Spring break has arrived! It's time for the beach, beer, and bulimia! Sex, Mexico, and anorexia! Wait, what? Lumping eating disorders in with the much-maligned annual migration ritual of college students is trite and misleading? Tell that to the New York Times.

In a lengthy piece for the Sunday Styles section, Alex Williams does just that, creating yet another dubious trend piece for the Gray Lady. Williams focuses on websites maintained by anorexic girls who meticulously chronicle their calorie intake. On some of these "pro-ana" sites (Wikipedia), the girls have set goals to lose a certain amount of weight before spring break. Rather than viewing these goals as part of a group of symptoms of the girls' disease, the paper treats the spring-break mention as a peg to work the story around. Here's the reasoning:

Though it is not possible to estimate the number of young women participating in extreme spring break weight-loss contests, or to assess how the popularity of such contests has grown, eating disorder experts say that the rise of spring break as a cultural phenomenon might play a role.

So by the Times's distorted logic, spring break is the culprit behind increasing incidence of eating disorders. Yes, spring break is here, but people who are mentally ill don't need some holiday to become that way.

(It also slightly misquotes one of the "pro-ana" websites at the end of the article. While the Times reports that one blogger ends her rant about her weight with "I hate boys, I hate my body. Goodnight" it leaves out one part. She actually writes "i hate boys. i hate my body. screw this. goodnight." )

The piece also plays into the paper's fascination with (and over-coverage of) the upper class. As much as many eating disorders (especially anorexia) are predominantly diseases of rich, white people, the act of going on spring break, especially among high-schoolers, is almost exclusively an upper-class phenomenon.

But that didn't merit a mention. Neither do real numbers. Instead, the Times gives us speculation:

Experts who treat eating disorders worry that healthy girls and young women who use spring break as an excuse to dabble in dangerous dieting techniques can tip over into self-destructive behavior. "You take that typical 15-year-old, who is taking her anxiety into spring break, if there are other issues in her life or her family, she's a prime candidate for anorexia or bulimia," said Doug Bunnell, the director of treatment for the Renfrew Center eating disorders program in Wilton, Conn. "Their first diet can blossom into a real nightmare. …

"It's showoff time," said Eileen Adams, a psychologist and treatment specialist at Remuda Ranch, a Bible-based eating disorder center in Wickenburg, Ariz. "That puts a lot of pressure on young people."

There is a lot more research that scientists need to do before they can determine the underlying causes of eating disorders. My hunch is that, when they do, spring break isn't exactly going to top the list.