the personal is political

I've been mulling over this entry for awhile now. The issue of body image is one that has in some way affected almost all of the girls I've been friends with over the years. I don't know when it started, but it seemed like one day we all just woke up hating our bodies. How does this happen, why does it happen? We can name the usual suspects- billboards, MTV, magazines, etc. But it seems like that's almost not enough. There must be some radical reason why girls start hating the way they look with an intensity that seemingly comes out of nowhere. But if this is true, it's a reason that has eluded me.
I never really struggled with my body the way some girls did when I was growing up. Of course there were days I wished my breasts would just grow already or that my skin would magically clear. But when I grew older I accepted the fact that I'd never have an ample chest and admired my long legs and my green eyes. I never struggled with eating. I used to joke that although I seemed like the perfect candidate for anorexia (perfectionist, overachiever, worrier), I didn't have the willpower required to keep myself from eating. When I stopped to think about it, I felt like I had in some way dodged a bullet.
It didn't last. Since spring eating has felt like some unconquerable task. In her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Courtney Martin describes how when she was a teenager she struggled with an "almost eating disorder", which sounds like the best way to describe my experience. It seems to be getting better through therapy and the like, but I still wonder: how did this happen? How does this happen to girls like me?
At the climax of this, I felt like I was struggling with two people. I had this feminist self, who's read Fat is a Feminist Issue and Body Outlaws and Our Bodies, Ourselves and could rationally tell myself that I was beautiful and my body needed food to keep itself healthy and starving myself wouldn't make me happy. But it was like trying to use logic to conquer an emotion that was too great to be ignored. I couldn't avoid the girl inside of me that was scared and lonely and always, always hungry, the one who believed that if I couldn't control the pain I felt then at least I could control what I ate.
I wish I could pinpoint something that started this, some kind of reason that would give meaning to this experience. At the very least I could use it to speak out and say, "Here's what I went through and why I went through it" and maybe it could help explain why some girls struggle so much with food. But I know that the reasons behind my struggle are complex and multilayer and that to shorten it to one concrete fact would be impossible. And even if it was possible, that one reason wouldn't speak to the many different experiences people have, it would only be the story of one girl at this one time in life. I think it's that logical side of me again, searching for something simple and understandable. Because I don't really understand why it is that the rational I tell myself seems completely meaningless when it comes time for dinner. I don't understand why so many people starve and purge and binge. I wish that there was some good that could come out of all this. So I'm writing about my experiences in case there does turn out to be some good, that someone will read this and feel a little less alone.
I feel like I could go on about this issue for hours and still feel unfinished, but right now I'm just working on grounding myself. One day at a time.