Content warning: This post deals with eating disorders, and may be triggering for some readers.
On last week’s episode of Mamamia Out Loud, we discussed Marti Nixon’s Netflix film ‘To The Bone’, which explores the eating disorder of 20-year-old Ellen played by Lily Collins. The film has attracted significant backlash, particularly by organisations like The Butterfly Foundation, who argue that vivid representations of eating disorders are instructive, and serve as a manual for people who are already struggling.
We received an email following the discussion, from a woman who has lived with anorexia nervosa for 14 years.
This is her story.
I’ve been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa since I was 13. I’m now 27.
I actually just came out of another one month stint in hospital for refeeding last Friday. I’ve had upwards of 20 hospital inpatient stays and been involved in multiple outpatient treatment programs, including a two year intensive residential program (which looked something like the treatment program Lily Collins’ character goes to in the film).
Most of the later part of high school for me was spent at home with my mum because she couldn’t leave me to my own devices. I had to sleep in my parents bedroom and they would lock the doors so I couldn’t sneak outside in the middle of the night to go for a run. None of this is something I am at all proud of, but I guess it just gives you an idea of the type of life experience I have had in relation to this topic.
LISTEN: Mia Freedman, Monique Bowley and Jessie Stephens discuss To The Bone on the latest episode of Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues below.
Top Comments
As a person in recovery from both AN and BN at different times of my life, there is no way I would watch this movie as haven't had disordered eating for almost 10 years but I have no intention of tempting fate by exposing myself to triggers. I just want to throw this point out there in relation to ED, they seem to be diseases that exist only in developed societies, EDs don't seem to exist where food supply is an issue, they only come into play once a community has access to "Western" entertainment. Is this rise in EDs a symptom of the way we lives our lives our now, an affluenza disease? Just like I believe depression and anxiety are too (I'm also currently on that particular continuum)? Is the cost of having too much - too much consumerism, too many choices, too much individualism, too much leisure time not dedicated to survival - a rise in all these mental disorders because we now have all this energy and brain power with nowhere to go?
Stories like this need to be told because people live these stories and have a right to tell them and this could be said about any number of difficult topics.
They do need to be told. I however agree with the writer- turning a disease into a movie to make money, especially one that is easily available to vulnerable people, is the wrong way to teach the public about the people suffering from any psychological illness.