Dying to be thin is society’s biggest shame

DINITROPHENOL, according to government scientists, is “an industrial drug” which can be “extremely dangerous to human health”, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

It’s found in pesticides, herbicides, antiseptics, sulphur dyes and wood preservatives. And more recently, in the body of a dead 21-year-old. Not because she was suicidal, but because she wanted to be thin.

Eloise Parry sent a text to her university tutor while she was in A&E, apologising for her impending death: “I’m so scared. I’m so sorry for being so stupid.” She knew she was going to die, because her symptoms hours before her death were consistent with fatal overdose of DNP; she had researched the drug prior to using it, and decided that it was probably not as dangerous as she had been warned. She was wrong. She died because she wanted to be thin.

The immediate response to this small, sharp tragedy has been to focus on the availability of such substances online. But the internet — now the digital street corner — sells all kinds of crap that people buy and swallow, primarily for the purpose of changing the way they feel. It would be a gross hypocrisy to single out any individual substance for censure when (a) our drugs laws are archaic, ignorant and dangerous and (b) the drug that harms and kills us in our hundreds of thousands is the one on which our culture is built and our society lubricated. You know, the legal liquid one.

No, the awful thing about a 21-year-old taking a drug like DNP is not that DNP exists and is for sale on the internet, but that a 21 year old would seek out a drug because she wants to be thin. Of course dangerous chemicals should not be for sale on the internet — were all drugs legal, they could be safely sourced, safety tested, and taxed (see ‘legal liquid one’ above) and not cut with deadly poisons about which online punters know nothing, and online vendors care nothing. The unambiguously deadly ones like DNP could be restricted to their original purpose — being part of the chemical industry.

That a young woman made what appeared to be an informed choice about ingesting a known poison because she wanted to be thin says as much about her surrounding culture as it does her own decision making process. Both are deeply flawed. The message to women — all women, but it is the younger ones who are most susceptible — is being fat equals social death. That being thin is to die for. In the case of this 21-year-old woman, the message had clearly become a foghorn, deafening out logic, intellect, self care and self love.

Millions of young women are fed all kinds of nothing-tastes-as-good-as-skinny-feels messages all day long — from adverts, the media and from each other. It’s a lie. A big fat bloated toxic lie, for which, as a society, we should be ashamed. Because nothing feels as good as being alive, and loving the gorgeous meat wardrobe in which each one of us lives, in all its glorious non-airbrushed reality.