Dear "Starving Secrets"

Editor's note: Today's guest post comes from 15-year-old Bridgette T. I'm impressed with this young woman's articulateness and determination and I think you will be too. And if you're not sure you agree with her, I suggest you google the show and click on "images."

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Dear Starving Secrets,
I am a fifteen year old girl recovering from anorexia. This is currently my tenth week in an outpatient program. I began treatment in the program after my initial evaluation there resulted in me being sent to the hospital. I was in the hospital for sixteen days, though I never restricted during any meals except for my first one. I had to drink at least one Ensure every night, as my heart rate dipped into the 20s when I was asleep.

I’m not asking to be on your show. I’m asking you to reconsider it.

The title was the first thing that shocked me: Starving Secrets? Really? They’re making a pro-ana show?! Huh…that’s going to be pretty hard to stay away from…

Then I saw a commercial for it: What in the world? People with anorexia are being documented? If I were just a normal person and I found out that there was a show about people who were anorexic, and all I knew about anorexia was that it made you skinny-of course I would watch the show, to learn how they do it! How do they drop that much weight? I understand that the show also shows the negatives of eating disorders, but I don’t think kids are really going to take that into account. A big thing with eating disorders is the whole “It couldn’t happen to me” thing. At treatment, people are told that by not eating they are risking going to the hospital. Half of us already have gone to the hospital. Though vitals are tanking and we know that people have died from this disease, it doesn’t make people eat. Because you simply don’t believe it could happen to you, that you could be that girl whose funeral is on the local news because she starved herself to death.

Though this show may help inform some people, it’s also going to trigger many. Is it really worth the risk?

Sincerely,
Bridgette

Another entry in the annals of Bad Ideas in Eating Disorders

is a soon-to-be-aired reality show called, I kid you not, "Starving Secrets with Tracey Gold.

The idea is that child actress-grown-up Tracey Gold, who nearly died from anorexia in her early 20s but is now married and recovered, will meet one-on-one with women suffering from eating disorders. As the show's early PR puts it, Gold will "work with women in the grips of anorexia or bulimia as she uses her own experience to reach them in ways no one else can."

Really? No one else but this particular former actress can help these women? I knew the state of treatment was bad, but not this bad.

And who the hell gave the show this title? It doesn't sound like it's designed to help. It sounds like viewers will be treated to pro-ana tips from Gold.

I'm sure that's not her intention . . . right? Someone reassure me? Because so far I'm unconvinced.

I'm not a fan of reality shows in general, especially when they purport to stage interventions or reveal long-held secrets in a very public forum designed to entertain other people. They can't help but be exploitative-that's their whole raison d'etre. But this one sounds particularly egregious.

Ugh.

A Big Fat Bad Idea

I don't watch reality TV. Even if I did, I would not be tempted by this recent offering from TLC. The show reportedly follows a father-and-son team who perform bariatric surgery on "obese people who have opted to undergo weight-loss surgery in an attempt to regain their lives."

And here I thought obese people had lives, even without undergoing the risky-but-oh-so-profitable procedures performed by these butchers--I mean surgeons.

The producers would have you believe that this father and son are dedicated do-gooders out to make the lives of Fat People better by surgical mutilation, we know better.

We know, for instance, that nearly 40 percent of those who underwent such surgery last year had complications within 6 months, including vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, reflux, abdominal hernia, leaking at the surgical site between stomach and intestine, and infections of one sort or another.

We know that 7 percent of those who had the surgery had to go back to the hospital within 6 months to treat complications of the surgery.

The producers of this incredibly offensive show describe the father and son as "passionate" people "who have dedicated their professional lives to raising awareness about obesity."

Raising awareness? Um, did we need our awareness raised on this issue? Do those of us whose BMI qualifies us as overweight or obese just not realize it? Is there anyone living in America--heck, in the world--who hasn't been inundated with anti-fat propaganda and prejudice?

Captain Kirk was wrong; fat is the final frontier. And this show is one big fat bad idea.