Members of the College's staff and student body assisted in the events of Hanover High School's "Body Image Day," which was designed to offer information about eating disorders and other adolescent health issues.
"Body Image Day" was divided into two days. On Monday, the high school welcomed "The Story," a Boston folk group that sang about women's issues, eating disorders and size prejudice. In between sets they discussed the content of their music with the high school students.
Yesterday Hanover High held two panels, both of which dealt with "issues of body image and how eating disorders, exercise and steroids fit into this puzzle," said Marcia Herrin, the coordinator of nutritional education for the College.
The first panel, which discussed eating disorders and body image, was made up of Herrin; Rahn Fleming '81, the former substance abuse educator for Dartmouth and Hanover High School; and Jennifer Evers '95, a representative of Students Against the Abuse of Food and Exercise.
SAFE is a Dartmouth group that distributes information about exercise, body image and dieting.
The second panel centered around the role of exercise in body image. It consisted of Kerstin Stoedefalke, an exercise physiologist at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H.; Eric Lawson, Dartmouth's strength and conditioning director; and William Dexter, a Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center doctor, who specializes in sports medicine.
Herrin said one of the objectives of the panels was to give students both male and female perspectives on these issues.
She said Fleming's part in the panel was to raise the issue of eating disorders in boys and men, pointing to his own struggle with bulimia.
Lawson said his role "was to talk about the use and abuse of anabolic steroids and how it applies to this situation. It's an issue with women as well as men."
Hanover High sophomore Josh Fischel said the Student Council voted to have five lecture series that dealt with topics concerning the student body. Fischel is also a member of the school's Body Image Speaker Series Committee.
"Hanover High is a stressful school academically, sports-wise, et cetera," Fischel said. "People can't really handle the stress sometimes. Image is a big thing in an upper middle class town such as Hanover and people really try to fit in."
Kate Curtis-McLane, the health educator for Hanover High, helped organize the event with Fischel and the three other student members of the committee: Michelle Moor, Jenn Cromwell and Meghan Maguire.
"We are a pretty competitive school. We do expect ourselves to fit this media ideal. We have a high prevalence of disordered thinking about food and eating," Curtis-McLane said.
According to a 1992 survey of 363 Hanover High students, 25 percent of the female students worried that they might be developing an eating disorder. Eight percent admitted to having one and 22 percent said they had fasted to control their weight.
The survey was conducted by Wendy Murphy, a health educator at the College.
Lawson said the students' response to the panels was tremendous. "It was great. We really got them thinking," he said.
Evers also said she thought the panel was successful. "I had a number of women come up afterwards and ask me for numbers to call for help for either themselves or their friends," she said.
Herrin said the prevalence of eating disorders at Hanover High is not unexpected. Many of the students there are children of Dartmouth professors and medical experts. She said children with successful parents often feel more pressure from themselves as well as their parents.
Herrin also said adolescence is the prime time for the development of eating disorders.
"When girls first start going through puberty, they start looking in the mirror and criticizing themselves," Murphy said.
Murphy's survey found that girls were much more critical of themselves and their bodies than boys were at the high school age.
"Weight is the one thing that's so readily apparent. The mirror reflects the emotions that these girls are feeling," Murphy said.
