Rajshree Saraf has never herself dealt with eating disorders, but witnessed the ugly illness take over the life of a friend. The 22-year-old communication design student first spotted signs of bulimia in her friend four years ago. “I noticed that she was exercising way too much but barely eating anything,” said Saraf. “We were just starting college and she, under the impression that she needed to lose weight, had begun following a diet and exercise regime to become thinner and look good. But she was taking it to an extreme and going through periods of extreme guilt at eating and was confused about why.”
Thin is not always beautiful
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder that is characterised by periods of binge-eating, followed by either purging or over-exercising. Ideas such as “thin is beautiful” and “thigh gaps are sexy” have taken over popular culture and especially social media to the extent that men and women barely eat and they exercise much more than they should. Searches for #thinspiration or #bonespiration on Instagram throw up disturbing visuals of women who celebrate having nearly 0% body fat.
In order to understand what her friend and thousands of other women go through, Saraf turned to the medium that makes sense to her – art. In 2016, she created a series of images and titled them The Purple Heart Project, in an attempt to showcase bulimia as a psychological disorder and not just a physical one.
The invisible disease
Because these disorders often tend to be associated with the West, a conversation around bulimia, anorexia and purging is largely lacking in India. Bollywood actor Richa Chadha talked about her own experience of battling with bulimia at a TedX talk in 2016 and called it the “big B” of Bollywood. And in a news report published in
