Dying To Be Thin Documentary Analysis

Most people with anorexia have a distorted image of their body. An anorexic will look into the mirror and see fat, even if they are sickly thin. Most commonly, anorexia begins in the teen years. This may be related to the common self-image problems that many teens suffer from. Anorexia tends to be more common in females than in males, and early intervention seems to be the key when dealing with this disorder. When left untreated, anorexia can lead to a whole slew of physical problems. Health problems related to anorexia include osteoporosis, kidney damage or failure, heart problems, and even death. Anorexia also affects the brain, as a person starves themself their metabolism changes. This change in the body causes a person not to think clearly or make good decisions. As anorexia progresses, a person will begin to have irrational behavior. For example, a person suffering from anorexia will often make rules about the amount of food they are “allowed” to consume. Others may start to purge themselves after eating even the tiniest bit of food, which is known as Bulimia. Anorexia can also bring on another psychological disorder; Depression. Depression is a mental illness that causes a person to feel sad and hopeless most of the time. People that suffer from depression will lose interest in things that they previously enjoyed, speak slower than normal, have trouble concentrating and remembering things, and be preoccupied by death

The movie “Dying To Be Thin” follows the lives of multiple different girls who are suffering through an eating disorder. The movie shows how extreme an eating disorder can be and how serious this addiction is. We were also able to see different types of treatments that can be used to help these girls. There are many different types of eating disorders and Dying To Be Thin shows the characteristics of each different disorder.

The documentary “Dying to be Thin” is about women that suffer from eating disorders and their success stories of how they overcame their disorders. All of the major eating disorders are covered through out the film, which include: Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge-eating disorder. These are all represented through real life examples presented in the film. I felt many emotions while watching this film.

I watched the documentary Dying to be Thin, which aired on PBS, it followed the lives of young women who have struggled with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. There were many thoughts which raced through my mind. After having watched Dying to be Thin I read the articles Anorexia Nervosa: Friend or Foe? By Lucy Serpell, Janet Treasure, John Teasdale, and Victoria Sullivan. I also had read Bulimia Nervosa: Friend or Foe? The Pros and Cons of Bulimia Nervosa by Lucy Serpell and Janet Treasure. What first captured my attention was when the narrator of the documentary spoke about a young woman Heidi Gunther. The narrator stated that Heidi Gunther died at age 22 due to her heart giving out, which was caused by an eating disorder. I think about this and I think about how her body no longer had enough nutrition for her to live. This made me think about what other women said in the documentary. Katy Tracey said that an eating disorder is “love, glory, power”. These are powerful words. If a young woman is saying that an eating disorder is having love, having glory, and having power then what else is left? It sounded like what the deeper meaning behind those words are would be that that an eating disorder consumes the person who has it until there is nothing left. It is interesting to look at anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and dissect them more closely. From what I have learned from the articles bulimia nervosa has “Two positive themes (BN allowing the

The film “Dying to be Thin” followed the cases of several individuals who have struggled with an eating disorder at some point in their lives, showing the different factors that play a role in eating disorder onset. Different individuals in the film have different reasons for developing an eating disorder but there are some over-arching themes such as the media’s influence, career-related pressures, and certain personality types.

After watching the documentary Dying to Be Thin, it opened my eyes to the underlying issues that play a significant role in the start of eating disorders. Each of the women who I got to know in the documentary had their own story of how this disorder developed. The statistic that resonated with me the most was that 8 million individuals, mostly women ages 15-24, suffer from an eating disorder. This documentary was done in 2000, so I am curious to know if that number decreased or increased with the development of mental health throughout the years. Eating disorders are a deadly illness and have the highest death rate of any psychiatric illness.

“Dying to be Thin,” produced by PBS, is a documentary that examines the troubles that persons who are affected by eating disorders go through and the constant, daily struggles they face with health and body image. The film tells the story of a number of young women who battled mainly anorexia and bulimia and mixes a variety of ages to give a “during” and an “after” perspective. Many of the women in the video were ballet or some similar type of dancer. Dancers, by their own account, are encouraged to be thin. The issue really came to the forefront after a young ballet dancer from Boston died of heart failure at the young age of 22, with an eating disorder deemed to be the cause. The narrator goes on to introduce more young women and detail the potential illnesses that their eating disorders can cause. Chronic low blood pressure, kidney and liver damage, severe early osteoporosis, and heart failure are all common things seem in patients who suffer from eating disorders. Most patients have dangerously low body weights, body fat percentages, and, often, young women will experience amenorrhea, which is the loss of menstruation. All of the people in the video wanted to be better and were seeking a road to recovery. The video showed though, how difficult that can be since the eating disorders can be so wide ranging and have a number of different root causes. Often patients develop eating disorders as something that they have control over, in a world that they feel is out of their

