Published June 18, 2005
The newly released results from Terri Schiavo's autopsy reveal the poignant realities that she was blind, that she was unable to perceive her surroundings, including when her feeding tube was removed, and that her 'smiles' were actually involuntary muscle movements. In the wake of these findings, both sides of the debate are busily commenting, backtracking, or claiming victory. But what neither side has adequately touched on is the same topic that was sorely missing from public discourse as it was happening: the why of it all. Why was Terri Schiavo in a coma in the first place? She was in a coma because she had an eating disorder that far too many times ultimately creates behavior that pushes the limits of what a body can withstand. Tragically, Schiavo pushed her body too far.
That the public discourse about Terri was not about the intrapsychic and sociopolitical implications of eating disorders is a huge disservice to the memory of her and another shovel in the deep pit of shame and secrecy for all those who struggle with them. An exploration of the mechanisms and institutions complicit in this issue in the mainstream was nowhere to be found. One institution, for example, is the women's magazine industry. Women's magazines purport to help women as they tell us to be afraid of and deeply ashamed about wrinkles and cellulite on the one hand, while they hand over our fear and our checkbooks to the advertisers with the other, wishing for a third hand to take in their ad revenues. Our fear and self-loathing and what we buy to mask them are the life bread of these magazines, as they are for many industries. Fully exploring this, and the causes and implications of eating disorders is far too broad for this article, but it certainly should not be too broad for public discourse because women (and men) like Terri Schiavo and Karen Carpenter and countless others all over the US are at this very moment literally dying to be thin.
In my years as a therapist and many more years as a friend, there is hardly a woman I've encountered who doesn't wrestle with this issue in one form or another. Whether you know it or not, someone you know and may very well love is wrestling with it too, whether she's thin or a person of size, gorgeous or not, it doesn't matter because it's an issue of not being enough, not having enough, of fitting in, literally and figuratively. And that transcends reality and is an issue that crosses all lines: rich, poor, Republican, Green, brown, white. It's a societal and media-perpetuated phenomenon that is born from the shared survival instinct hard-wired in us - the innate urge not to be rejected by the group because there is survival in numbers.
Just like the color-coded terror alerts, our need to survive, which often manifests as fear, is capitalized on in the form of blatant fearmongering that is as enormously profitable for the cosmetics and fashion industries, as it is for the health industry and the war industry (to name but a few). Our need to belong, to survive, isn't going anywhere and the powers that be know this all too well. It bears saying that there is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, or primping, or having nice clothes. It's when your inherent sense of worthiness is based on this and it becomes all-consuming and destructive that it's a problem because whatever you do you can never, ever be enough. There is always, in your mind, going to be someone thinner or with nicer clothes or more toys.
Terri Schiavo must surely have had an angst-ridden life, despite how she might've appeared outwardly at times, or she wouldn't have starved herself to death. To sweep that reality under the rug is to sweep Terri, the woman, the human, under the rug amidst front page headlines. We had a chance to take a hard, meaningful, compassionate look at the issue that not only would've been unavoidably steeped in pathos, but could've been an opportunity for us as a country to come together to speak the unspoken, to create one of those "change moments" that is imbued in relief and hope. But we didn't.
Terri's very human life and the lesson it had to offer so many people was used to hammer a wedge issue in more deeply. The co-opting of the moment was almost as tragic as the moment itself, and it proved to be one of the most blatantly self-serving bits of pseudo-righteous, inappropriate grandstanding in recent memory. Wild horses and warning after warning that a 9.11-type tragedy potentially killing thousands was in the works could not wrench George Bush from his ranch in Crawford. That he flew back to Washington during a sacrosanct vacation on symbolic Palm Sunday to sign into law a bill passed in an emergency session that would allow Schiavo's case to be heard by a federal judge speaks volumes. The irony of the radical right feigning concern (or even truly being concerned) about this human being while sitting silent in the face of so many other human tragedies that don't promote their agenda is as evident as it is sickening.
As Terri's family was in turmoil, the wedge folks - the radical right - mallets in hand, wielded their convoluted logic and their confabulations and their spittle, so as to obfuscate any reasoning or rational discourse about the human issues of her situation, leaving us with nothing but fear and despair. They said it was about the sanctity of life, which it very much was but in a different way than they meant, a way that was deeply personal to Terri and that was ironically lost amidst the 'moralizing' and the grandstanding.
The same co-opting and grandstanding and blatant distortions and illogic were and are put forth about the invasion and occupation of Iraq (quick, man the duct tape; no evidence is evidence; war is peace; the occupation is going well), the privatization of Social Security (gambling our retirement money is security), the dismantling of environmental laws (loosening pollution safeguards equals clear skies), taxes (disproportionately taxing the poor and exempting the rich helps bridge the gap between rich and poor) and on and on and on ad infinitum, it seems. Illogic is logic, they say. And now the standard, knee jerk reaction of the radical right is to respond to calls for a rational discussion with an accusation of treason, rather than an invitation to the table.
But you and I have our own tables. We have kitchen tables and picnic tables and community tables. Beyond that, we have the Web and we have the streets and we have our minds. Just as many librarians have refused to invade the privacy of their patrons in the face of the hastily shaped Patriot Act, and as states such as California are passing tougher environmental standards as the Bush administration busily erodes them, and as individuals by the millions have taken to the streets to let the Bush administration know we don't buy into its rhetoric and illogic about the war in Iraq, you and I can once again refuse to buy into the convoluted rhetoric and divisive wedge issue that the Bush administration and the radical right are hoping will keep us in a myopic frenzy.
We can take the focus back from the radical right and start a dialog about the very human issue that was all but ignored in Schiavo's case - the eating disorder that led to her death, a disorder that silently permeates every stratum of our society and torments the lives of so many. And as we can with the other wedge issues endlessly put forth by the Bush administration in an attempt to encourage us to divide and divide and divide into powerless, reactionary fragments of our former collective, cohesive selves, we can put aside our shame and our judgment and our fear and call to our table our friends, our loved ones, and our neighbors near and far. Then we talk. But more importantly, we listen. That's the best we can do for ourselves and our world, and it's the best we can do to truly honor Terri Schiavo and the sanctity of her life.
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