Eating Disorders in the Media and Thin Privilege
I was watching a documentary on anorexia, and I found a few major problems with how certain situations were handled. One woman with an ED kept saying, “You’ll tell me if I gain too much weight and get fat, won’t you?”, and her mother answered, “Of course, we don’t want you to be fat, just healthy”. Gee, I wonder why she might have an eating disorder in the first place!! Also, a doctor had one client do an exercise where she had the patient sketch a to-scale drawing of how fat she thought she was, then traced the outline of the women’s body around that image. The doctor told her, “See? You’re not as big as you think. You’re actually very thin”. That’s not the point! The point isn’t whether they’re ACTUALLY fat or not, it’s that they have a very self-deprecating mindset. People need to stop promoting the idea that anorexia always = thin. They’re indirectly saying that “you need to get down to a certain weight and get sicker before we’ll actually help you”.