuscule amount) empty calories to an otherwise HEALTHY food.
Other disordered eating habits include…
Packing a healthy snack bag on a road trip and then staying up all night JUST to sleep in the car so she wouldn’t be tempted to binge out of boredom
Eating her soup with a fork to avoid extra calories and extra sodium
Splitting a six inch subway turkey sandwich (which is already less than 250 calories) with her mom just to keep her placated enough until they got to the hotel
Ate a very low calories meal and walked home instead of riding with her family so she could “digest” her dinner before bed
These are NOT normal eating behaviors and these are NOT eating behaviors that should be followed.
p.s. I’ve noticed I’ve picked up a few followers since my first post. I have submissions open so if you want to say something about undressedskeleton please don’t hesitate to say it! I will post it as long as it’s appropriate
![majorstranger:
Above is a picture of me in 2009 and a picture of me taken about a year ago. In the first picture I weighed almost 200 lbs and in the second picture, I weighed 135 lbs. I have managed to keep off the 65 lbs I lost to this day and am much healthier because if it. This is not to say that healthier means weighing less, it just did for me. Plenty of people are comfortable, happy, and healthy at many different weights and I firmly believe that weight is no indicator of how healthy a person is.
I show you those pictures and tell you a bit about my weight loss journey because I want to help you understand that I somewhat know what I’m talking about when it comes to weight loss and disordered eating habits. There was a time, during my process, where I became obsessive with my food intake and amount of exercise. This is extremely common and happens to a lot of people who are trying to lose weight and change their life. Here are some great examples of the type of behavior that I’m talking about taken from another Tumblr user’s blog:
She packed a cooler of food to eat on a vacation with her family and then decided not to sleep the night before so she could sleep throughout the entire daytime car ride and not eat. [link]
She is careful to eat soup with a fork, but only the chunkier kind. She rationalizes that this is to cut out sodium but then, why wouldn’t she get a lower sodium soup or even make her own from scratch? I feel like it was really to cut out even MORE calories from her already restrictive diet. [link]
She counts calories consumed and burned in the back of her head at all times, even when hanging out on the beach with her friends and making sand people. [link]
She finds ways to add high-flavor, low-nutrition substitutes to low-calorie, high-density foods in order to get as full as possible while still semi-enjoying it and eating as little calories as possible. She does this even when the foods didn’t pair well together (cooked carrots and sugar-free jell-o powder anyone?). [link]
Her meal plans consist of 1,000 calories per day. When people asked her why this was so low, she simply told them that she usually combines different 1,000 calorie meal plans together so that it’s 1,500 calories or more. I wonder why she didn’t just make 1,500 calories or more meal plans to begin with. [link]
She felt that she needed to split a normal portion size because it was still too much. She writes about splitting a 6” Subway sub with her mom, despite the fact that that’s only around 150 calories for a full meal, maybe less. I know now that healthy meals should be around 400-500 calories for most people. [link]
Her meals can sometimes contain even less calories than her meal plans. 185 calories for dinner is just is not enough and if you consume only 1,018 calories and then exercise off 803 all in the same day, that is a major problem. [link, link, link]
She sometimes makes fatphobic, judgmental remarks about others’ diet, weight, and body and will even directly correlate her clothes size to her happiness and ability to let herself have fun in life “When you finally move from the fat sizes section to the regular sizes section, you can throw a party.” [link, link]
And that’s only some of it. But here’s the worst part, the Tumblr that I got those instances from, that I compared to when my eating was disordered and obsessive, is a very popular weight loss blog. The girl that runs this blog seems like a very sweet, kind-hearted person, but I fear that she has become obsessive, just like I was, about her weight and weight loss.
Actually wait, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that this blogger is now featured in Seventeen magazine as a role model for a healthy lifestyle. By doing this, Seventeen magazine, a global publication which reaches millions of young girls all over the world, has given impressionable teen girls a gateway into unhealthy, restrictive eating habits. Young girls already have enough pressure from the media and society to be thin and presenting them with an unhealthy disordered diet plan wrapped in a veil of healthiness is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.
The young blogger I’m talking about is Taralynn of Undressed Skeleton. I am not saying that she has an eating disorder (whether she does or does not is her issue and for me to assume anything is not only disrespectful, it’s extremely invasive). What I am saying is that her eating habits are disordered. This is reflected over and over again in her blog and although I can’t speak to what she does in real life, her Tumblr certainly speaks volumes. Perhaps the advice and entries are older and come from a more obsessive and restrictive time in her journey. If that is the case, I ask you to contact Taralynn and please urge her to update her meal plans to reflect a healthy number of daily calories so that they aren’t misinterpreted and to also adjust some of her language so that it isn’t as harmful. She does have the freedom of speech and is not required, of course, to do this. If I didn’t know her blog was going to be viewed by tons of young girls and could potentially act as a vessel for them to develop an eating disorder, I wouldn’t even be asking this of you or her. I’m also aware that she has quite a following on Tumblr and would love if you could reblog this message to get the word out.
If you could also please send an email to Seventeen magazine at mail@seventeen.com or ktranell@seventeen.com and let them know how you feel, that would be greatly appreciated. In the end, most of the blame falls on them for not choosing their role models more carefully.
Finally, if you’re curious about my healthy (no, really) weight loss journey, please check out a post I made in my blog about it here: How To Lose 60 Pounds Like Now. And as always, if you have any questions for me, I’m an open book. :)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxnpg6qY2H1qzon6eo1_1280.jpg)
