Adderall the New Coke

The other day I was with this girl named Katie. She has proudly given herself the nick-name, “Sasha-Fierce,” which she stole from Beyonce, but I don’t have the heart to call her out, so I’ll let it slide. She never, ever let’s boys boss her around. In fact, I think every boy she meets is either in love with her or afraid of her. She dances when she wants, sings when she feels the need to sing, and cries when she just needs a good cry and she will not apologize because life’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to. Katie is my role model, so brave, so confident and so “Fierce.” But the other day, Katie shocked me when I found her crying in the locker room at our local pool. When I asked her what was wrong, she turned up to face me, looking defeated and shamed. “Am I fat?” she whispered. Katie is 9.

After hearing her say this, I knew it had started. It’s like clockwork, girls slowly grow up and the media and society break apart our self-esteem, leaving us feeling flawed and fat. But at 9? I hoped Katie would have had a few more years, but sadly, young girls are being affected by impossible to live-up to beauty standards faster and faster, thanks in large part to celebrity “role models.” You look at any major Disney movie star with her stick-thin frame, thick extensions and professionally airbrushed face and see her portrayed as normal to millions of idolizing girls.

And what about as we grow older? Well, the stars girl my age read about in beauty and gossip magazines are the picture of perfection. And if they aren’t, they’ll be pictured on the cover with the headline, “Guess which Celeb Let Herself Go: The Best and Worst Bikini Bodies in Hollywood!” How great for us! It lets us know what is acceptable and what isn’t. Interestingly, many of the same celebrities that are pictured on the “Best” side have also been accused by the same magazines as having eating disorders. Hm… are they trying to tell us something?

We’ve all heard of the crazy way our role models stay skinny. While most of them claim, “I eat what I want, in moderation,” this obviously is usually not the case. From cocaine and anorexia, to syrup and water week-long detox diets, like Katie’s role model, “Sasha-Fierce,” celebrities will do anything to cut the extra pounds. If Katie heard that about Miss. Fierce, I would expect her to say how stupid that was. Or would she ask her mom to make that for her school lunch the next day?

Unfortunately, as kids enter college, the problem only gets worse and the need to be thin overshadows the need to be healthy. On college campuses, Adderall is widely used, legally and illegally, to help people concentrate, study and… stay skinny? Yep, that’s right. Because it is an amphetamine, it works like speed, suppressing your appetite. Ah, a miracle diet pill! Here’s a scenario: a girl illegally buys Adderall to study during exam week. After the week she realizes, “OMG! I lost 5 pounds!” The compliments start coming and she decides to keep on buying. She uses it not only to suppress her appetite, but to help her have the energy and drive to do longer, harder work-outs. The pounds keep dropping, and before she knows it, she has an addiction to Adderall and an eating disorder.

Can you blame her? Recently, LaLohan, or Lindsay Lohan, America’s favorite bad-girl, attributed her weight loss to Adderall. And apparently many other movie stars use and abuse this drug, too, crushing up the pills and snorting them. As red is the new black, adderall is the new cocaine.

I can only imagine how wide-spread this problem really is. Adderall is so accessible on campus and ADD is a fairly easy disorder to fake, so these miracle pills are readily available to any college student wishing to use drugs to solve her size zero aspirations. Marylyn Monroe was reportedly a size 12. Posh Spice? Double zero. What’s next, negative zero? Why are women everywhere making themselves disappear?

**Hungry Hungry Hippy**