In the video Dying to be Thin there are many factors, biological (such as brain chemicals) and non-biological (such as modern media), which are mentioned as contributors to why and how people develop eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. In any society there are views, such as the want and need to be thin, which are subtly forced onto the public through media; specifically in the modern society that humans currently live in, the media and advertising which are constantly shown to the public have a profound effect on viewers as the media creates unrealistic expectations of what our bodies are supposed to look like and therefore body dissatisfaction (Smolak & Levine, 1996). Most forms of media also sell idealistic transformation ideas by making the viewer’s believe that they can turn into their role model if they change their eating behaviour by eating less, dieting more, etc. (Ritsko, 2000).

THIN is a documentary that appropriately displays individuals suffering from eating disorders while residing at The Renfrew Center, a residential facility for the people who are trying to seek help. The main patients who are shown in the film are Alisa, Polly, Shelly, and Brittany. The camera crew follow the girls around the facility to accurately depict how treatments are performed, their meal times, therapy sessions, and more. THIN is a knowledgeable documentary because it provides an excellent insight in the life of individuals with eating disorders, how eating disorders could be handled or treated, and how others who view the film can learn from the patients who are suffering. Treating eating disorders may seem confusing for some, mostly

Michael W. Wiederman, Tamara Proyor, and C.Don Morgan, conducted a study comparing the sexual experiences of women with bulimia vs. women who suffered anorexia. Similar to this experiment control groups in the past have used bulimics and anorexics (Wiederman et al., 1996a). It had been reported that women who are bulimic have greater sexual activity and experience compared to women with anorexia, and are more likely to engage in sexual intercourse (Wiederman et al., 1996a). In addition reports have stated that “anorexia nervosa was often precipitated by menarche and the initiation of breast development, and that the anorexic individual often had difficulty negotiating heterosexual relationships, ultimately retreating from, or rejecting,

Today,over fifty million people worldwide are affected by this eating disorder. One girl, Elena Dunkle, wrote a memoir about her life with anorexia. Anorexia caused her to through many hardships, such as miscarriage. Pregnant anorexic women often suffer from miscarriage or their child suffers from birth defects. In Dunkle’s memoir she talks about her feelings of guilt throughout her book because of the miscarriage, describing herself as a “serial killer” (169).

Dying to be thin was a document that I could relate to, minus the dying part. It stirred emotions. I am overweight. To loose weight is easier said than done. Never in my life would I have thought that I would be battling the bulge. For most of my life, I was thin. I could eat as much as I wanted, and never gained weight. During and after my successful battle with breast cancer, I gained weight. It has been an all up heal battle to lose it. I hate shopping in larger size clothing. I have tried to recondition myself to eat healthy and less. I thought about starving myself. I have tried dieting and exercising, counting carbs as well as limiting fats. I am desperate to loose weight. I get depress often. I am my only true motivator. I’ve tried

Food. It is essential for survival. Without it, people die. However, oddly enough, many struggle to live without it to accomplish the standards that our culture has created for us. We are taught that being thin is perfection and will lead to a happier life. However, lurking are the health risks that one pays for obtaining the “perfect body”. Still, along with a distorted body image, others struggle with keeping weight down and fall into the diet fads that the world parades. From movies, magazines, and television, the media also sends us messages that being fat is bad and unhealthy while being thin and beautiful is acceptable. The impact of such influences has increased eating disorders in America. These disorders do not

Less common are cases in which the misuse of diuretics has resulted in the deaths of mother and child. Also found was that the use of excessive exercise in anorexic patients has shown an increase in the risk of miscarriage and premature birth. Overall, the most common complications associated with anorexia nervosa during pregnancy include low birth weight, delayed development, premature death, and prenatal death of infants (Franko and Walton 1993).

Lauren Green (2013) explains that anorexia is an obsessive-compulsive psychiatric disorder and physiologic syndrome, commonly known as an eating disorder. In the United States, this disorder affects between one to three percent of women. These women have a fear of gaining weight and they believe they are obese. Women who suffer from anorexia nervosa usually do not have a menstrual cycle every month, although this does not mean ovulation has ceased. Being able to notice the disease is the initial priority towards adequate prenatal care and education (Green, 2013). When these women do want to become pregnant, they need to start by taking the proper vitamins and try and have a body mass index (BMI) of greater than 19. Patients with a history of anorexia are more likely to take laxatives during