'To the Bone'

**warning: contains spoilers**

To the Bone is a movie on Netflix about eating disorders, mostly focusing on anorexia nervosa and featuring a few people who suffered from bulimia nervosa. The movie has sparked tons of controversy and people are calling for it to be removed, but this is just my opinion on the movie.

The film was directed by Marti Noxon, produced by Bonnie Curtis, Karina Miller, and Julie Lynn, written by Marti Noxon, and starred actors such as Lily Collins, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, and Keanu Reeves. The movie was officially released in January 2017 on Netflix.

Let's break down a character list real quick, why don't we? Lily Collins was casted as Ellen (who later requested to be called Eli by the other inpatients), a 20-year-old patient with anorexia; Keanu Reeves was casted as Doctor William Beckham, the doctor who helped people get into the inpatient facility; Carrie Preston was casted as Susan, Ellen's stepmother (and Susan had a hateful attitude toward Ellen's mom and other stepmother due to their lesbian relationship); Lili Taylor was casted as Judy, Ellen's mother; Alex Sharp was casted as Luke, a male 19-year-old patient with anorexia; Liana Liberato was casted as Kelly, Ellen's 18-year-old half-sister; Brooke Smith was casted as Olive, Judy's girlfriend (Brooke is not seen much throughout the movie); Leslie Bibb played Megan, a patient with anorexia who is pregnant; Kathryn Prescott was casted as Anna, a patient with bulimia; Ciara Bravo was casted as Tracy, a patient with bulimia; Maya Eshet casted as Pearl, an anorexic patient; Lindsay McDowell was casted as Kendra, a patient suffering from binge eating disorder; Retta was casted as Lobo, the inpatient nurse (who is not seen much through out the movie); and Alanna Ubach played Karen, the therapist (not seen often).

The movie starts off with Ellen in an inpatient facility where they're sitting down in group therapy doing a project where they cut out magazine pieces and glue/tape them onto a piece of paper. A few of the girls are explaining their frustration about how society is; they describe a magazine with a calorie-filled chocolate cake on one page and the very next page is an add for diet pills or a diet where someone lost so much weight and the girl is frustrated as to where the balance is; do you eat the cake and take a pill or do you just skip the cake and go on a strict diet? Ellen harshly tells the girl to stop complaining and the counselor tries to tell her to be more constructive and to be kind to the other girl's feelings. Ellen smirks and then holds up her piece of paper that states: "Suck My Skinny Balls."

She then leaves the facility, hails a cab, and goes home to her father, Jack, and stepmother, Susan. Rosa, the maid, tells her to take the room in the garage and that's where she goes to do some sit-ups.

When she's called for dinner, she sits by her sister Kelly, and her sister pulls out her phone as Ellen begins to number off the calories on the plate, counting for the pork meat, green beans, roll, noodles, and butter; she gets all of the calories correct and her sister remarks that she has "calorie Aspergers." Then, they begin eating.

Jack and Susan walk in the door and apologize for being late to dinner; after dinner, Susan has a talk with Ellen, advising her that Jack is worried. Ellen says Jack should be having the talk with her, but Susan says he'd rather that she talks to Ellen instead. She then says that Ellen has to still be eating and putting on weight or else they would put her on the bus the next morning to go to her mom's. Susan then leads Ellen to the bathroom to weigh her.

She then takes a picture of Ellen and shows her, asking her if she's proud of it and if that's pretty to her; Ellen simply replies, "No," after looking at the picture. Susan says they can't go through this again with Ellen and leaves the room.

The next scene is Ellen walking by Jack and Susan's room later that night; she hears them fighting and goes to Kelly's door, knocking and asking if they could go for a drive. They do and they stop by the bottom of a hill and Ellen leads Kelly up to the top, claiming that the view is amazing. They sat down and talk; Kelly shows Ellen a butterfly tattoo she had gotten and Ellen tells her it's a "retarded butterfly" because it was basic.

Later on, Susan takes Ellen to a doctor appointment to see Doctor William Beckham, which Susan had to work hard to get the appointment. He takes Ellen's vitals and notices the bruising on her protruding spine (from doing sit-ups) and the fluffy hairs on her arms (called lanugo, which are from her body trying to stay warm); he tells her that she likes what she's doing to herself and that he would not treat her unless she was willing to do six weeks of inpatient and get better. She protests, saying she doesn't need more inpatient, and he says that he won't help her then, so she agrees to into inpatient care.

After the appointment, Susan, Ellen, and Kelly sit down for dinner; Jack doesn't show up because he was running late, a reoccurring theme that carries on throughout the movie. Susan asks Ellen if she's a lesbian like her mother, saying she might be starving herself if she was not accepting her sexuality. Both of the kids laugh and mock her for it, Ellen explaining that she was straight and didn't have any confusion over her sexuality. Susan goes quiet for a moment and then offers dessert; a cake molded to look like a hamburger, and on top, in red icing, it says: "Eat up, Ellen!"

When Ellen arrives at the inpatient house; she's put into a room with Anna and Pearl (when she arrived, Pearl was sitting in bed being tubed, which happens to people of malnutrition and people who struggle with eating disorders; the tube will give them nutrients, such as sugars, to keep them alive and to try to keep their organs functioning as well as possible). Then, they search her bags, asking if there are any blades; she says no and they confiscate her vitamin pills, phone, and iPad she uses to draw (she used to have a Tumblr, and a girl ended up committing suicide and left the note to Ellen). Susan left the facility and Luke takes Ellen on a tour of the house.

The therapist Karen leads a group therapy session after the tour; she welcomes Ellen and explains that they would do that daily and that each person would have to talk about a victory of the day but then talk about a struggle they had that day. They then go around the circle and start with Pearl; she explains her struggle was being tubed and she felt all hot and was obsessing over the calories, saying the doctors wouldn't tell her (for an anorexic person, not knowing the calories can make them very anxious and they oftentimes will do whatever they can to burn off the calories). Ellen then impulsively interjects and says it's 1,500 calories and Pearl starts to freak out a little bit. Karen then asks Ellen to respect that they don't allow people to interject or to talk about numbers, including weights and calories. Ellen apologizes and Karen moves on with the group therapy.

When dinner time rolls around, Ellen is told by Lobo that she could have any foods she wanted, like Kendra, who always had a jar of peanut butter to eat from at meal times. Lobo said that if Ellen had any special foods, just say something to one of the nurses and they would arrange for Ellen to get that food at mealtimes. The patients sit down, put food on their plates, Luke says grace, and then they begin eating. Pearl gets up and runs into the other room to cry; Luke gets up and follows her to comfort her. Megan informs Ellen that she upset Pearl by mentioning the calories, but assured her to not feel bad about it.

Now the movie goes on and a few things happen—Megan has a miscarriage when she tries to purge in the bathroom, Ellen leaves after Luke kisses her and claims he's in love with her (after knowing her for only a few weeks), and she goes to her mother's for a while before going back to her father's house.

All in all, is it a good movie? Yes, of course! But do I think the movie should have left some things out? The only thing they really should have left out was the romance between Luke and Ellen/Eli. People are saying that Netflix tried to romanticize eating disorders, and that is not true—besides that one scene, there was no dating, sex, no more kissing, etc. I liked the brutality of the movie—it talked about laxatives, purging, starvation, excessive exercise, and the chew-and-spit rule some people with anorexia or bulimia will go on.

Overall, it brings attention to what eating disorders are and how dangerous they are; eating disorders are becoming more and more common, and Netflix released a movie that brought light to the issue. Do I think the movie should be banned? Hell no.

~Scott