Culture

Author: Lesley Fairfield, Publisher: Walker Books, (3/5).

This is a quick read, a graphic novel about a teenage girl’s battle with the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It’s a story of how a young woman spirals from a picture of good health to the depths of depression caused by these two diseases. The author gives a clear picture of Anna and her journey to regain her life and how she battles her disorders, offering a very intimate and personal view of the motivations and thought processes that go hand in hand with this disease. She provides a helpful insight for people who are studying eating disorders, and perhaps most importantly, we read a moving account of a person, not just a disease.
 

This may not be the book for Joe (or Joanne) Average – I don’t think it will appeal to a broad cross-section of society. However, it would be extremely useful for education students planning to work in high schools. Fairfield’s book comes across as a close, personal account of one woman’s successful battle against her demons. It will appeal to people who are involved in outreach, and perhaps should be compulsory reading for any girl under the age of seventeen. As the next season of NZ’s Next Top Model gets set to kick off, we may see the real power of Fairfield’s book. What most people take to be a show about young girls trying to fill their ambitions of modelling in reality is no more than a bunch of anorexic teenagers parading their faults on prime-time television in front of a voyeuristic audience hoping to view the utmost in shame, humiliation and conflict.

 
Tyranny is a quick read, not for light relief or entertainment, but for insight into a group of diseases that our modern “entertainment” and “fashion” industries seem hell-bent on either perpetuating or promoting. Hats off to Fairfield for the way she deals with and presents her story.