By Coleen Dee Berry

For a high school senior, it was an act of unflinching courage. Molly McElroy stepped on stage in front of more than 300 of her classmates at The Catholic School of Baltimore and painstakingly described her ongoing battle with anorexia..

She did not know how her classmates would react. “It was terrifying,” McElroy ’17 said. “I hadn’t really told people. Even my sister—she’s my best friend—when I told her, I had to turn out all the lights in the room and then text her what was wrong with me. I was so embarrassed. It was so hard to talk about it.”

But McElroy knew that in order to conquer her eating disorder she had to bring it out into the open. “I had to tell my story, but I was afraid of what would happen afterwards,” she said.

Her high school classmates did not fail her. “The majority of the students at the assembly were moved to tears by the end of her talk,” recalled Sharon Johnson, principal of The Catholic School, who was a teacher at the school at the time of the assembly. “It was extraordinarily courageous for Molly to get up on that stage and reveal something that personal and painful about herself.”

McElroy received a huge outpouring of support from her fellow students. “About 20 of them afterwards told me how much the talk had helped them. It was so empowering for me, I knew I could not stop,” McElroy said. Her Beautiful Me campaign unfolded from there.

Beautiful Me is a support network and awareness campaign that stresses the positive side of body image, not just eating disorders. “Discover your greatest self and understand that you are beautiful in your own way,” Beautiful Me’s website states.

After speaking at her high school assembly, McElroy made contact with the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) and began mentoring other high school students who had disorders. She created a Beautiful Me Facebook page and spoke to other groups, including Girl Scouts and other schools.

When she enrolled at Wilson, one of her first priorities was to find a way to bring Beautiful Me to campus.

“I met Molly on orientation day when I sat down to lunch with her and her dad. The first thing her dad said was, ‘Oh good, I’m glad you met Molly because she will be talking with you about her project,’” said Cindy Shoemaker, Wilson’s director of counseling. “I was very happy to encourage her and support Beautiful Me. Peer education is very powerful. It’s something that Wilson has embraced. It’s very empowering, especially when it’s someone who has lived it and wants to share the experience.”

----

The statistics are sobering. Nationwide, eating disorders affect 20 million women and 10 million men, according to NEDA. The 2014 National Survey of Counseling Centers found that 21.3 percent of college counseling center directors had reported an increase in students with eating disorders over the previous five years. A 2013 study by NEDA showed eating disorders increasing on college campuses: In 1995, 23 percent of women and 8 percent of male students reported eating disorders, and in 2008 those figures had increased to 32 percent of women and 10 percent of men.

Eating disorders range from anorexia (taking extreme measures to avoid eating) and bulimia (eating, then purging through vomiting or laxatives) to binge eating (periods of uncontrolled excessive eating). Another form of eating disorder is a constant preoccupation with exercise.

There has also been an increase in what is termed “disordered eating” by college students, according to the NEDA. An individual with disordered eating is often engaged in some of the same behavior as those with eating disorders, but at a lesser frequency or lower level of severity. Research by NEDA suggests that more than 50 percent of the overall national population has, at one time, demonstrated problematic or disordered relationships with food, body and exercise.

Shoemaker said she sees more evidence of disordered eating on campus than full-blown eating disorders. “The students come here and there’s no longer any parental control of over food. They can have as much pizza and ice cream as they want,” she said. “So many get the dreaded freshman 15 (gaining 15 pounds the first year at college) and then they’re trying everything to lose it.”

Eating disorders are complicated to identify because most victims are good at hiding their symptoms and are in denial that they have a problem. National Institute of Mental Health statistics show that almost 80 percent of students with eating disorders do not seek help. “Often it will be the friend group around the student who will come to us and say they are concerned about their friend’s behavior,” Shoemaker said.

“I think, for every case of someone with an eating disorder that I know about on campus, there’s probably about another four students who are struggling with one and not saying anything,” said Wilson Director of Residence Life Sherri Sadowski.

So when McElroy said she wanted to use Beautiful Me to raise awareness and foster support on campus, Wilson’s counseling and student development staff members  embraced the idea. “At a larger school, they may have brushed Molly’s idea off, saying that we have our own program, we don’t need yours, but here we encourage that type of involvement,” said Leah Rockwell, campus counselor. “And Molly and her program certainly have reached many people on campus.”

For the past three years at the end of February, McElroy—with the help of other students who support her Beautiful Me campaign—has organized a week’s worth of events both to promote positive body image and to increase awareness about eating disorders. One of the fixtures of Beautiful Me week is the “Like a Tree My Body Is’ display in Lenfest lobby. Students are encouraged to take a paper leaf, write one positive word about their appearance on it and then pin the leaf to the large cutout tree on display.

Last year, the week featured a talk by Sara Shaw, an eating disorder survivor and Harrisburg Area Community College coordinator of student life and multicultural affairs, who uses improv workshops to speak about eating disorders. “Campaigns like Molly's Beautiful Me are crucial,” Shaw said. “They often intercept girls at critical turning points and offer real hope in really dark periods.”

Shaw praises McElroy’s dedication. “I was so happy to see her initiative, and it's refreshing to see someone like her in college. Wilson is lucky to have her. I think the impact she's making is phenomenal.”

