ABSTRACT
To varying degrees I engaged in bulimic behaviors from ages 15 to 24 (1986–95). In my first year of graduate school (1993), I began drafting “A Secret Life in a Culture of Thinness: Reflections on Body, Food, and Bulimia.” That work proved instrumental in writing my way into and through bulimic behaviors; its composition and revision corresponded with my disengagement from bulimia. Ten years later, my marriage unraveled, and I experienced this as a compelling invitation to return to bulimic practices. I did not and composed “Body and Bulimia Revisited: Reflections on ‘A Secret Life.’” I am 49 as of this writing, 25 years (half my life) past my most recent binge-purge episode. This chapter explores my relationships, now at middle-age, with body and bulimia as well as with activist teaching and research.
