Gok’s Teens: The Naked Truth (if, by truth, you mean extreme simplification)

I stupidly thought we were getting somewhere and moving on from blaming all our weight-related problems on the most glaringly obvious causes. I thought lazy scapegoating was getting old and boring. I thought we had grown up and wisened. I was wrong, and Gok Wan’s new Channel 4 series has more than provided more than enough proof.

Tonight, the focus of the first of his ‘Gok’s Teens’ was body image. Two girls talked about how much time they spent on the Internet gawping at pictures of models, skinny celebrities and pro-ana sites before discussing how this contributed to one obsessing over herself so much that she photoshopped all pictures of herself (poor love) and the other developing Anorexia. When I say ‘contributing’ though, no other factors were mentioned or even suggested.

Viewers were bombarded with images from pro-ana websites, catwalk models resembling zombies and ‘real life’ pictures of other anorexic girls. Again and again, we’re told that eating disorders and poor body confidence is purely the result of us having constant access to the internet. The internet is to blame, it’s evil and wrong. That’s as far as it goes.

The media and fashion world have long been an excuse rather than a reason; an easy, on the surface, logical explanation for why increasing numbers of teenagers and even children are developing eating disorders. Throw the internet in there too and you have a nice little equation that sits nicely, can be presented simply in that it makes sense and is uncomplicated, visual and makes for ’sexy’ television.

‘TRIGGER (skinny, airbrushed models) + ACCESS (the bastard interweb) = ANOREXIA

It isn’t so much the simplification in itself that gets my blood boiling. I work in television and I know that it’s completely irrational to expect all the complexities to be covered; there has to be a narrative to follow. It’s the fact that the narrative that this episode followed is based on myth, not fact. That is, that anorexia is about vanity. Not once did this programme explain that anorexia is a mental illness, that it kills more of its victims than any other psychiatric condition and that it grips its sufferers with such force that only 46% ever make a full recovery. It suggests, like so many other accounts, that it is a choice that young girls make; a change of lifestyle as a result of a few skinny models.

If the internet caused anorexia, as absurdly suggested continuously throughout, then every one of us would fall into the trap. Anorexia existed long before the internet.

I have said time and time again, and I bore myself saying it, that not one person I have ever met who has suffered with anorexia or bulimia has ever blamed the media for their illness. Wherever this belief came from, I have an uncontrollable urge to slap anyone who allows that ridiculous, narrow-minded and quite frankly, insulting idea to perpetuate.

I am all for body confidence and I completely support those who campaign to promote education in that area. I believe that our government should listen to those who ask for it to be a compulsory part of PSHE lessons. But if you’re going to make a programme with the intention of promoting positive messages and use the word ‘truth’ in the title – at least make the effort to make those messages accurate and well, true.

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