One of the most common myths about eating disorders is that they only affect white, mid-to-upper-class women — and pop-culture is certainly not exempt from perpetuating this harmful stereotype. In Netflix’s To the Bone, the protagonist documents her struggles alongside other patients in an eating disorder facility.¹ In Starving in Suburbia, a teen becomes engulfed by Anorexia Nervosa after discovering pro-anorexia websites on the internet.² In “Feed”, a  high school student develops an eating disorder after the tragic death of her brother.³ The trend amongst just three of the many movies that depict eating disorders is that all of the protagonists are thin, white women. Though the film industry needs to expand its diversity in eating disorder representation, this does not necessarily mean that those three films do a poor job of portraying the experience of eating disorders. While it is important to create media that bring awareness to the experience surrounding eating disorders,  eating disorders should be accurately represented through both size and racial diversity.

In truth, this myth has fatal implications when internalized. Often, people of color struggling with eating disorders are unaware that they are even struggling because of how white-washed eating disorders have become in pop-culture. In an interview with National Public Radio, American actress Karla Mosley opened up about her own eating disorder: “I am a woman of color and I certainly didn’t know that people like me had eating disorders. I thought it was a rich, white, female, adolescent disorder.”⁴ Mosley’s quote embodies the experience of being a woman of color struggling with a mental illness that is falsely labeled as being exclusive to white individuals. By not acknowledging that eating disorders can and do affect anyone, it negates the experiences of those who don’t fit into the eating disorder stereotype.