If This Is Anorexia, Sign Me Up

I want to talk about the character of Emma on the new CW teen drama, Red Band Society. Emma is hospitalized for anorexia. Ignore the fact that it makes no sense that an anorexic is in a general hospital pediatric ward instead of an eating disorders facility.  Most of the series makes no sense.  Look instead to the positive and appealing light with which anorexia is being portrayed in a show targeted to young female viewers. While none of the characters seem all that sick (aside from the missing leg....) I don't object to the other portrayals because one cannot be influenced into getting cancer or having a bad heart, no matter how cool it appears on television.  Anorexia is different.  It can be appealing if pictured as something sexy and desirable. Though most people won't have the mindset to find it so, many of the young girls who are the target audience for this drama will. You can play with anorexia, try it out. For some people it quickly becomes addictive, like alcohol or drugs. And like alcohol or drug addiction, anorexia is at worst deadly and at best, a life long struggle.

Emma is played by actress Ciara Bravo, who is quite tiny but appears very healthy.  Which is good.  I am NOT advocating hiring someone who actually suffers with anorexia.  However, make-up and costuming should be used.  Anorexia is neither pretty nor sexy.  Your hair falls out.  There are dark circles under your eyes.  You are always cold and often your muscles ache and cramp because they are eating themselves away.  Your skin is sallow and even if your face is round, your cheeks are hollow.  There is a scene in the second episode where the camera lingers over her abdomen, breasts and arms.  She looks hot.  Like a model.  There are no protruding bones or atrophied muscles, just a gorgeous young body.  Her hair is long, lustrous, and so very shiny.  Her eyes are bright and engaged and her cheeks are rosy. She has a great sense of style, even when dressed in a hospital gown. It is all very appealing, attractive and alluring.  If that is the face of anorexia, I am all in.

In interviews, the actress states that she has not suffered from an eating disorder (though she has been, in the perverse world of Hollywood, accused of having one).  To be perfectly clear, you do not need to have experienced something in order to inhabit a character.  Most actors are not murderers, rapists, or super heroes. What is required, especially if you are going to talk about it, is understanding. In a Celebuzz interview, she says  "something that I like about Emma is how she doesn't let that [living with an eating disorder] get her down too much. She's still incredibly driven and she's so smart and she's very witty..." What she doesn't understand is that anorexia takes up your entire being. It is eating away at you; when you are studying, at school, at a movie, out with friends, running your tenth mile though you have eaten only an apple and a one inch cube of cheese, and when you are trying to sleep but can't because your stomach acid is eating you alive, your mind is constantly torturing you and you cannot, no matter how many sweaters you pile on, get warm.  You feel all of the weight that you don't have, do one hundred sit-ups to counter calories consumed in the  extra skim milk you put into your coffee, you compare yourself to every person that you come across.  In an article on TheTVPage.com she says, " an eating disorder isn’t something that consumes your whole life.  You are still a person and you still have school to focus on and being a teen. I think Emma does a really good job of portraying that." Wrong. Dead wrong.  That is exactly what a eating disorder does.  It consumes your whole life, defining you. It destroys your body, mind and spirit.  

I think that the fault here only partially lies with Ms. Brava.  While she should be more careful with her talking points, and perhaps more complete in her research, she does say positive things about raising awareness and points out that Emma is getting help. She is a young actress who has been given a script, both on and off camera.  She doesn't have control over the show's styling or script. The producers, writers and directors are a different story.  I understand television.  Actors on the CW are by definition hot young things. That is the network's product and demographic. However, if part of the raison d’etre of the show is to raise awareness of the perils of anorexia, show a hot young thing whose body and soul is being destroyed by this obsessive and fatal disease. Show her hair falling out and her deadened eyes. Show her having a heart attack or seizure. The media is constantly under assault for setting unrealistic expectations for young girls by showcasing models. This is more insidious because though they are claiming she has the disease, none of the effects of it are visible. The final ridiculous element is the major plot point of the show: the romantic entanglements between Emma and the two lead cancer boys.  The likelihood of an anorexic being at the middle of a love triangle is almost non-existent.  Anorexia can be (though not always) about staving off sexuality and sexual relationships.

