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A diary of obsessive love and eating disorders

Book cover of Lesbian Crushes and BulimiaLesbian Crushes and Bulimia is a real-life diary account of an obsessive nineteen year old lesbian, Natasha, whose internal homophobia, alongside infatuations with women, bring her condemnation in both her gay and straight environments and drive her into a state of compulsive binge-eating and purging.

Edited from detailed, encoded diary entries, the story begins in the summer of 1989–one year after the infamous, homophobic Section 28 was introduced in the UK. This is the first book to present a diary account of living as a lesbian with an eating disorder.

Natasha is obsessively, unrequitedly in love with her former teacher, Miss Williams, a love which she declares openly as a tattoo on her wrist. She meets Alex, a girl her own age, who questions her about the tattoo, revealing her own remarkably similar obsessive love for her former teacher, Miss Wilson. A romance blossoms between the two girls. Alex is slim and beautiful, Natasha is not.

A book about coming out as lesbian, and an eating disorder memoir, this is compulsive reading.

Photographs of Natasha Holme’s diaries →

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Posted on February 27, 2012 by Natasha Holme

Review by Helena Whitbread →

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Historian and Editor of 'The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister'
Posted on August 1, 2012 by Natasha Holme

As the editor of the Anne Lister journals I was amazed when I found Natasha Holmes’ book. I learned that, like Anne Lister (1791-1840), Natasha has been an obsessive diarist from her early teenage years. But the startling fact is that, again like Anne Lister, Natasha wrote in a secret code of her own devising. This marked her out, to me, as a modern-day Anne Lister. Natasha’s account of her struggle to realise her lesbian sexuality and to deal with her eating disorder makes for an interesting, honest and sometimes painful read. I contacted her and, finding that she has many more years of her diairies yet to be published, I feel that a discerning literary agent might well find it rewarding to take up the challenge of getting them published. Like Anne Lister, from whose diaries I have published two books from which two documentaries and a film have been made, Natasha’s story could, I believe, become the subject of a film. It is my belief that her work on her own life may well make her a ‘name’ in the world of lesbian writing.

51 Quotes about diary-writing →

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Posted on April 24, 2012 by Natasha Holme

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The risk of death from bulimia →

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Posted on April 4, 2012 by Natasha Holme

World Health Day takes place annually on 7th April—each year focusing on a particular aspect of health. The focus for 2012 is Ageing and health: Good health adds life to years. With this in mind, and having just listened to a mother speak of the death of her nineteen year old daughter Melissa from bulimia in 2009 (audio, 12 minutes), I wanted to take a look at the risk of death from bulimia.
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Does God hate gay people? … Keeping homophobic Christians busy … →

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Posted on May 2, 2012 by Natasha Holme

In 2012 gay people are still struggling to come out, are ridiculed, attacked, and killed for our sexuality. Why is this? It is apparently the word of God that homosexual acts are sinful. Homosexuality is mentioned six times in the Bible. I want to take a look at two aspects of this:
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