TW - eating disorder
It's Eating Disorder Awareness Week in the UK (2-8 March 2020). Ella from Cambridge, England, developed unhealthy eating habits that heavily influenced her life after watching To the Bone on Netflix. The main character knows the calorie count of every single food item in her house: “In my mind, it was like a superpower that I wanted to have.”
Main character Ellen (Lily Collins) struggles with her weight. To The Bone: Netflix
To the Bone is a film on Netflix about a 20-year-old girl’s struggle with anorexia. The main character, Ellen, has severe issues with her body image and is shown counting every calorie and running up the stairs to burn them. She gets admitted to an intensive programme to get help and we see her journey to a healthier lifestyle, which basically serves as a subplot to a romantic storyline. Netflix’s main motivation for the film was to draw attention to eating disorders by showing a story about recovery. But for Ella, it was a gateway to her own issues with food.
“At the beginning of the movie, it was kind of like she was being rebellious. She put so much effort into food and it just made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough to be skinny. I felt like I was behind and needed to make up for my lack of effort. I started counting every single calorie I’d consume, and basically stop eating.”
Captain Skinny vs. the Calorie Monster
“There’s this scene in the movie where Ellen is in the kitchen with her half-sister. She knows the calorie count of every single food item in her house. Her sister is completely amazed by it and calls it a talent. It’s shown as something to be proud of. It was a superpower in my mind," Ella explains.
“I started looking into how many calories were in every single thing I ate. For example, one teaspoon of Nescafe’s instant coffee is 60 calories and if I put in one teaspoon of milk, it’s an extra 7 calories. I’d look up every single thing individually and then do my own maths.”
Glamorously thin
Ella has had issues with her body image her entire life but watching To the Bone created a domino effect into, as she calls it, “madness”.
“I really didn’t think anything was wrong at first. I watched the movie and took over some habits without thinking. It took me a long time to realise that what I was doing was bad for my health. My parents noticed though and sent me to somebody to get help. During a session, I was asked to write down my ideal body figure. When I finished the list, I noticed that I wanted to look like a lot of anorexic characters from movies like To the Bone. That’s when I realised the impact it had on my mental health.”
"Having an eating disorder was not at all as glamourous as I thought it’d be."
The movie ends at the moment Ellen discovers she actually wants to get better. It leaves the audience with an optimistic feeling about her future. But we don't see her story to recovery, only the shocking images of her bones peaking through her skin.
We asked if the images shown of Ellen’s stick-thin body weren’t putting her off the idea of developing an eating disorder for herself: “It’s going to sound really weird but at that time especially, I wanted to look like that. I thought she looked beautiful. I turned a blind eye to the bad consequences shown in the movie, like her almost dying, and focused on the tips and tricks she gave on how to avoid food. I thought that I would handle it better than her and was going to look even prettier.”
“By ignoring those consequences, I wasn’t ready for the changes that occurred in my own body. I had always really loved my hair, but it eventually started to get really thin. It was not at all as glamourous as I thought it’d be.”
Self-care Ella is now on her way to recovery and a lot more careful by taking trigger warnings into account: “I used to ignore them because I thought I was stronger than that, but people are fragile. Especially for people with a predisposition for mental illness, it’s so easy to get into a bad mindset. So, I now try to think about my own mental health before clicking on another Netflix show that could potentially trigger me.”
Find out more about eating disorders via Beat (UK) and sign their pledge to demand the best care, support and information for people with eating disorders and their friends and family.
If you struggle with an eating disorder, please contact WijZijnMind for Belgium & The Netherlands or contact your country's helpline.
If you ever think about suicide or self-harm, and are in need of a conversation, then you can always contact the Suicide Hotline on the number 1813 or www.zelfmoord1813.be for Belgium. For international helplines, please click this link.
Text: Femke Lippens
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