To The Bone Movie Analysis

The way the show addresses Raj’s social anxiety is even worse. When the show first begins Raj is completely unable to speak to women, and struggles to speak to strangers. Yes, social anxiety can make it hard for someone to interact with others, but the disorder itself is much worse. In his article Joshi says “Social anxiety isn't that specific. It's something that affects every area of your life, sometimes to the point where people don't leave their house for weeks at a time.” Again this is another example of the show downplaying a disorder. The Big Bang Theory even goes on to poorly address the way the disorder is dealt with (Joshi). In real life the disorder is dealt with either drugs or “Cognitive behavioral therapy [which] is an effective

Yes the movies does attempt to shine a light of hope for recovery for those that live with eating disorders. They even hired an actress who herself has dealt with the disorder herself. However the show still stereotypically depicts “another young, white, thin, cisgender female struggling with anorexia” (Virzi). The inclusion of an actress who has the disorder could have resulted in a groundbreaking film, but the film focused too much on how the disorder ‘looks’ rather than actual symptoms or what the illness is actually like. Virzi points out that they focused so much so on the looks that, they asked the main character, who suffered from the disorder herself, to lose weight to fit the appearance they wanted. The movies does show some actual symptoms, “counting calories, exercising excessively and struggling at meal time,” however these are stereotypical symptoms that we’ve already seen numerous times before (Virzi). The movie gives us just another movie about a skin and bones female who struggles with the disorder with seemingly no reason as to why. As an article from Mayo Clinic states “People with eating disorders may have psychological and emotional problems that contribute to the disorder. They may have low self-esteem, perfectionism, impulsive behavior and troubled relationships.” The reasoning behind Ellen’s disorder is lacking in the movie. Also Virzi goes on to