How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia

How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia

by Kelsey Osgood
How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia

How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia

by Kelsey Osgood

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Overview

“Eloquent . . . An incredibly realistic portrayal of anorexia.” —The New Yorker

She devoured their memoirs and magazine articles, committing the most salacious details to memory to learn what it would take to be the very best anorexic. When she was hospitalized at fifteen, she found herself in an existential wormhole: How can one suffer from something one has actively sought out?

With attuned storytelling and unflinching introspection, Kelsey Osgood unpacks the modern myths of anorexia as she chronicles her own rehabilitation. How to Disappear Completely is a brave, candid and emotionally wrenching memoir that explores the physical, internal, and social ramifications of eating disorders.

“Osgood vividly portrays the creepy phenomenon of the ‘pro-ana’ movement and the claustrophobic, self-involved, achingly lonely world in which young women compete to be ‘perfect’ anorexics. . . . imbued with pathos and tenderness.” —Publishers Weekly

“What sets Kelsey Osgood’s memoir apart from the existing literature on anorexia is the author’s commitment to stripping the glamour and romance from the illness . . . Intelligent, moving, beautifully written, Osgood has written a paean to wellness, and taken a forthright look at everything that anorexia, ‘bastard child of vanity and self-loathing,’ took from her life.” —Molly McCloskey, author of Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781468308464
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date: 08/16/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 269
Sales rank: 587,026
File size: 1 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

About The Author
Kelsey Osgood is a Brooklyn-based writer. She has contributed to The New Yorker's Culture Desk blog, Salon, New York, and Gothamist, among others. She is a graduate of Columbia University and Goucher's College's MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. How to Disappear Completely is her first book.

Table of Contents

Prologue 13

Chapter 1 The Beginning 17

Chapter 2 A Communicable Disease 25

Chapter 3 The Protagonist 39

Chapter 4 Idol Worship 53

Chapter 5 The Anorexia Spectrum 77

Chapter 6 Blurry Lines 105

Chapter 7 Titillation 131

Chapter 8 Plateau/Climax 147

Chapter 9 Hospitals 173

Chapter 10 Distances from Death 199

Chapter 11 Attempting Narrative 211

Chapter 12 The End 231

Acknowledgments 259

Selected Bibliography 263

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"All addictions are alike, but not anorexia. The looking glass malady covertly twists even the language of healing to its own ends. In this brilliant book, Kelsey Osgood breaks this demon's code." —Susannah Lessard, former New Yorker staff writer and author of The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

“The clear-eyed rigor of How to Disappear Completely is a refreshing corrective to hazy clichés of genius and madness and romance and rebellion that cloud discussions of art and mental illness both.”
New York Magazine
 
“An incredibly realistic portrayal of anorexia. [Osgood is] a precise, smart, and beautiful writer.”
—NewYorker.com
 
“Osgood’s candor and humor carry the narrative; the reader nods and laughs even while shuddering. She demarcates myths about anorexia while illuminating truths about what it’s like to be hospitalized and in treatment…this is a book for every Millennial.”—Bustle.com
 
“[Osgood] showcases a world that debunks so many of the commonly held but misguided beliefs surrounding the disorder, and also how the same forces that are meant to support anorexics are often the ones that amplify its effects.”—Bookslut
 
 “How To Disappear Completely changes the conversation when it comes to eating disorders…Osgood paints an illuminating and incredibly honest picture of the struggle so many young women face, and it's eye-opening.”—Refinery 29
 
“A provocative new take on anorexia and how we approach the illness socially.”—Huffington Post
 
“Osgood vividly portrays the creepy phenomenon of the “pro-ana” movement and the claustrophobic, self-involved, achingly lonely world in which young women compete to be “perfect” anorexics.…the novel is imbued with pathos and tenderness.”Publishers Weekly
 
"How To Disappear Completely is a wholly original and thought-provoking meditation—part-memoir, part sustained essay—on the coded culture of anorexia, what it purports to mean, and what it really signifies. I didn't think I wanted to read another word about eating disorders, but Kelsey Osgood made me reassess the way I consider this illness, its genesis, and the suffering that underlies it."
—Daphne Merkin, author of Enchantment and Dreaming of Hitler
 
 
“Kelsey Osgood has written a consequential book about an important subject: the ways in which the stories anorectics tell themselves and others about the disease can be as dangerous to them as their own behavior . . . Carefully considered and delivered in finely wrought prose, it's a book that should find a large audience.”
—Caitlin Flanagan, author of Girl Land and To Hell with All That
 
"Clear-eyed, compassionate, and courageous, How To Disappear Completely deepened my understanding of anorexia and those who suffer from it. Kelsey Osgood is a terrific writer."
—Rosie Schaap, author of Drinking With Men
 
"All addictions are alike, but not anorexia. The looking glass malady covertly twists even the language of healing to its own ends. In this brilliant book, Kelsey Osgood breaks this demon's code. "
––Suzannah Lessard, former New Yorker staff writer and author of The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family
 
"In How To Disappear Completely, Kelsey Osgood achieves a paradox: she writes beautifully about anorexia, without beautifying or poeticizing an affliction that is anything but. Instead, her gripping story and smart analysis lay anorexia bare for what it is—greedy, cunning, and wasteful, its logic tedious, its damage too often permanent. This is important reading for parents of teenagers, and friends and loved ones of anorectics, and an education for anyone who’s felt the troubling allure of the waif archetype."
—Katherine Sharpe, author of Coming of Age on Zoloft
 
