Thin Documentary Analysis

While watching the documentary “Dying to be Thin”, I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness and discomfort. These women don’t see themselves the way everyone else does. They see themselves as fat and ugly; when they are really thin and beautiful. This aspect of eating disorders has always fascinated me because it is almost as if the patient is blinded by what is actually in front of them. They are in complete denial of their looks.

To briefly summarize, “Dying to Be Thin” was a documentary sharing the stories of young females suffering with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is an emotional disorder where an individual starves themselves in order to lose weight. Bulimia nervosa is another eating disorder where the individual binges enormous amounts of food at a time and then forces vomiting. In both cases, the diseases are very harmful to the human body and can ultimately lead to death if untreated.

Dying To Be Thin chronicles the journeys of different individuals who have suffered, or are suffering from, AN and BN. This documentary gives personal stories that tend to draw more emotional responses than in the scholarly articles we read this week. The prognosis for these disorders were not promising and often the women in the film had been suffering for a long time with their disorders before they sought help. I had a reaction of anger to some parts in this when the women reported they were reinforced for being extremely thin, frail, and unhealthy. Their schemas of self worth seemed to have been very skewed. Almost all the women report some bullying when they were younger about their weight or suggestions by role model/adult figures that insisted they needed to lose weight. It also made me sad to think that these women felt they were only worthy to connect with if they were thin. In some cases it appeared as though the women withdrew and were isolated by their own choice when they were not as thin as they would like to be. There was some optimism in the documentary with the story of one woman who is now a plus sized model and is in full

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 reviewing the “Dying to be Thin” (2000) video and the two studies on anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) my view of these two disorders has been expanded and somewhat altered. The “Dying to Be Thin” video looked at the history, triggers, medical complications and treatments. It documents the struggles of models, dancers and teenagers with the disease. The two studies on AN and BN asked patients in a therapeutic setting to write letters to their disorders from the friend and foe perspective. The results were interesting and merit further studies.

Hello everyone. My name is Ruth and I want to talk to you guys about eating disorders. An eating disorder is essentially an illness that disrupts a person’s every day diet which can cause a person to pretty much stop eating or over eat, depending on the illness. These illnesses are more apparent in the teenage years and in to young adulthood (Pinel, 2011), which makes sense because this is when we start becoming more aware of our bodies as well as other people’s bodies. We might want to look like the model we just saw on TV and will do anything to get that body, right? But an eating disorder is not the way to go; we will get in to the effects of

Eating disorders are extremely serious and often even fatal. They are tremendously trying on both the person with the disorder, and those who are close to them. I remember the time that my roommate and I were watching TV with a group of girls when one of the girls started commenting on how fat a certain actress had become, and how gross she looked. I saw the look on my roommate’s face when she heard this girl criticize this actress who still looked practically perfect. More than anything, the weight this actress had put on made her look healthier than she had before. I became quite concerned though when I noticed that my roommate ate nothing for the next three days, and the one meal she did eat I am certain she threw up soon after. My roommate, like many other girls, was trying to achieve an unattainable goal. Some girls will just never be so thin, and struggling to be is very dangerous.

“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 longing to reach the norm many people fall victim to these detrimental illnesses. Sadly, women are more subject to these eating disorders than men, the number of men suffering from eating disorders is on the rise. Our culture puts pressure on each of its inhabitants to attain this ideal body type that is unrealistic for most people. The images that pollute television and magazines make us all feel inadequate if we don't meet the credentials of slenderness; therefore, continuing the role of our society in the development of eating disorders.

The documentary Thin, followed the lives of four different women, as they struggled to rehabilitate from their eating disorders. The documentary followed these women as they were short-term residents at an impatient treatment facility in Florida that specialized in helping those with severe eating disorders. One participant, Shelly was admitted into the facility after complications relating to her excessively low body weight of 82lbs. She restricted her food intake to the extent that she required administration of a feeding tube to absorb nutrition. However, it was revealed during the documentary that she had been using her feeding tube to purge food.

Therefore, treatment approaches that are the most effective are still being developed and refined based on emerging research. The various methods utilized in the past include: medication, psychodynamic therapy, behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and a combination of methods (Cororve & Gleaves, 2001). In the current literature, leading research on treatment focuses on pharmacology and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

While the types of eating disorders differ in symptoms, at the heart of both is an intense fear of becoming overweight and fat. They are a common and very dangerous disorder in which they hurt the person’s body and mental process. Proper attention and treatment is mandatory to get the person healthy again. Treatment like therapy and Cognitive Behavioral therapy is the most effective, however with each situation, treatment should vary. Center Stage depicts very well how influences of others and oneself can lead to an eating disorder. The ability to relate this movie to real life circumstances is uncanny, and it depicts perfectly how pressures of life and family can result in unhealthy situations.

The purpose of this article was to explain how three constant change, choice, and principle provide stability in the time of great uncertainty in an effective leadership in a healthcare setting. (Govier, 2009). The difference between management and leadership is that management is concerned mainly with order and consistency while leadership is centered on change and movements. Management focuses on controlling complex process while leadership is about challenging existing ways of doing things and setting new directions in organizations. The author argues that management is about “doing a thing right way” while leadership is about “doing the right things” (Govier, 2009).

An eating disorder is an illness that involves an unhealthy feeling about the food we eat. “Eating disorders affect 5-10 millions Americans and 70 million individuals worldwide” (www.eatingdisorderinfo.org 1). They also affect many people from women, men, children, from all ages and different races. People who have eating disorders usually see themselves as being fat when they really aren’t. This usually deals with women or teenage girls mostly. They watch television, movies, read articles in magazines, and see pictures of the celebrities whom they want to be like because they have the “ideal body” that everyone wants and craves for. The media makes us all think we need those types of bodies to be happy with ourselves, be more successful

Another aspect that I think it is important to discuss, is the descriptors that were used in creating the ‘eating disorder persona’ – for lack of a better term. The individuals in Dying to Be Thin were described by professionals as “harm avoidant”, “perfectionists”, and “controlled”. To me, this indicates a point in