Beginning of Essay
Christmas is a time of joy, but the Christmas of 1988 was one of revelation for me. My best friend of 15 years unveiled her deepest, darkest, most private secret; she was bulimic. I was unfamiliar with the disorder at the time, but when she told me of her 7 yea ....

Middle of Essay
.... As I tried to rationalize my friend's behavior, I decided that social acceptability had to have played a large part in her illness. I also took into account that her mother had passed away about 7 years before she broke her news to me, and she had also given up her crown as Miss Iowa, so depression could have been a factor as well. Another aspect of eating disorders that I discovered is a lack of self-esteem, something I never imagined. The first source I found to dispute the sexual repression hypothesis was in Psychology Today. Dr. Sarah Leibowitz theorized that sexual maturity is a consequence of the disorder, not the raison ....