Do TV shows, Web sites fuel eating disorders?

Victoria Clayton • E-mail

Last month, FX network launched a sitcom called “Starved” about the lives of four thirty-something friends living in Brooklyn. The set-up may sound like any other situation comedy aimed at young, single viewers, but “Starved” has an unprecedented twist. The friends — three men and one woman — all have eating disorders.

Some experts warn that shows such as “Starved” and “Fat Actress,” which debuted this year on Showtime and depicts the efforts by Kirstie Alley's character to lose weight, including taking laxatives, are no joke when it comes to our kids.

“I think what something like ‘Starved’ does is sort of normalize eating disorders,” charges Susan S. Bartell, a psychologist in Port Washington, N.Y., who specializes in treating teens, many with eating disorders. “It may leave impressionable adolescents with the notion that eating disorders are so normal we can joke about them on television. And that’s really not the case. Eating disorders are serious, scary and for some they are truly life-threatening.”

Indeed, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. There are approximately 10 million females and 1 million males in the U.S. who struggle with eating disorders.

A lesson plan?
Bartell’s concern has to do with how instructive the shows are about eating disorder behaviors. “If you watch ['Starved'], for kids who are tending toward an eating disorder, it teaches them how to do it," she says. "It talks about using laxatives, exercising for hours on end, restricting food, throwing up after eating … it’s kind of like a lesson plan, so to speak.”

In response to a request for comment, the show "Starved" issued the following statement: "Eric Schaeffer, who plays 'Sam' and is also Starved's creator, is no stranger to the show’s themes and subject matter and speaks openly about his own addictions. He believes he’s not alone in battling his food demons. 'While addiction, like life, is often dark and terrifying, recovery comes from mining our true humanity, with all its pathos, hope, love and humor,' says Schaeffer. 'I think everyone — addicts and non-addicts alike — will identify with our characters’ journeys.'"

In recent months, eating disorder specialists have also warned parents about certain Web sites and blogs called “pro-ana” (pro-anorexic) because users often share tips on how to perpetuate an eating disorder.

Yet Bartell says television is still more troubling.

“TV is so real and accessible for anybody and everybody," she says. "My concern is that a TV show could push someone in the direction of having a disorder. They may start to dabble in the disordered eating. They may not even feel like it’s so dangerous but once they get started they may not be able to stop.”

After the first episode of “Starved” in early August, NEDA immediately issued a release calling the show “tasteless and dangerous” and urging viewers to boycott it and the advertisers. The organization also took a similar stance when “Fat Actress” began airing.

Influence of family, friends
Yet NEDA spokesperson Jessica Weiner, an eating disorder survivor who has authored two books on the subject — “A Very Hungry Girl” and the upcoming “Do I Look Fat In This?” — says we have to be careful where we point the finger of blame.

“The media is a very easy scapegoat,” says Weiner. “But no show taught me how to have an eating disorder. I learned more from friends and from what I saw with my own family members. That’s the more typical route.”

According to Andrew B. Geier, a psychology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, what we know about weight and eating disorders is, indeed, that kids tend to be influenced by their peers and, most seriously, from the body image problems and disordered eating of their families.

“If you look at parental pressure to lose weight — whether parents are fairly critical of weight and whether there’s a lot of maternal investment in how thin daughters are, there’s definitely a correlation with eating disorders in girls,” says Geier. Mothers of girls with eating disorders, he notes, tend to have a higher incidence of such problems.

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