So near, so far

Yesterday morning I caught a few minutes at the end of a program called Pororo the Little Penguin that at first seemed fairly dead-on in its portrayal of a character with an eating disorder. So, naturally, descriptive triggers follow in the recounting of it. What I saw started with a pink beaver character (named Loopy according to the Wikipedia article) moping, looking at herself in the mirror and sighing that she is 'chubby'. Then her friends come over for lunch and are enjoying themselves, while she quietly sips a drink through a straw instead of eating. While doing so she visualises herself expanding in size as she drinks, and puts even that away. While she is lamenting that she is chubby and should not eat or drink anything, her friends are admiring a model in a magazine she has lying around. When they notice she is upset about her weight, they try to tell her she is not chubby but she does not believe them. And then... it all falls apart. She says she wants to be thin and pretty like the model in the magazine and the polar bear tells her if she wants to be thin she should exercise, and that dancing is great exercise. They all get up and dance happily. ~ fin ~ Speaking as someone who hasn't experienced it first-hand, that seemed an accurate and distressing portrayal of someone suffering from an eating disorder, immediately followed up by what is just about the worst possible response you could give in that situation presented as a permanent solution. From everything I've seen personally and elsewhere, eating disorders pretty commonly include obsessive exercising as part of their manifestation, so advising someone in any stage of one that exercise will solve eir problems is more likely just adding to them.