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After Schiavo, a new life for our daughters.  So now our culture moves forward to focus on the court-enforced starvation death of Terri Schiavo, blaming this judge and that judge for not "erring on the side of life," mimicking Tom DeLay's sardonic threat that "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," praising politicians with a personal history of death enforcement as they mouth a call for Americans to "build a culture of life" and continuing to connect artificial dots around abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, assisted suicide, rights for persons with disabilities and chronic illnesses, living wills, and "quality of life" assessments. Lost in all of this bluster is the primal issue of our culture's twisted image of women.

I am not the first to see the irony in Terri's death by starvation and the eating disorder that led to her cardiac arrest and consequent brain damage.[1] In this she has joined other celebrity anorexics like the talented songstress Karen Carpenter, who died of heart failure in 1983 at the age of 32, the result of continuous serious dieting (water, laxatives, thyroid pills, etc.) that at one point brought her down to a mere 80 pounds. Terri joins other famous bulimics like the late Princess Diana and Jane Fonda, who in 2001 confessed to a 25-year battle with anorexia and bulimia ("For 25 years I could never put a forkful in my mouth without feeling scared," she said ); and also the svelte actress Uma Thurman who has struggled with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which has her perceiving herself as fat.[2] There are many others. I still find it significant that even Jack Kevorkian would not have put Terri Schiavo to death.[3]

The blame doesn't rest solely with bulimia, anorexia nervosa, or BDD. These are diseases of culture. We can't blame the thin runway model for this. She has the job not because the industry values skinny girls—it's a business decision based on overhead. Thin models use up less cloth. Nor should the blame be handed over to the motion picture industry, the television industry, or even the food industries. That would be like blaming beer and whiskey makers for our soaring alcoholism rates. It's more base that this.

Two weeks ago, in an interview on the Egyptian version of NBC's Today, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. was asked about the appointment of 31-year-old Egyptian-American Dina Powell as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. Card said this about her:

Of course, White House Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten also said, "You can see people really taken by surprise when this young, attractive, really well-spoken person in both English and Arabic makes a presentation on behalf of the president. That sends a really strong message." And so the message is that Dina Powell was nominated because she is basically a good looking chick. And that was enough to send Dads and Daughters over the edge with letters urging the White House to "Value Achievement Over Looks in Female Officials."[4]

All cultural battles are fought uphill. If we are going to make any change in the rates of eating disorders among our girls and women, we ought to look first to what we most value for our daughters. I am gratified that two NGO organizations are now affirming a Christian model for social reconstruction. Recently the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockville, IL, and the Utah-based Sutherland Institute jointly published The Natural Family: A Manifesto[5] which traces the breakup of the "natural family" to the "challenge of industrialism and the assault of new, family-denying ideas" and offers a bold prospectus enabling us to:

Until we have the strength to affirm God's own vision for men and women, we will never stop looking at women and girls as objects of sexual desire, if not for us then for other men. Fathers and brothers, I remind you that the girls in your family may one day be mothers, too, and will therefore have the challenge of nurturing children of the future. I remind you that you want other men to look upon them as people of value, well beyond their physical beauty; that you want men not to look at them with prurient interest. We ourselves must be charged with the discipline to honor our sisters and our daughters with the best opportunities and to labor toward protecting them from a culture that values only their sex.

1.  The best statement, I think, is found in Zeynep Toufe's blog and essay at Common Dreams News Center, April 1, 2005.
2.  BBC News, February 21, 2001.
3.  The Blade, March 25, 2005. At least according to Dr. Stanley Levy, a friend, supporter, and Kevorkian's own physician.
4.  Alert at Dads and Daughters (dadsanddaughters.org). Here you also have access to the New York Times article that got this going.
5.  "The Natural Family: A Manifesto" is available from the Howard Center as a PDF file. Registration is required.