Unnecessary Remarks
Listening to the Savvy Traveler this afternoon, I heard something I never thought I'd hear on a public radio broadcast. It stunned me and angered me. A commentator from New York named Mary Lou was talking about her and her husband's doomed struggle with vacation packing. Her self-deprecatory remarks about the impossibility of the task wound up with her comment that she and her husband were like a couple of bulimics in front of a refrigerator stuffing
clothes into their suitcases.
Does the piece reflect, or at least not conflict with, those ethics for which public radio stands. I know I pay annual membership dues to my local public radio station because it brings me programming which simply isn't available commercially. It's a cut above, in sensitivity, in scope, in presenting under-represented view points, and in a lack of banality, and coarseness. So I am amazed that her little off-hand remark about bulimia was allowed to remain.
As the 20th century winds to a close, you don't often hear blacks being laughed at for being lazy, or Jews for being cheap, or homosexuals for being deviant. Drunk driving isn't considered a laughing matter. Parodies of drunks like Dean Martin aren't so visible either. But apparently people with eating disorders are still fair game. I've certainly heard remarks on the commercials stations making anorexics and bulimics the butt of jokes. This is a first for public radio.
Not only is bulimia a disease recognized by the American Medical
Association, but its main victims are women - young women at that. So, the cheap little laugh at a bulimic's expense is all the more tawdry.
So what's the big deal? I guess it's that bulimics feel enough shame and are so isolated already by an illness which repels and frightens them, that having a credible network depict the horror of their disease as a joke only further diminishes them in their own eyes. Moreover, this sort of representation creates more misunderstanding about the disease and its victims. There is so much ignorance about eating disorders now, and how they manifest themselves, and who the sufferers are, that what is really needed is compassionate handling, not more put-downs.
Mary Lou's glib remark caused me pain, and I would guess, anyone else whose family has been ravaged by this illness. How lucky that to her, bulimia is a crude little joke.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I've never heard any programming on public radio address this health issue. Maybe it's time.
-Theresa
{ Previous Letter
| This Week's Index |
Next Letter }
{ Main Letters Page }
