I lived with an eating disorder. TV almost never got it right – until Heartstopper
When I look back at my teenage years, I remember being hungry. In the tangle of GCSE exam panic, awkward adolescence, angst and first love, I decided I had to take charge of my life in the only way I knew I properly could. At 16, I made the very active decision to stop eating. Lunchtimes stretched out into blank space. Before going to restaurants, I compulsively checked menus in search of the smallest thing I could stomach and still go unnoticed. Calories listed on the back of food packets demanded attention. Numbers, values and sums swarmed and swamped my head. Food was an all-consuming obsession, but I was empty.
The desire to avoid eating informed almost every decision I made. I came late to dinner plans, parroting that “I wasn’t that hungry” or that “I’d eaten at home”. I’d shamefully tip full plates of food into the bin, pretending I hadn’t let any go to waste. But however hard I pushed myself to skip snacks or adjust the levels of what I was allowed – and not allowed – to eat, my struggle was an internal, quiet and solitary one.
All of it was shrouded in secrecy because I worked hard to keep up appearances. Everything had to seem normal. Like so many people who have disordered eating patterns, I desperately wanted to keep up appearances – even if this is not usually considered a main feature of the illness.
So, for me, the most recent series of the LGBTQ+, coming of age, romantic comedy Heartstopper – adapted from the graphic novel by Alice Oseman – is revolutionary. In the second series of the Netflix show, we watch Charlie support his boyfriend, Nick, on his comingout journey. But as his classmates become progressively more interested in their relationship, the attention and stress starts to weigh heavily on Charlie, reminding him of his earlier experiences of being bullied at school.
It starts with little things. He lies about having already eaten and opts for cups of tea over full meals. Then, he turns down ice-cream and eats barely anything on a school trip to France, before eventually fainting. Charlie is eager not to highlight his avoidance of food, repeatedly saying that he is the happiest he has ever been in his new relationship. Although Nick notices that he tends not to eat very much, Charlie’s struggles are largely kept private.
At my all-girls school, extreme dieting and restrictions were not exactly uncommon. My peers wrote down the calories they consumed each day on the backs of their hands in tiny scribble – wearing the lower numbers like a prize. Together, we would decide not to eat for 12 hours, just to see who could complete the challenge. But, though there were endless signs that many of us were inwardly torturing ourselves, I don’t recall ever having a conversation