"Why do countless young women (and not so young women, and some men, too) starve themselves to the brink of death? Do not read Kelsey Osgood's uncompromising memoir of her own anorexia unless you really want to know the truth—unvarnished by moral, therapeutic, or redemptive pieties—about this epidemic. How to Disappear Completely gives new meaning to gutsiness."
—Judith Thurman, Staff Writer at The New Yorker, and prize-winning author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller and Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
 
"What sets Kelsey Osgood’s memoir apart from the existing literature on anorexia is the author’s commitment to stripping the glamour and romance from the illness. Yes, Osgood suffered from anorexia, but she refuses here to play the game of ‘eating-disorders porn’, focusing instead on how we must learn better ways to discuss anorexia in order to ‘undermine its currency’, to save ourselves and our loved ones from the nightmare that it is. Intelligent, moving, beautifully written, Osgood has written a paean to wellness, and taken a forthright look at everything that anorexia, ‘bastard child of vanity and self-loathing’, took from her life."—Molly McCloskey, author of Circles Around the Sun

Interviews

A Conversation with Kelsey Osgood, Author of How to Disappear Completely

What made you decide to write How to Disappear Completely?

When I was in my early teen years, I became fascinated with anorexia. It seemed like something that afflicted special people, and it had glamorous consequences: the sufferer became thin (something every teenage girl wants) and took on a tragic, mysterious aura. It seemed like the perfect solution to what I thought were problems in my life (that I was boring, not special and untalented.) Over the next twelve years, during which I struggled with the disorder, I came to realize that there was something strange—even counterproductive—about all of the anorexia-related TV shows, magazine articles, and memoirs I encountered. All of this stuff was supposed to increase awareness, to deter young women from developing eating disorders, but for my compatriots and me, even the direst medical consequences—the most terrifying images—didn't look like the unwanted effects of our unhealthy habits. They looked like "success." Later in life, when I started to write, I found myself wanting to explore this phenomenon—how could something so shocking be so seductive? And I also asked myself if it was possible to tell one's story—my story—without unintentionally glamorizing an issue that I felt must not be glamorized, no matter what.

What distinguishes How to Disappear Completely from other anorexia memoirs?

For one thing, I tried to avoid anything overtly prescriptive. In the past, a majority of books on the subject would outline the protagonist's diet and exercise routine—not to mention his or her (though mostly her) lowest weight. I know from personal experience—and from research—that for people who are already ill, or who would like to be, this information is a motivational tool. It serves as the direct inspiration for their own weight loss regimens. So the simplest thing I could do was to refuse to disclose those facts about myself. I suppose that I was also trying to unpack some of our most cherished beliefs—the idea, for example, that suffering makes a person stronger, or that mental illness and genius are inextricably intertwined, or that coming close to death brings with it a sense of spiritual enlightenment. And by virtue of timing, I was also able to write at length about the way that eating disorders manifest themselves online, in communities known as pro-ana and pro-mia.

You have said that you consider yourself to be a "recovered" anorexic. Some schools of thought might say that recovery from an eating disorder is not possible. What are you feelings on recovery versus management?

This idea of "always recovering" is, like many tropes in psychology, a theory, rather than an evidence-based idea that society has adopted as fact. It's a cornerstone of the 12-step tradition, and seems to work well in that context, but I worry that because eating disorders are so tightly wrapped up with identity, forever labeling someone as an anorexic or bulimic will either a) contribute to the allure of the problem, and make the person tempted to return to it or b) forever cast the person as a victim. A person who thinks that her eating disorder is always there, lying dormant, is a person who lacks agency, and who may very well remain passive in the face of a recurrence. Many people who work in addiction recovery would argue that "relapse is part of recovery"—another 12-step idea—is a destructive belief. I don't think we really know if "complete" recovery is possible, and if that's case, then the decision is ultimately up to us. So why not decide that it is doable? I find that much more empowering.

What do you hope is the takeaway from your book?

This is definitely the most daunting question on the list! I'm expected to say that I hope young people who are flirting with disordered eating will see the error of their ways, and of course I do hope that, but frankly, I don't know what it feels like to be a young person today, so I don't have a great sense of what they're up against. When I was young(er), the Internet was still in its infancy, so there was still some premium placed on private life. There wasn't this underlying idea that getting attention—in whatever form that may come—was unequivocally good in and of itself. I imagine that in 2013, it must be harder to internalize the idea that you are both very special and normal. In another vein, I want people to know that whatever the origin of their problems, they deserve to recover. At various points in my life, I felt very strongly that because I had actively nurtured my eating disorder, the only poetically just outcome would be my own death. I know now that I was not to blame for my illnesses, and I want readers of my book to feel that way, too.

Who have you discovered lately?

I recently finished a piece about Maeve Brennan, a writer for The New Yorker who had her heyday in the mid-twentieth century. She came from a family very active in the Irish Rebellion, and she moved to New York to be a fashion copywriter for Bazaar before she was hired by William Shawn. She was famously witty and stylish, and she wrote some charming, incredibly detailed Talk of the Town pieces. But her most impressive work is her short fiction, most of which takes place in her homeland. "The Springs of Affection," a short story about a bitter Wexford County denizen surveying the objects she inherited after her brother died, was so layered and controlledthat it left me feeling suspended in time. I also read Bambi, by Felix Salten, which is far more devastating than the Disney version. (Don't say I didn't warn you.) Also Clifford Chase's Winkie, which was thrillingly bizarre, and the work of George W. S. Trow, which I didn't really discover "lately," but which I like to mention anytime I'm given the opportunity.

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