With the release of To the Bone, there's been a swell of threads on MPA, posts on Instagram, and I'm sure it's all over Tumblr too. Unlike the release of Starving in Suburbia, this reaction wasn't quite as comical. Instead, the discussions talk about whether or not the movie was accurate, whether it gave you feels, how bad the contours were in certain lighting.
I won't be the first to forget there's a sea of much worse disorder movies. It's simply the best they could do at this point.
In my opinion, the worst crime they commit in making these movies is a lack of time-passing. Every one of them seems the span of a few days or weeks. The reality is that there is a great deal of waiting to do in an eating disorder. Time spent fighting hunger with no energy to do anything but sit there trying to ignore it. Or time spent running and exercising, trying to pass enough time to have burned enough off. Or time waiting for binge food to cook, or your unwilling dinner to come out of the kitchen, or simply counting out every calorie before eating. One of the biggest characteristics of your life is your indefinite patience, waiting to be thin. Waiting to see yourself as thin. There is no set date, no number which will click on the scale and release the shackles from your ankle like a combination lock. These movies make it seem as though things actually change and happen. I wish I could see a new number on the scale once a week, I don't even dream of a new one every day.
But that's how we go unnoticed. The longer it takes, the smaller the changes, the less people see. Whatever.
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