CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE YOUR STORY ABOUT DISORDERED EATING?

There’s a lot of misinformation about eating disorders in the South Asian community. Image credit: PABLO MERCHAN MONTES on Unsplash.

Shuno is a project focused on raising awareness of eating disorders in the South Asian community.

“Due to the great deal of stigma in the culture of this region towards eating disorders, which tend to be normalized and, to an extent, encouraged, many are made to believe they don’t deserve treatment or that one must be “sick enough” before they do, despite “sick” looking completely different on different people,” says Anoova Sattar, who initiated the project.

“Shuno was chosen as the name because it translates to "listen" or "hear" in Bengali, and that is to represent listening to the submissions of those who likely haven't been listened to before. It is a taboo topic that isn't discussed nearly as much as it should be given the number of people affected by it and even the words of those who have spoken about it are twisted and misunderstood. As one of the main goals of this is to give each individual their own space to share their struggles and what they have gone through, the name Shuno seemed a fitting choice.”

The goal of this project is to help reduce misinformation spread about this illness by collecting submissions from people willing to share their experience and publishing it anonymously on a website for the public to access and depict the global impact of eating disorders.

If you are South Asian and would like to share your experience with disordered eating and/or an eating disorder, please navigate to the form or contact Anoova Sattar at anoovasattar@gmail.com for further information. Eventually, the submissions will be compiled to create a growing, interactive map.

Anoova is currently a high school student located in Olympia, WA.

She decided to start doing work on this topic after her own experience with disordered eating patterns and anorexia from the age of 12.

Although she was encouraged by family to get access to the treatment process, there were still moments that made it incredibly obvious how much they misunderstood the way she was suffering from the disorder.

Seeing that many others may not even have access to treatment itself but still face that sort of pushback, she wanted to pull from aspects of her struggles with an eating disorder to provide a helpful, informative website also containing the voices of real people.

In her free time she also enjoys dancing, reading, and playing the piano.