Monday 20 April 2009

The Truth About Online Anorexia/ Louis Theroux/ Slumdog Millionaire

Forgive me, folks, I'm about a week behind on TV at the moment, thanks to my stupid aerial, but you can probably still get this stuff on catch up, innit, if it's that bloody good. This is my mish-mash blog, with something for nobody.
And so another asinine TV presenter makes a 'serious' documentary (hi there, Alesha Dixon and Louise Nurding). This time it's crow-faced Fearne Cotton checking out 'pro-ana' websites (good advertising for them, right?) in The Truth About Anorexia.
Fearne looked at an anorexia messageboard and said 'how is this even online?' How naive is she? There's kids being raped online, Fearne, you can download anything in your wildest dreams. It's a free-for-all! It's the INTERNET. Best friend to the mentally ill and the grotesquely lonely. Plus, you're advertising it.
Fearne then went to visit some schoolkids to tell them not to worry about being fat, whilst being very thin herself. What a good role model. It was sick hearing children talk about calories, but all children are doomed now, anyway.
As usual in these programmes Fearne took the hypocritical step of 'trying out' an anorexia 'diet' (again, what a good role model).
She read on a messageboard, 'Fat people can't fit anywhere'. They can fit some places, just not through turnstiles. Fearne then made a collage of thin people to provide 'thinspiration' (giving them ideas) and said 'the last time I made a collage was when I was about 7.' Really, you're missing out, my collages are the talk of the town!
Woah, anorexia is the biggest killer of any mental illness in the UK and one in five girls with it dies of the condition! Wow, that's a lot.
Fearne then went to meet the mother of a girl who died of anorexia aged 19. Her mum told her to 'just eat more food' which is my general feeling towards anorexia. But I'm not so stupid that I think it's that easy. But how can they look in the mirror and think they look nice when they look like frail old women? It truly is a mental illness, like you go blind or something. The pictures are so horrific. It's like a horror-show.
But I don't believe celebrity causes it. Yet I don't believe it helps, either.
How awful to watch your child die of a self-inflicted illness like that.
When I was researching my novel I visited a lot of self-harm sites and they were pretty grim.Those galleries were not pretty, but they were proud of the mutilation. There's fucked-up people out there. In a way it's good they have a community that isn't the whitewashed media, but actually content with no filters is dangerous, too. I'm forever glad there was no internet when I was a young teenager.
Also, Fearne, you're not a children's TV presenter anymore (are you?) Could you stop talking in that patronising voice. Thanks.
Oh I also saw Louis Theroux's show on paedophiles which was excellent, obviously. There's not much to say about it, just watch it. Louis says more with one raised eyebrow than Fearne could in an entire lifetime. The woman in control of the bloody place was worse that the paedos! She was so stiff and robotic she made you side with child molesters. That's not right on any level.
PPS. I was going to do a whole blog on Slumdog Millionaire as I finally watched it, but what's the point, everyone has already seen it, so I'll just say a few irrelevant words. I thought it was beautifully shot, put together well, and I enjoyed it greatly. It deserved all the acclaim. I liked the British call-centre, plus my boyfriend found the Millionaire music playing over a dramatic scene near the end very funny. The dance was a nice touch, too. Probably the best bit was when he 'phoned a friend'- it was a real heart-stopper.
I thought the woman love interest was slightly miscast as she was a little too glam for Dev's character, and the film was a bit depressing at times, (no shit given the subject matter), but those were my only niggles. The children in it were excellent (don't sell her, you bastard dad git) and super-cute. The evil Chris Tarrant figure was really horrid, and excellently realised.
Next: Deal or No Deal: the feature film? I live in hope.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

How can we sit here and let this disease kill our friends and family? I have already lost someone to this mess and I pray that people become more aware of this disorder.

http://www.eatingdisorder.com/anorexia-nervosa.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=pv&utm_content=zs&utm_campaign=anorexia

asterisk said...

That anoreia show was stupid but compelling.

I haven't seen Slumdog yet, so :p

aste said...

*anorexia* (Duh).

Anonymous said...

like your line about people being a download away from their wildest/darkest fantasies/dreams. at the risk of sounding like a pretentious quote-at-the-drop-of-a-hat-cunt (hey, why break the habit of a lifetime, right?), 'for $200 anyone can conceive a God on video'.

Anonymous said...

then again the geezer who wrote that line was an anorexic, sel-harming chronically depressed alcoholic :)