Since a misjudged anorexia storyline in Skins, television has continued to glorify and glamorise eating disorders. I am so relieved that Netflix’s hit teen drama has finally got it right
When I look back at my teenage years, I remember being hungry. In the tangle of GCSE exam panic, awkward adolescence, angst and first love, I decided I had to take charge of my life in the only way I knew I properly could. At 16, I made the very active decision to stop eating. Lunchtimes stretched out into blank space. Before going to restaurants, I compulsively checked menus in search of the smallest thing I could stomach and still go unnoticed. Calories listed on the back of food packets demanded attention. Numbers, values and sums swarmed and swamped my head. Food was an all-consuming obsession, but I was empty.
The desire to avoid eating informed almost every decision I made. I came late to dinner plans, parroting that “I wasn’t that hungry” or that “I’d eaten at home”. I’d shamefully tip full plates of food into the bin, pretending I hadn’t let any go to waste. But however hard I pushed myself to skip snacks or adjust the levels of what I was allowed – and not allowed – to eat, my struggle was an internal, quiet and solitary one.
