The concern expressed here (that even negative portrayals of driven behavior will increase that behavior) doesn't just apply to eating disorders, but all driven behavior including the adolescent male commitment to military and combat service....
When I was sick, there was a young adult book that centred around anorexia that I was obsessed with. I actually had a confronting interaction with it the other day. I work in a bookstore, and a young girl with her father came in and asked me if we stocked the book. I stood there for a moment, unsure of how to respond. How could I tell her that this book contributed to some of my worst stages of my illness? Her father was standing right next to her, should I have called her out in front of him? Thankfully, we didn’t have the book in stock, though I don’t know if I would have told her the truth if we did. For all I know, she could have just wanted to read it, and been perfectly healthy, though I don’t believe it’s ever really that kind of book.
It is a wonderfully well written novel, that captures eating disorders in a very accurate way. But when I was sick, this wasn’t representation to me, this was a novel filled with hints and tricks to help me become skinnier without getting caught.
I understand that the film is written and starred in by women who have suffered from eating disorders, and that they’ve done their best to represent an incredibly serious topic. But it terrifies me to think how dangerous it was for Lily Collins to lose so much weight for the role without relapsing, or why she even needed to. The actress is thinspo (thin-inspiration, a common term among anorexic people, of things reminding you not to eat) on a normal day, but not everyone who has an eating disorder looks like that.