Wagga businesswoman Marlo Olsen has battled anorexia nervosa and understands how social media can influence the way we think about eating disorders. She sat down with Jody Lindbeck to share her thoughts on this complicated mental illness.
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Marlo, you run your own business here in Wagga, tell me about that.
Honeycomb Ink came from wanting to offer a marketing service to small businesses, who typically can’t get into those services because they’re priced way out of their league, so I wanted to offer something that was there for small, medium and large businesses.
Also, when I started it, just over two years ago, there was a real void in the market here for those social media and digital marketing services, so I thought that was a good place to insert myself
Do we underestimate the power of social media? Is it still growing?
I think when you look around and everyone’s on their phones, nine out of 10 people are on social media. It’s where everyone’s going for information now.
I think most people would check their social media a couple of times a day, so using that as a marketing method, is still very important. People underestimate the impact it can have.
You’re also a strong advocate for people battling with eating disorders, and you’ve had some experiences of your own there.
I dealt with anorexia for six or seven years from late high school through to very recently – only in the last year or so. I think falling pregnant has been a huge reason for me to really push myself to recovery fully.
The further I go on this journey through recovery, the more I come across more people – or hear stories of people going through it – and it just breaks my heart because it’s such an insidious thing, and it’s only going to get worse with the way the culture is.
I know I just spoke about how good social media is, but the other side of social media is that it really is just fueling the fire for these things to come up in young women, and young men as well.
Young girls are going on the internet and they’re watching film clips. They are so young and they’re seeing these idealised bodies that are not real. They’re photoshopped or they’re edited, or the women have surgery or they're starving themselves to look that way. They’re not real at all.
What’s the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were first struggling with anorexia?
I think it’s just to try embrace things about myself. There was nothing wrong with my body and to try to just learn – and it’s hard when you don’t have the maturity – to embrace the things you don’t like rather than trying to change them. I had a lot of people around me who were saying ‘you’re beautiful’, ‘everything is fine’ ‘why is this happening’.
And there were a lot of reasons why my self-harm, I guess, manifested into an eating disorder. There were traumas and things like that behind it. Maybe if I had been really pushed to think in a different way about the things I didn’t like about myself, rather than being in one mind about ‘this is wrong and I have to get rid of those things’ about my body?
Are we taking it seriously enough?
I don’t think so. I don’t think there are enough resources for mental health in general. There are definitely not enough resources for eating disorders, and I think it’s because people don’t understand them. People think ‘it’s a vanity thing’, ‘it’s a diet’. I had people say to me, ‘why can’t you just eat’ ‘you’re just dieting’. My response was always ‘you don’t know how badly I want, to but I’m afraid of what that means’.
So I think dealing with the root cause – which is what we see as ideal and perfect to do with body image – that’s where it has to start. And educating young women on diversity, and that health can be at every size.
I think that message of diversity and health at every size and differences are OK, that’s where the focus needs to be, where the education needs to be.
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How did you recognise that you needed help?
People were pointing out to me that I’d lost a lot of weight. My first downhill plummet was very quick, and I think I was having a conversation with my mum and she said to me something like ‘should we get some bread or some pasta’ or something like that and they were all fear foods for me at the time and I just broke down.
I was saying to her ‘I’m scared of those foods, I’m scared to eat these things’, and as I was saying it I was like ‘wow there’s a problem here, these are foods that I love to eat, that I haven’t eaten for 18 months and I’m now scared that something is going to happen to me if I have these because the way my body is now’.
Ironically, the smaller I got, the worse my body image got, which is always the case. There is always a goal weight for someone with an eating disorder, that’s always part of it. You never get there. I always told myself ‘I will commit to recovery once I get to XYZ, but you never get there’.
You’re expecting a baby boy. What do you want him to understand about eating disorders?
Firstly, I want to teach him to respect women and to respect the differences that come in women and not to take what he sees in the media and on TV as gospel.
Also, the body image thing is now seeping in male culture, with the body building competitions and all these kinds of things, and I want to tell him ‘health at every size’ for men as well.
Whatever size you are, whether you lose your hair or you keep your hair, tall or short or whatever, embrace who you are and what you look like. You’re fine the way you are.
If you, or anyone you know is experiencing an eating disorder or body image concerns, you can call the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline on 1800 33 4673 (ED HOPE) or email support@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au.