The vague bull
Manga artist: Noah Siatti
Publisher: FieldMouse Press
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Noah Ciatti’s 52-page obscure Blu is about Gender Quan Air’s teen Blu, who suffers from impaired eating behaviors.
Eating disorders, or EDS, are characterized by persistent eating habit disruptions that damage physical and mental health. EDS is the most fatal mental health disorder, primarily due to physical health complications of malnutrition/dehydration (eg, heart problems, endocrine disorders, gastrointestinal diseases, and soaking/feeding deficiency syndrome). All Eds are unique, but the media often paint “narrow, simplified sensational portraits” of them and those struggling. This portrays disrupted eating primarily affecting thin, rich, heterogeneous heteroseuual women, according to the Journal of Eating Disorders on how EDS is portrayed in the media.
“Stock stereotypes can be linked to the early work of anorexia when many psychologists have defined them as “a disease of abundance” that only affected “girls who grew up even in privileged and luxurious circumstances,” according to Project Heal, which increases access to life-saving treatments for EDS (not uncovered by insurance). Therefore, media use can lead to negative attitudes towards individuals with ED, as it reinforces the notion that these fatal illnesses are merely “problems of abundance, greed, or ungratefulness.”
In the exception, SWAG stereotypes of individuals with EDS cannot accurately represent the diverse populations affected. For example, only 10.61% of characters with EDS are male, but in reality the rate is much higher in this population, with about a third of the US having EDS being male (some experts claim that these numbers are high. Similarly, the odd community is very underrated in the media about EDS, showing that less than 5% of characters with EDS (and none of them not identified as trans) have a higher incidence of EDS, indicating that feeding is higher in adolescence compared to LGBTQ+ adults and heterogeneous and scientist counterparts.
Misrepresentations of these diseases in the media can limit audience understanding and existing stigma, making the path to diagnosis more difficult, as they can limit the understanding of the audience and for those who do not fit stolen items from seeking or receiving treatment. In fact, scholars argue that media portrayals of mental illness can affect viewers’ attitudes and behaviors, including the attitudes and behaviors of healthcare professionals.
“Stereotypes about those developing EDS can contribute to disparities in ED treatment and outcomes,” found a 2018 study on the identification of these disorders in a variety of populations. “As such, individuals with higher weight, racial/ethnic minorities, people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, and men may not recognize the need for treatment and may not be properly screened due to ED.
Although the portrayal of EDS in media has evolved slightly over the years (think HeartStopper), these portrayals do not accurately reflect the empirical evidence of those who actually develop them. And that’s where ambiguous blues thrive. It’s one of the rare portrayals of gendered people struggling with diet with disabilities (in fact, from what I can find online, Blu may be the only gender character in the mass media with ED).
As a journalist and critic who recently completed his (third) ED treatment in March 2025, I know well that telling compelling eating disorder stories is difficult, while being sensitive to the effects of these stories on people struggling with. However, Schiatti is perfectly balanced, tells the realistic stories of disrupted meals and remains sensitive to potential impacts on readers. For healthcare professionals, it can use ambiguous Blu to learn about ED and develop compassion for them and struggling patients. And for the patient himself, he may find comfort in the story. After all, a disturbed diet thrives in secret.
Blue’s Ed’s actions take place in secret, but that’s a prominent part of the comic’s visual story. If you look closely at the Blu room, you will soon notice the empty food containers and the wrappers. Each is carefully placed under the chaotic debris of their lives, depicted as a symbolic mountain of scattered space. Although it is not possible to carry out activities of daily life (e.g., eating regularly, cleaning rooms, cleaning personal hygiene, caring for personal hygiene, etc.), here, the messy and well-maintained rooms of Blue represent Blue’s distorted eating habits.
Courtesy of FieldMouse Press
Secret meals that the National Institutes of Health define as “eating vigorously, eating or hiding evidence of eating” (e.g. eating in the toilet, or hiding food rappers who can’t find evidence that others meet your body’s needs are common in young people populations like BLU. In fact, clinicians and researchers see it as a behavioral indicator of unrecognized as uncontrollable, regardless of how much they are actually eating.
According to Carl Jung, secret and shame are conceptually related. Like Blu, individuals may view their nutritional needs as succumbing to their body needs.
When someone struggles with ED, they often feel embarrassed about the evolutionary needs of the body. Because meeting these needs can be seen as a sign of weakness. In other words, humans are designed for survival, but the brain of ED can overwhelm their evolutionary functions. Also, since we live in a merit-based culture, people may be embarrassed to try and allocate the time they need to respond to those needs (for example, my ed doesn’t let me drink a glass of water.
However, our bodies are designed to keep us alive, creating tension between our body needs and our eating disorder desire to ignore those very needs. This tension between mental desire and physical needs can embarrassing people with disabilities as overeating inevitably continues as each attempt to limit calories.
Readers are invited to witness Blue’s unruly meals, but they appear to be hiding their actions from friends and family. And they seem to do it well. Blu’s disability diet is never mentioned in dialogue, and people around you should not acknowledge that people around you may have problems. Instead, it is part of their dissociation, telegraphing how they respond to food stimuli in the middle of the story, and how the rest of the book unfolds. For example, at one point, readers will see Blu engage in eating disorder behavior known to “spaise when biting.” And at another point we see the word balloon being scrawled, like the voice of a teacher in Charlie Brown’s “W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-O-Teacher. This is a general description used in treatment spaces of how it feels to be engaged in conversation when you are not experiencing an embodied experience thanks to ED and trauma.
Courtesy of FieldMouse Press
The decision not to focus on ED behavior may be narratively driven, but it also serves as a measure of sensitivity to people reading comics that may be struggling with. In that vein, I chose to list some of the impaired eating behaviors outlined in the comics to avoid those who use this review as a self-triggering mechanism.
Emily T. Torosianko’s 2018 study on literary reading and eating disorders found that for many, fiction featuring a protagonist with an eating disorder “has a negative effect on mood, self-esteem, feelings about the body, diet and exercise habits.”
“Some respondents explained that they were intentionally seeking a particular book, knowing that they are likely to exacerbate their disabilities,” Tosianko continues, emphasizing the risk of self-triggering (when someone uses a book to intentionally exacerbate their eating disorder).
Due to the unique nature of Blu in the field of graphic medicine, I feel it could become an important resource both as a creative bi therapy mechanism and as a resource to help others with things they like to experience life with ED. My hope is that works like this reduce the stigma around Ed’s individuals by presenting a more subtle story of experience that encourages readers to approach their loved ones that seem to be struggling with (remember: eds live in secret!), or can help yourself (you are not alone!)
Courtesy of FieldMouse Press
The vague Blu offers a total glimpse into the secret shame of Somone, suffering from disturbed eating, and should be added to the list of essential cartoons about eating disorders.
Ambiguous Blu is now available.
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