To The Bone Thesis

Depending on whom you ask, Netflix is either the best friend you could have on a weekend or a reckless conglomerate trying to seduce your children into becoming suicidal anorexics.
(www.w3livenews.com/2017/07/03/Netflix-s-To-the-Bone-depicts.../6630805

You may have heard some buzz around the newly released Netflix movie To the Bone. The trailer was hit with harsh comments from the public before the movie had been premiered, stating that the movie will glamourise eating disorders and potentially even harm the progress of recovering sufferers. To the Bone tells a story of Ellen who is a sarcastic teenager that struggles with the eating disorder and eventually seeks in-patient treatment despite being unconvinced that she can get better. The trailer

To the bone misses the point of raising awareness by stereotyping eating disorders and what someone with an eating disorder looks like. To the public mind, anorexia is already a young, emaciated, middle-class, white girl. There have been recent studies done on the general public and shows that we lack sufficient knowledge and information about eating disorders, leading us to incorrect beliefs about those who have them. If the movie was purposely meant for raising awareness, then why are we seeing exactly the character we expect to see onscreen? Eating disorders are serious and life threatening mental illnesses. The reality is that suffering from an eating disorder doesn’t mean you have anorexia, it doesn’t mean you are skinny and it doesn’t mean you are female. Eating disorders occur in individuals both women and men, young and old, rich and poor, and from all cultural backgrounds. Large population studies suggest that up to a quarter of people suffering with anorexia or bulimia in Australia are