I am incredibly irritated. I was at the gym and Dr. Oz came on t.v. He was doing a story about a girl who is severely anorexic and quite literally, near death. The focus was on how impaired she was, how underweight she was, how low her medical stats were, how many pounds she had lost, how many times she had gone to the emergency room, how many calories she had lost. All about numbers. Yes, Dr. Oz was trying to spread awareness and education. I get that. And yes, awareness is important.
But there’s a bigger issue here. And the issue is all of the individuals who are watching that and their response is, “Oh. I’m not 30 pounds underweight. I haven’t been to the ER. I don’t eat under 500 calories a day. I guess I’m not sick then. I guess it’s not a problem.”
I mean, really, would Dr. Oz have brought someone on the show, noticed them, reached out to them, offered them that help and support to recover if the individual was normal weight and didn’t visibly look sick? No, probably not. And that right there is the problem.
I get that people think that the extreme cases make a point. And maybe they do. But that just reinforces the stereotype, the false belief, that you’re not sick unless you’re underweight. That it doesn’t matter unless you’re fainting. That it’s not real unless you go into the hospital.
And that’s so, not true.
