According to English teacher Kristina Gossard, one in three women have disordered eating, along with one in seven men. Additionally, she said, students are most prone to eating disorders during transition periods—like between high school and college—however, the disorders can affect them their entire lives. To this end, Gossard will host Gunn’s first ever National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAW) from Feb. 23 to 27.

Gossard’s battle with her own eating disorder, which was diagnosed when she was 19 and treated last summer, spurred her activism for the cause. “My experience with it has allowed me to see that it is a much bigger issue than people think,” she said. Gossard became involved with the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) last year. NEDA created the awareness week, and according to its website, the mission of the week is to “prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment.”

Activities will be held each day at lunch in V-6, including a discussion led by a nutritionist on how to eat right for your body type, a documentary showing about the healing process and an informational session about how to identify and treat eating disorders.

NEDA member Nan Dellheim will visit Gunn on Tuesday at lunch to speak about the role of body image in society. Dellheim wrote the “How I Look Journal,” a journal for middle school students to help them feel comfortable in their own skin. “Negative body image has become pervasive by middle school with almost 80 percent of girls reporting that they ‘feel fat’ even though most are not fat,” Dellheim said. “This has resulted in a dramatic increase in disordered eating, obsessive exercise and smoking for weight control, and because of the link between body image and self-esteem, this phenomena can also play a role in the development of depression and high risk behaviors.”

Dellheim had found many good curriculums for elementary school students on body image, but had yet to find something for middle school students. With her teenage daughter, Dellheim created the How I Look Journal. “While I had learned a great deal about the prevention principles that have defined recent body image and self-esteem programs, I was concerned that some middle school girls care too much about how they look to reject the ‘thin ideal,’” Dellheim said. “Then my daughter and I discovered the What Not to Wear shows and realized that you can make peace with the parts of your body you don’t like by learning how to dress in a way that flatters your particular shape.” Because Dellheim anticipated that many schools would not have enough time to spend on body image, she and her daughter were careful to make the journal relevant and friendy for both classroom setting and independent use.

In addition to speaking at lunch, Dellheim will also be one of four speakers at the PTSA-sponsored event “Be Comfortable in Your Genes: Wear Jeans that fit the True You,” which will be in Spangenberg theater on the evening of Feb. 24. Dellheim will speak about the detrimental effects of the media on self-image. Along with Dellheim and Gossard, two specialists will be speaking at the evening event—Director of El Camino Hospital’s Intensive Outpatient Eating Disorder program Carol Dietrich, and Dr. Cynthia Kapphahn of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

Dietrich said she will speak about the psychological perspective on eating disorders, and help the audience recognize that many things factor into the disorder. “Eating disorders are about a lot of things, but they aren’t about food,” she said.

Dietrich, who suffered from an eating disorder herself, believes the media is unrealistic. “There is no way you can pick up a magazine today and see and image that has not been altered,” she said.

Gossard agrees that the media displays a false model for appearance, and with NEDA week she hopes to combat the negative message. “I know I can’t change how the media dictates how we look, but hopefully I can change the way people perceive fallacies in the media,” she said.