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Being Thin

When I responded to this email a few weeks ago "Yes, I am interested", I had no idea what to expect to see .

On November 14, 2006 at 9pm EST, HBO Documentary Films presents Thin, an intimate look into the lives of four women suffering from an eating disorder.

Director Lauren Greenfield (author of the critically acclaimed book Girl Culture) has turned her focus on the epidemic levels disordered eating has taken in the past few decades. A disease once downplayed as a vanity issue, is now being recognized as a serious mental illness.

In Thin, Greenfield explores the various stages of recovery and downfall through group therapy sessions, mealtimes, weigh-ins and heated arguments.

In addition to Lauren being available for interviews, we have film screening opportunities, signed books and a custom resource guide available. We are currently looking for partners to help us communicate Lauren’s message. If you are interested in supporting this documentary, please contact me directly.

The first thing about the movie that struck me was how unobtrusive the camera was. It was like being there in person, watching the horrifying tales of these anorexic women unfold before you - when truth is told so starkly you are left feeling raw and wounded.

How small is small enough, how thin is thin enough are questions that the protagonists of this movie have not been able to answer. They have carried their obsession with thinness to the edge of insanity - to a point where they would rather kill themselves than ever be "big" or "fat" again. As a woman and a mother of a daughter, I had to wonder what combination of circumstances could trigger such irrationally dangerous behavior in an otherwise normal person - could I become one of them ?

I wondered about the size two and less women that I see swing in and out of Victoria's Secret, Gap and Ann Taylor Loft, about the many deprivations they must suffer to fit into those "small" clothes - about how they might be teetering on the brink of chronic eating disorder that may one day require them to be hospitalized and force fed through a tube.

"Thin" will make you question the premise of small and thin is beautiful - it will make you want to tell every super thin woman out there to watch this movie and save her life and sanity while she still can.

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