"83.6?"
For decades, Hollywood has exploited our
morbid fascination with eating disorders
in one dramatic film after another.
But the facts are that an estimated
30 million Americans will suffer some form
of eating disorder in their lifetimes.
“Something in your brain and in your body
says, no, no, no, wait a minute.
Starving is bad, starving will kill you.
But for me, I felt calm for the first time
that I could ever remember.”
Given the grim statistics
and media attention,
why are there still so many
misconceptions about eating disorders?
“No one knows that you can die from it,
no one knows
you’re slowly killing yourself.”
Throughout the 1970s,
pop artist Karen Carpenter
and her brother Richard
sold tens of millions of records.
Karen’s distinctive voice propelled them
to a celebrity status enjoyed by few.
“It’s one of those instant, radio
kinds of voices. You hear it, and
in two seconds of it,
you immediately recognize who it is.
And, hers was an unmistakable voice.”
[music]
But behind that voice,
Karen Carpenter battled a serious illness
and was literally
starving herself to death.
“On the outside, we didn’t see that
for a number of years. It was around 1975
that people really started
to take notice of her, of her weight loss
and to the point of being emaciated.”
“Well, Karen and Richard that’s the first
we’ve heard from you in three years.
It’s the first time you’ve sung together
live now in five years. Why?
Where have you been?
What’s been happening?”
“Well, we decided to take a
small vacation, take some time off."
“The interview where Sue Lawley asks her,
were you suffering from
the slimmer's disease is
what she called it, anorexia nervosa.”
“There were rumors though you were
suffering from the slimmer’s disease."
“The look of terror
on Karen's face is very telling.”
“No, I was just pooped.
I was tired out.”
"You went down to about six stone
in weight, I think, didn’t you?”
“She didn’t want to admit it.”
“I have no idea what six stone weight is."
“So she lied, and became very defensive.”
"I think about 84 pounds.”
"No."
"No?"
"No."
“The family was trying to deal with it
on an outside sort of way.
All she needed to do was eat,
in their opinion,
and everything would be fine.”
In a desperate attempt to lose weight,
Carpenter took multiple medications,
including laxatives
and a syrup called ipecac,
which induced vomiting.
By 1982, she weighed only 77 pounds
and had to be admitted to the hospital.
“They were able to put 30 pounds on her,
but that was from an intravenous
feeding, basically.”
But the damage had been done.
“A big shock in the music world tonight
and to the family and friends of
Karen Carpenter.”
“The pop singing star
died today of cardiac arrest.
She was just 32 years old.”
Carpenter quickly became
the poster girl for an entire disorder,
launching stereotypes that persist today.
"Mother, how can anybody be too thin?
Women are suppposed to be thin now."
"Be sensible about it for once."
"I am!"
“When you look at movies
about eating disorders
typically it's movies about anorexia,
and the protagonist is
young, white and emaciated.
There’s typically some sort of
family dysfunction that's seen as
the cause of the eating disorder.
And so, you know, you get this narrow view
of what eating disorders are.”
Carrie Arnold developed anorexia
as a teenager
and has written extensively about it.
She says we also hear very
little about men who suffer
and make up about a third of those
who develop eating disorders.
“It’s less common for men to come forward
and say to their doctor, 'You know,
I think I have a problem with food.’
Because it's seen as
quote unquote a woman's thing.
And so, you know, it’s hard to know
whether it’s an issue of it being actually
less frequent among males
or whether it's just not recognized.”
And men are not the only ones
whose disorders go unrecognized.
“We don’t get talked about enough
and it’s not just African-Americans.
There’s Hispanic,
there are Asian-Americans
struggling with eating disorders.”
At the age of 13, Ayanna Bates
says her anxiety became
so great that she stopped eating.
“Starving was used to hurt myself
and it was also used for control.
So I’m like, wow. I did this for two days.
Let me see if I can do it for
two more days.
It was like an exciting feeling
because it felt like at the time
that was the only thing I was good at.
So it gave me a sense of empowerment.”
But she soon learned
that the complexity of eating disorders,
and the lack of understanding
that they afflict minorities, have made it
harder for patients to get diagnosed.
“One African-American story I found was
she was struggling
with binge eating disorder
and the doctor says, 'Oh, no, that's not
a binge eating disorder.
That’s not an eating disorder. You're just
overweight and you're just overeating
because you're fat.
And she was refused treatment
because of that.”
Dr. Evelyn Attia,
a leading researcher in the field,
says that while some treatment for
eating disorders has advanced,
myths continue,
often leading to devastating consequences.
“Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa,
binge eating disorder.
All of those conditions are not equally
associated with high rates of death.
Anorexia nervosa is, with certainty.
And a significant percentage of the
deaths associated with these disorders
are due to suicide,
so that connection is an important one,
it's a frightening one.”
In fact, the suicide rate for people
suffering from eating disorders is one of
the highest among mental illnesses.
“People don’t know that it could be a way
to slowly kill yourself.
That’s why I was using my eating disorder,
I hoped
that if I starved myself long enough
that I wouldn’t wake up the next morning.”
“There’s been increasing understanding
over the last several decades that
this is a serious psychiatric illness.
This is a brain-based disorder.”
And still,
research funding for eating disorders
remains far lower than other
serious mental illnesses.
“I think some of it is that
eating disorders are
still largely seen as a choice.
And so, you know, why would
you need to research something
that someone can just eat and,
you know, get over it.”
In a society long obsessed with thinness,
and where you can find online communities
that cheer on anorexic weight loss,
Carrie Arnold says it’s no wonder the
public isn’t getting the message
about eating disorders.
“I was really pale.
My skin was kind of grayish yellow.
My hair was falling out,
my clothes were falling off
and yet, at the same time,
I'd get questions of people asking me,
you know, ‘How did you do it?’
Like they were asking me for diet tips
even as, you know,
my heart was giving out.
And so,
there just a lot of misunderstanding.”