Eating disorders are no laughing matter

When I watched the premiere this month of "Starved," the new FX sitcom that claims to explore the comedic side of eating disorders, I wasn't sure if I thought it was all that funny. After seeing the second episode, I am sure — it's not funny at all.

There are actually some very humorous moments in the show, but that's exactly why I find it so troublesome. Eating disorders are serious business. Millions of women and men fight a daily life-and-death battle with anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating disorder. By turning these illnesses into comedy, their gravity is trivialized.

"Starved" chronicles the everyday lives and friendship of four adults, each suffering from a different variety of eating disorder. They binge, vomit, starve themselves and abuse laxatives, as well as obsessively weigh and measure their bodies.

The group consists of three men and one woman — an interesting choice, because real-life statistics consistently demonstrate that the number of women with eating disorders far exceeds that of men. Only about 10 percent of sufferers who reach out to mental-health clinicians are male. This kind of misrepresentation is just a further illustration of how the show, by departing so drastically from reality, trivializes a group of illnesses that, at their worst, can result in death.

The National Eating Disorders Association is particularly alarmed about this trivialization, but my greatest concern is slightly different. As someone who works with adolescent girls who struggle with body image and weight-loss issues, I worry that portraying eating disorders as comedy will serve to normalize them in the eyes of vulnerable teens.

Developmentally, teens have a trend-following mentality. They tend to jump on many bandwagons as they travel through the angst of extricating themselves from childhood. It doesn't take much for someone with a poor body image or with an intense desire to be thin to find a reason to actually try starving, bingeing or purging to obtain or maintain a low weight. A peer or family member engaging in such behavior could serve as a motivator. So could a TV show, which can provide ideas for how to engage in disordered eating while illustrating that everyone — even the most mainstream adult guy — can and is easily doing it.

It is a slippery slope, but we can't shield kids and teens from every peril they may encounter — especially those on TV.

Instead of focusing on the potentially detrimental effects of "Starved," we should use it as a tool for communication — a way to reach out and discover what teens are thinking and how they are feeling.