Season 2, Episode 9 - Mirror in the Bathroom

Original Airdate - November 17th, 2002

Content Warning - disordered eating

Toby Isaacs wants more recognition. His computer programming team got third in a huge competition and he gets only polite applause. Sean Cameron’s wrestling team success gets a truly silly amount of cheers. Toby decides the if he wants to get noticed, he needs to make some changes. Goodbye Toby the nerd, hello Toby the jock. He’s joining the wrestling team.

JT thinks this is a terrible idea. Toby isn’t exactly swole. But Toby thinks he’ll get fitter as the season goes. Unfortunately, the team only has one slot for each weight class. Toby weighs in and he’s competing for his slot with Sean. That’s never going to work.

Toby and JT do some research on wrestling technique and find information about making weight. Mr. Simpson warns them that these methods are dangerous, so Toby tries to do it safely. JT becomes his trainer and he devotes all of the time he can to calisthenics and cardio. Unfortunately, he’s not seeing big results.

But when Toby and JT stop at a convenience store, and Toby sees some laxatives, he gets an idea. After a secret night flushing his system, Toby weighs in in the lower weight class. He’s woozy, but not too woozy to win the match and make the team. Coach Armstrong warns him that anyone caught making weight will be cut, but Toby denies it. Armstrong is not exactly empathetic when he says this, and I think he should work on that!

Ashley has been watching Toby’s plan from afar with skepticism. But she starts paying more attention after Toby makes the team. She offers him his favorite chocolate muffin and he says he’s not hungry, just like he did yesterday and the day before. She asks him about it, and Toby snaps at her. He’s in a foul mood.

He picks up his cool team windbreaker and shows off for Kendra. He’s not really acting like himself anymore, instead being a caricature of a cool jock. Kendra is not quite amused and JT is judgmental. Toby yells at JT too.

At lunch, Ashley confronts Toby about how little he’s eating, including a threat to tell their parents, and Toby orders a huge meal to prove her wrong. He goes to the bathroom to throw up his meal, and JT walks in. JT is suspicious but Toby denies anything is wrong.

Ashley goes to JT. She thinks Toby may have an eating disorder. JT can’t believe that. Toby is a boy, and that’s girl stuff! But Ashley educates him. In Media Immersion, Toby can’t even focus on his quiz. And this is his best class! JT confronts him before the meet. He tries to tell Toby not to compete, but Toby ignores him. He can’t focus at all during the match and passes out.

JT comforts Toby back at his house. Toby has been cut from the team and thinks he’s back to being invisible, but JT says that’s not true. Everyone is actually really worried about him, because people like him! People including Kendra Mason. How sweet!

Meanwhile, Terri has a cool new cell phone and Paige and Hazel are suspicious. She’s had a lot of new stuff lately, and won’t answer their questions about where she got the money. They think she may be stealing and prepare to confront her about it.

But Spinner shows them the truth. Terri is the model in an advertisement for “More Girl,” a plus sized clothing brand, at a bus stop near Degrassi. Everyone is impressed, but Terri is embarrassed. She feels bad about being a plus-sized model, not a “regular” one. Her embarrassment gets worse when a douchebag student named Mohammad makes fun of her for being fat.

Terri tries to cancel on her next shoot, and Paige tries to stop her. Terri is beautiful and has nothing to be ashamed of. But Terri needs a man to convince her. Spinner finds her after school and tells her she’s hot, no matter what size she is. Terri goes through with the shoot and when Mohammad tries to talk shit, yells at him. She made $500 in an afternoon. What can he do?

It could be worse as far as body image stories go!

I have to give big props to Degrassi for understanding something in 2002 that people still struggle to understand today. Eating Disorders do not have a gender. They are more common among women, but are becoming increasingly common in boys and men. And those rates are only based on diagnosis.

Disordered eating is a spectrum and diagnosable eating disorders are the far end. What rises to the level of diagnosable is far past what can be really damaging for someone. And I think a lot of behaviors I would characterize as potentially disordered are becoming really commonplace for men, especially gay men.

Part of the reason this goes under discussed is because of an association of eating disorders with losing weight or not eating. Because Anorexia is the most common eating disorder, we’re all on the look out for folks who are skinny or want to get skinny. And while plenty of those people are boys and men, the increasing scourge of male disordered eating is going in the other direction.

Slight sidebar, until 2013, it was really hard for men to actually get diagnosed with anorexia because loss of menstrual cycle was a symptom in the DSM. Gender essentialism strikes again!

Back on point, let’s talk about muscle dysphoria. Also colloquially called “bigorexia,” this disorder is characterized by an obsession with muscularity and mass. The unique associated behaviors can look like excessive exercise and compulsive supplement use. But muscle dysphoria also brings in a number of the concerning warning signs of more traditionally discussed eating disorders. Obsessive calorie and nutrition tracking, severe omission or restriction of certain foods from a diet, and anxiety around meals.

I’m sure any gay men, and probably some straight men too, recognize these behaviors as exceptionally common amongst them and their friends. It’s no secret that the ideal male body presented in media has gotten more muscular, while also becoming more toned and defined. It is a body that one can only get through very particular nutrition and, in a way people hate addressing, through genetic disposition. That’s and, not or.

And the gay world has been particularly physique obsessed. This started as early as the 50s. Gay men with no access to porn turned to men’s fitness magazines, a field that was burgeoning at the time. But it intensified post-AIDS crisis. A muscular body became of way of showing people you weren’t sick. That image of the muscular gay men, linked to one of our greatest tragedies, has never really gone away.

So we have a subset of men that feels the need to look fit to belong. And a standard of fitness that is increasingly difficult to reach or maintain in a healthy way. The 21st century has also seen gym culture become more prevalent and start younger. The rise of the internet and phone apps has made finding information about macro tracking, and doing that tracking easier as well.

I’m not going to argue that all fitness nutrition and macro tracking is disordered eating. That’s one of the more difficult and insidious aspects of intervening to prevent eating disorders. Behaviors that in one person may be healthy, in another are divergent. Some people simply eat less, some people count their food without becoming obsessive, some people bulk up and eat well without anxiety.

That’s why it’s so important to talk about the underlying aspects of disordered eating - obsessive thoughts, anxiety around body image, social pressures - and learn to recognize them in yourself and others. But when all of that stuff become linked to cultural identity, it can get very tricky to recognize and have a conversation out of concern for a friend.

As a person who has found myself in an obsessive and disordered place with food before, I have determined a lot of steps I need to make to avoid that. I avoid counting and targets. Those are the big things that activate my anxiety around food and bring me to pay too much granular attention to how I am fueling my body.

I’ve also told friends that I don’t like it when people make comments about my body, even positive ones. I will not initiate a conversation with a friend about their body, and when one comes up, I try to avoid ascribing value to bringing a body more in line with the beauty standard. I don’t compliment people for losing weight or putting on muscle. That doesn’t stop other people from doing so around me.

It’s genuinely difficult for me to avoid being a scold when it comes to bringing awareness to the possibility of disordered eating and voicing concern for potential disordered eating in my gay male friends. And a lot of that difficulty comes because we don’t talk about how common and dangerous these behaviors are in our community. If we all were more worried about this very real problem, I wouldn’t have to feel so weird for being worried.