Video Transcription

Varsha’s experience of an eating disorder as an Indian Australian woman

Hi, I’m Varsha, and an eating disorder looks like me. I’d say that it doesn’t look a certain way, and it’s not confined to a certain group. It’s not confined to just women or, you know, younger women as well, because so many older people deal with it, and it goes undiagnosed because we leave these symptoms and say that they don’t fit the right stereotype.

I have struggled with an eating disorder for probably a lot of my teen years. I went to a high school that was predominantly white, so when I started having symptoms of an eating disorder, I didn’t really think it would be possible for me to even get one, because I hadn’t heard of a single brown person having an eating disorder ever. So, I was like, I’m just excluded from this automatically.

I don’t think my family would know many other people with an eating disorder as well, at least in the environment that my family probably grew up in. It wasn’t a thing, and I think having an eating disorder is a really first-world problem almost. So, it was kind of hard to even say, “I’m struggling with having an abundance of food in my house,” and there was definitely some guilt that came with it because it is harder in a lot of other countries, and even in Australia, I know that I’m quite privileged.

I definitely think it would have been great to have culturally competent support, because just understanding the cultural barriers, the difficult conversations, and the stigmatisation of eating disorders in South Asian communities would have been so helpful to, I guess, understand how to approach this subject. And again, I’m quite lucky to have family at home who did come around to understanding, but I know so many people who wouldn’t be able to have a conversation about seeing a psychologist or any of those sorts of things.

You don’t need to, you know, lose as much weight or gain this much weight, or have a certain skin colour, or be a certain gender. If you are struggling, that’s enough. You don’t need to pass a certain threshold. So, I think places like Butterfly are just a great foundational place to go, because just knowing that you have a place of support and knowing that there is a community out there that isn’t just, you know, on a YouTube screen or anything like that, but there’s physical support, I think is so important.

Groups like Butterfly have helped me, and I know so many other people out there, but they can’t do it on their own.

Video by Butterfly Foundation