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To Make a Dragon Move: From the Diary of an Anorexic
Pamela White Hadas is a feminist poet who wrote this poem from the perspective of an anorexic teenager. Pamela White Hadas describes the teenage girl’s anorexia in a sestina poem called To Make a Dragon Move: From the Diary of an Anorexic The sestina recycles these eight words: touch, mother, guts, fat, bones, person, smile and disappear. There are eight eight-line stanzas and one four-line stanza. Hadas uses many literary devices to express her struggle with anorexia. The title of her poem comes from a line of the Emily Dickinson poem No. 612, “To make a dragon move,” where Dickinson personifies hunger as a claw and a leech. To Dickinson, ridding herself of her hunger was equal in difficulty as moving a dragon. This gave Hadas the inspiration to make that line the title of her own poem. Just as Dickinson used many literary elements in her poem, Hadas uses literary elements such as metaphors and similes to express her disease. She describes herself as the “king of her body”, showing her self-control involving food and eating, as well as representing herself in a masculine way. She calls her mother a “food machine” because of the amount of food she creates and devours. When her mother takes the food out of the oven, Hadas describes her desire to eat it as her “bone marrow turning to hot mud.” Hadas utilizes another metaphor when she wonders if her “gut is as loopy thin as spaghetti.” Hunger is personified as a creature living inside her that tortures her; similar to how Dickinson personified hunger as a leech or dragon in her poem. Referencing touch in order to describe how the author experiences the world around her as an anorexic is an example of a motif within the poem. Other examples include using anatomy as a descriptive tool and repeating the words of the sestina in the poem.

About Anorexia Nervosa
What is the Definition of an Eating Disorder?

Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder where a person refuses to maintain a normal body weight. Anorexia nervosa is a relatively new disorder; it was only recently defined and came to the nation’s attention in the 1970s.[1] People who develop anorexia nervosa usually lose at least 15 percent of their body weight, have an intense fear of gaining the weight back, and weigh themselves several times a day. A person with anorexia nervosa has an unrealistic view of their body; seeing an enlarged version of themselves while losing a realistic view of their own self image. In females, the habit of not eating may cause their menstrual cycle to stop. Another anorexic habit may include exercising excessively. They may also develop a ritual of binge eating and then purging, which is also known as Bulimia. They may force themselves to regurgitate their food because they feel guilty and shameful for eating. Anorexia nervosa also affects a person’s personality, causing them to feel depression, anger, fear, irritation, and may develop obsessive-compulsive behavior. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.

Who Develops an Eating Disorder?

Over 90% of people diagnosed with anorexia nervosa are female. The majority of people with this disorder are adolescent, making anorexia nervosa the third most chronic illness in teenage girls. According to one study, Caucasian females are more likely to develop an eating disorder over any other race, but anorexia nervosa is more related to culture than ethnicity. The cultural values of beauty may be at fault. Advertisements and magazines are targeted towards teenage women every day with pictures of skinny models, providing an unrealistic body image that young girls feel that they must imitate in order to feel accepted into society. These advertisements usually affect middle to upper class intelligent women. Competitive athletes are also at risk of developing anorexia nervosa disorder because they may feel the need to achieve perfection and be better than everyone else in everything that they do.

Why does someone develop an Eating Disorder?

There is never one single cause for anorexia nervosa. There are many factors that contribute to the development of this disorder, including biological, societal, individual, and family factors. Studies have shown that people who have developed anorexia nervosa had previously suffered with anxiety, which would possibly contribute to the obsessive-compulsive ritual habits that are seen in most anorexia nervosa cases. Society is the major influence on people with this disorder, because it constantly surrounds young women with images of those who are unrealistically thin and beautiful. The media has an image of perfection that young women think they must achieve. Another reason that a person might develop anorexia nervosa is because they think they lack an identity, and not eating is a way to transform him or her into something beautiful. Another factor is the social dynamics of a person’s family: whether it be an overprotective family, a perfect family, or a chaotic family, a person may feel that they need to live up to their families standards of themselves.[1] In an article by Marlene Boskind-Lodahl, she describes characteristics of anorexia, “A person with anorexia nervosa is attempting to control their physical appearance and demonstrates disproportionate concern with pleasing others. They rely on others to validate their sense of self-worth, desiring self-validation from a man and possess an inordinate fear of a man’s power to reject them.”[2]

Pamela White Hadas’ Expression of Anorexia in the Poem
In her poem, Pamela uses the voice of a teenager who exhibits many signs of a woman with anorexia nervosa. It is unknown if Hadas truly suffered from anorexia nervosa when she wrote this poem, or if she simply wrote this poem in the perspective of a girl with anorexia nervosas disorder. In the poem, her character refuses to eat to make her feel in control and strong. She says, “No thank you” and “Make it disappear” about the plate of brownies. She has the distorted image an anorexic girl would have of herself when she says, “I confess I was fat – gross. Gross belly, gross ass, no bones showing at all.” She reveals her fear of gaining weight when she describes writing as “slow, but like picking a bone, satisfying, and it doesn’t make you fat.” She shows obsession with maintaining an unhealthy body weight when she interrupts herself in the poem, “do bones have calories?” And, “is lip-skin fattening?” She shows signs of bulimia when she talks about binging and purging, “He’s worse in my gut where his stamped foot means binge and puke.” She displays her habit of excessive exercise when she rocks her hunger to sleep “like a mother by doing sit-ups.” The poem shows signs of depression where she references wanting to disappear so that she can feel no pain.

Feminist Aspect of Anorexia
As seen in Pamela White Hadas’ poem, a person with anorexia feels in control when they fast. However, Marlene Boskind-Lodahl discusses another psychological explanation behind the origins of anorexia in her book. She says that a woman with anorexia carries an unconscious hatred of her mother and femininity. To them, eating food is “oral impregnation,” which makes them feel “fat, dirty, and pregnant.” She also states that amenorrhea, the interruption of a woman’s menstrual cycle, which is a side effect of anorexia, is evidence that a woman is rejecting her femininity. This aspect of anorexia nervosa is clearly evident in Hadas’ poem. She reveals hatred for her mother and her mother’s weight, “Who needs a mother – a food machine.” She calls her mother a “fat cow,” and describes her mother’s body with disgust, “Maybe he likes a person to have boobs like shivery jello. Does he want to disappear between thighs like tapioca?” Hadas shows the importance of the relationship between her mother and her eating disorder by using the word “mother” as one of the eight repeated words in the sestina.[2]

Anorexia Healing Narratives
There seem to be more fictional anorexia stories than there is fiction. However, fiction or nonfiction, most anorexia nervosa narratives have an ending that reveals the person suffering overcome their anorexia nervosa disorder. When discussing specific nonfiction anorexia healing narratives, Katherine Oldis says, “Of even greater importance is that they show adolescents that the debilitating dysfunction of anorexia can be overcome.”[5] These are motivation to people that suffer with anorexia presently. Pamela White Hadas’ poem, for example, shows that anorexia nervosa comes in many different forms of healing narratives.