Voice Critique

Eating Disorder Hope is a blog concerning the health of girls and women, particularly their weight. It is written by Jacquelyn Ekern, the founder of Eating Disorder Hope website. Eating Disorder Hope seeks to help girls and women with eating disorders to recover and to adopt healthy eating habits. It encourages eating-disorder victims to seek help and promotes eating-disorder survivors to guide them and to share stories with them. It explains to family and friends of eating-disorder victims how they can help them, such as how to listen to them and how to approach them about the disorder. It also advertises ways that other people can help victims with eating disorders, such as attending fundraising events like benefit concerts and fashion shows.

In Eating Disorder Hope, not only does Ekern seek to help girls and women who have eating disorders, she also seeks to prevent girls and women from getting them. She discusses the causes for eating disorders and their effects on girls and women’s thoughts and behaviors. She blames society’s pressure to be thin for the increasing eating disorder amongst girls and women. She exclaims that girls and women who have eating disorders are misunderstood by society because society blames them for having the disorder when in fact it is society’s fault for putting pressure on them to look a certain way. Due to this misunderstanding, eating-disorder victims lack help and support from society. In Fight Back Against Eating Disorders, Ekern points out that

“shame, stigma, and lack of awareness lead to eating disorders being largely misunderstood.”

For this reason, she felt the need to create the Eating Disorder Hope site to help victims with eating disorders. At times, she is a bit too harsh on society; she completely blames society for the eating disorders amongst girls and women and she accuses society of not being concerned with eating-disorder victims.

Ekern shows a lot of passion for her cause. She has been blogging in Eating Disorder Hope since May 2005 and blogs about once a month. Most of her blog posts are of resources for eating-disorder victims, their family and friends, and potential helpers. She offers resources to give them access to help and knowledge about the disorder, such as websites for information and places for treatment. She also promotes and advertises resources where other people can help eating-disorders victims, such as applying for a job that specializes in treating victims with eating disorders. Ekern shows a great deal of sympathy and compassion for eating-disorder victims, particularly because she had an eating disorder herself. In Hungry For Hope - Restoring Identity: 2009 Remuda Ranch Christian Conference on Eating Disorders, she related herself to other victims of eating disorders, explaining that

“[t]heir identity can feel lost in calories, numbers on the scale and habitual behaviors.”

Through her use of language such as this, she attempts to gain her readers’ sympathy and compassion for eating-disorder victims, which can be a bit overwhelming at times.

Ekern’s goal in Eating Disorder Hope is to gain support for victims with eating disorders. Because she mainly posts resources, her use of language tends to be simple and straightforward and she makes her points obvious. Her posts are really more like announcements rather than typical blog posts. Her post titles are usually the announcements (such as programs and events that are going on) and then her actual posts usually contain descriptions of the announcements (such as when and where the programs and events are being held). She sometimes uses banners as links to her resources. Through her advertisements of programs, events, etc. on her blog, Ekern has maintained enthusiastically supportive of eating-disorder victims by promoting eating disorder awareness for almost four years.