The misrepresentation of bulimia feeds into shame and an unhelpful push to “get over it.”
The first time the word “bulimic” caught my attention was while watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was twelve. Early on, we are introduced to Sam , the main character’s enigmatic love interest. At the end of the scene, she randomly says, giggling, “I’m not bulimic, I’m a bulimist…I love bulimia!” I remember being confused as to what exactly this meant, and why it was funny.
Time and again, bulimia jibes are gleefully tossed around in the catty dialogue of popular girls in teen movies. “Grow up, Heather. Bulimia is so ’87,” says clique dictator Heather Chandler to her verbal punching bag Heather Duke in the ’80s classic Heathers. “Miss Phlegm” and “mega bitch,” as she’s labeled by rebel Veronica , is a vacuous sheep, then a vacuous bully, and her bulimia is used as an early indicator of her weak character.
And even on the handful of occasions that bulimia is taken more seriously, it is treated as a short-term problem, swiftly discovered by a loved one and nipped in the bud. In the first season of the iconic TV show Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf’s history of bulimia, which the novel explores in detail, is packaged neatly into one scene, in which she binges and purges in response to an emotional trigger, and we see a vague flashback of past instances.
In my own case, bulimia developed out of months of food restriction, during a period of depression I felt helpless to overcome. I had never heard about bulimia’s health risks, and how it can develop into something that completely consumes and warps your mindset and body image. The women with bulimia in film and TV are generally healthy-looking and free of “real problems.” I had to learn firsthand the complete havoc it wreaks on the body, both physically and mentally.
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