The CW can’t have this both ways.  If they want to raise awareness of anorexia, (while  raising ratings) they have a responsibility to do so honestly, by depicting what actually happens. Characters don’t smoke on television any more for this very reason. The target audience is too susceptible to suggestion.  Anorexia is not someone with a type A personality who won’t eat a cookie. It is the most fatal mental illness, by suicide or organ failure, there is. To portray anything else is reckless and stupid.

Running at Night

I roam at night. Usually it doesn't matter how tired I am or how many times I have worked out during the day.  Eleven PM or midnight hits and something, some thought or feeling or memory drives me from my house. I exit into the cold, almost hyperventilating in fear. Whatever it is; sadness or despair, guilt over a piece of bread or an extra handful of trail mix, an attempt to deflect the desire to once again inflict some sort of self harm, something pushes me out the door. Some nights I walk encumbered by extra weights, most nights I run, music pounding in my ears. The first few blocks are generally covered quickly, as if being pursued. I barely notice my surroundings. However fast I travel, it is always late and dark and unbelievably still.
 
The stillness of the night air evokes childhood memories.  I grew up in a time and place where children were given the freedom and responsibility to ride their bikes to school, to their friends' houses and to their after school commitments.  I often traveled home well after dark, pedaling down the dark suburban streets in the still cold air. I grew up near the San Francisco Bay and I hated riding my bike during the day. The afternoons were always blustery and it was hard work getting anywhere fighting a headwind while toting a heavy backpack. However after the sun went down, the wind also disappeared.  I would ride home in the silence, savoring my time alone. The streets seemed somehow fake and the world was suddenly something else; a movie set, something almost magical.  Late at night as I run alone, it still seems that way.

During my nighttime excursions, once I have momentarily escaped the demons and have settled into a rhythm, I start to look around.  I live in a particularly beautiful neighborhood with tree lined streets, lovely homes and well tended gardens. I usually head up into the hills.  The air in spring smells like jasmine and honeysuckle and rose. The walkways are illuminated and lights are always on in the windows. You can see into peoples' houses at night, differently than during the day. The light shines through, making an opaque world transparent.  I look into those windows as I run by and see bits and pieces of other (idealized) lives.  There is a baby's onesie hanging off the back of a chair, a half finished painting on an easel, the blue light of a television. Sometimes there is a cat sitting on the back of a chair or in a window sill, surveying the outside world.

I have been running at night for years now. I've run towards the ocean in the foggy Sunset district of San Francisco, along the quiet streets of Mill Valley and then back in San Francisco, up and down  the mansion lined hills of Pacific Heights.  It feels familiar, running the hills near Fryman Canyon.  Big unique houses that have the gorgeous patina of money and success.  I live in a monied neighborhood, hiding out in a small cottage behind a big mansion.  I sometimes imagine, while looking into the windows of houses that I will never be able to afford, what a life inside could be.  I know that will never happen.  The life I lead is not one of money and big houses, of a solid foundation built upon stability, a partner, commitment. I find my sadness often intensifies as I look through these windows, as I recognize my outsider status.  I wonder sometimes, could I just slip in unnoticed? Wipe down the kitchen counter, fold some stranger's laundry and slip into one of the over-sized beds?  Some sort of Goldilocks fantasy where I leave my own life and take on that of someone else.

There is something strangely intimate about looking into other peoples' houses uninvited and unseen. There are entire stories that spring up based upon just a tiny glimpse into a life.  The Harvey Edwards poster visible in a second story room transports me to my teenage room and my earlier ballet dreams. The shiny marble counter tops visible in a corner kitchen make me wonder if anyone ever cooks there.  The gorgeous roses everywhere remind me of my mom and her green thumb. Are these roses also tended to by a widow or are the ever present gardeners responsible for the stunning blooms? It gets more personal; will I ever have my own garden or a ballet obsessed teenager?  The answer is likely not. Yet, as I run the dark silent streets my mind can go there.  I can feel a hand on my back as I chop vegetables while standing at the shiny counter top.  I can feel the sun bake down on my head as I prune roses.  I can sigh at the teenager and remind her that an engineering or computer science career is easier on the toes and probably on the psyche.  I can peak into these softly illuminated rooms and imagine alternate lives, lives in which I am not alone or sad or barely scraping by. I have a husband and a child and a bright shiny house with a bright shiny car in the driveway and I don't need to run away from voices that taunt me at midnight, chasing me into the dark.

5th Position by Harvey Edwards