This year, the week was themed “Let Your Light Shine” and students made luminaries, which were lit on the campus green after the final Beautiful Me event on Sunday, Feb.28. Another highlight was an evening Zumba class, which featured a talk by instructor Erin Adams about her personal eating disorder challenges.

McElroy’s outreach is not limited to the February week of events. During the spring semester, she helped form Foot Steps, a campus club designed to offer a support network for those coping with mental health issues, including eating disorders. She led a Beautiful Me team that participated in a fundraising walk-a-thon in Baltimore in the fall, and she volunteers for Chambersburg’s Women In Need program. And every year, McElroy returns to her high school in Baltimore to speak to students.

“I think that programs like Beautiful Me help people to understand what eating disorders are and that they really do exist,” McElroy said. “I want to let others know that they are not alone and there are others who are struggling too.”

Beautiful Me volunteer Lily Rembold ’17 said she became close friends with McElroy during their freshman year. “Hearing Molly’s story and being her friend through part of her recovery has really given me a passion for helping others who struggle with eating disorders and self-image,” Rembold said. “The most important thing I have learned is that recovery is a never-ending process. It takes time and hard work and a lot of energy. That's why people who are struggling need a really good support system, and that's what Beautiful Me is here to do.”

---

McElroy’s problems started when her older sister—and best friend—Maggie left for college at the start of Molly’s sophomore year in high school. McElroy admits she took up with group of friends, including a boyfriend, “who were hurtful and bad influences.” She began to experience physical stomach pains that kept her from eating. She was convinced something wrong with her, but all the tests showed there was nothing wrong—except she was rapidly losing weight and not eating.

Pat McElroy, Molly’s mother, has a background in counseling, but said even she did not realize the full impact a sibling leaving for college can have on those remaining behind. She and her husband, Tom, despaired as they watched their daughter become more withdrawn and grapple with eating issues.  “As a mom, I desperately wanted to fix this for Molly and it was very hard realizing that I wasn’t the one who could fix things,” she said.

When a doctor first confronted her with a diagnosis of anorexia, “‘I was very, very angry with him,” McElroy said. “I was like, ‘No, this is not why I’m not eating. There HAS to be something wrong because my stomach hurts so much.’ I didn’t understand that I was mentally causing my pain.”

A therapist helped her realize she did indeed have an eating disorder. She gave her disorder a name—ED. Her therapist encouraged her to treat the disorder like a person, and realize that she had to “break up” with this person. “ED was like a bad boyfriend, always trying to tell me what to do, being critical and negative,” McElroy said. “He had to go.”

McElroy credits her love of horses and riding with helping her get a handle on her disorder. One of her doctors suggested she was becoming too underweight to ride safely. “That pushed me to decide that I wanted to recover, that I loved riding too much to let ED take that away,” she said.

Her parents encouraged McElroy to network for support. Pat McElroy said she finally told her daughter, “If you want to deal with your problem and get better, you have to build something to help other people who are suffering just like you are.” She helped Molly arrange the talk before her high school assembly, and Pat McElroy also spoke about being a parent and facing her daughter’s problem. “I actually found out more about her and how she felt during that talk than I had known before,” she said.

Pat McElroy continues to support her daughter’s Beautiful Me effort, recently helping her to create a webpage. “I know that Molly is probably going to have to struggle with this issue for the rest of her life, but by helping others, she is helping herself stay on track,” McElroy said. “Her dad and I have always told Molly, ‘God put you on this earth for a purpose—that you’re here to help make a difference’ and that she is doing that through Beautiful Me.”

McElroy has made a difference on Wilson’s campus. One of her Beautiful Me volunteers, Emma Miller ’17, said she became involved in the group because she has undergone some of the same challenges McElroy faced.

Miller was a cross country runner who led Wilson’s team to the NEAC championships her freshman year. But she also was obsessed with being thinner and fitter. “I became worried about everything I ate and didn't see food as fuel for my body. I saw it as something necessary that I would then need to burn off,” Miller said. She tried every diet and “had issues” with binge eating disorder. But through the support of McElroy and Beautiful Me, she was able to get her eating dysfunction under control.

“I now chase progression and not perfection,” Miller said. “Loving myself and working towards being stronger has carried over into my relationships with others. I have become a better sister, daughter, friend, and have the capacity to care for someone else.

“I'd be lying if I said there are no struggles remaining,” Miller continued. “There are always struggles. But when the mind is cared for above all else, the power those struggles hold over you is weakened. Beautiful Me reminds me of that and empowers others to do the same.”

Beautiful Me will continue after college, McElroy said. She chose Wilson because she wanted to major in equine-facilitated therapeutics, and she sees herself merging the two. “My dream for Beautiful Me would be to open a small company where women can come to have group sessions and ride horses and learn how to love themselves.”

The program will also continue at Wilson after McElroy graduates through the newly created Foot Steps club, which McElroy said will carry on her efforts to raise awareness of eating disorders and offer victims support.

McElroy’s dedication has impressed not only her peers, but the entire Wilson community. “Her willingness to put her own story out there makes her very vulnerable, but it also empowers others to share their own vulnerabilities,” said Rockwell. “Molly’s very committed and dedicated to getting her message out. She doesn’t get paid for this; she doesn’t get credit. It’s certainly an act of service—and it sets a powerful example for the other students.”