Susan Child

Sue Briggs
English 2010 10-11:20
March 6, 2014
Review
Dying to Be Thin

In the documentary Dying to Be Thin, it talks about a few
peoples stories and what their journey was like and how they got
help to overcome the eating disorder they were suffering from.
The beginning of the documentary focuses on ballet dancers and
the extremes they have to go through in order to be a dancer.
Many of them are at least 15 percent underweight, and are still
being told that they need to lose more weight, but they are still
receiving praise for being super skinny. It talks about Karen
Carpenter who suffered and even died from health problems caused
by an eating disorder, she died in 1983 at age 32 from heart
failure. It also talks about a 14 year old girl named Erin who
almost died in a hospital near her home in Texas from
malnutrition. After discovering Erins malnutrition problem her
mother sent her to an eating disorders unit of another hospital
to try and help her overcome her problem with food.
The film depicted what a day in the eating disorder unit is
like for the patients, what kinds of activities they do, what
they eat, the group therapy sessions they have with each other,
etc. One of the very first steps to overcoming Anorexia Nervosa
is weight gain; the eating disorder unit that Erin was staying in
noticed that their patients have had more success when the
patient(s) get closer to their ideal wait before leaving the
eating disorders unit at the hospital.
The documentary uses this quote, In a study done by the
Mayo Clinic, it was found that Anorexia Nervosa has been
increasing by 36% every year since the 1950s. this is something
we need to be aware of, eating disorders arent just going to
disappear and people with eating disorders arent always going to
be open about their problem either. Some individuals, like the
models in this documentary will be more open in hopes that others
will see/hear their stories and realize that eating disorders can
and will completely take over their lives.
I noticed that most of the people in this documentary were
young women. Did you know that three out of every one hundred
girls will develop either Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa in
their lifetime? For all you know there is a girl or woman you
know who has or is currently suffering from one of these types of
disordered eating. It isnt always obvious either. This is sad
that our society believes that the only way to be beautiful is by
being stick thin, and it is portrayed on magazine covers and all
over every type of media we see each and every day. Think of all
the young girls that are being exposed to this, if this is what
they grow up seeing then they will be more likely to believe it
and decide to try only drinking water and not eating anything.
Eating disorders are only going to get worse. More people
are suffering from them each and every year, and that number is
only going to keep getting higher unless we do something about
it. We need to use
the media to let men
and women know that
they are beautiful
the way they are,
they dont need to
be a twig to be
beautiful. We need
to stop listening to
what the media says
is beautiful and
look for the
positive things we like about ourselves rather than look for the
negatives.
In my personal opinion this documentary did a good job
depicting eating disorders, and what things are like for people
who suffer from them as well as their families, the extremes
dancers go through each and every day just to have the
opportunity to be a dancer. I like that they got a few different
dancers to share their experiences about being told that they
need to keep losing weight even though they are already super
skinny. There were also models telling about their experiences of
having to lose weight, and go to some major extremes. One model
in particular stood out to me her name was Kate Dillon and she
shared her experience of what it was like for her to be a model.
I look at my face, my face looks so hollow.
I look so...my eyes look like they're
bulging out. And I just look so weak.That
was the day that they told me to lose like
ten or twenty pounds, and I kind of knew
that that was crazy. Like I remember
thinking, "From where? Like twenty pounds?
How am I going to lose twenty pounds?" And I
remember thinking, "I don't have to do this.
Like what have I been doing the last couple years?
What have I been doing my whole life?" Kate Dillon




Works Cited
"Dying to Be Thin." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
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EasyBib. Imagine Easy Solutions, LLC, n.d. Web. 26 Feb.
2014.
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Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Sweet Machine. "Shapely Prose." Shapely Prose. Kate Harding, 01
Sept. 2009. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.