Barbara Niven : Eating Disorders & Pressures to Be Perfect

Eating disorders are a raging epidemic in our culture. There are incredible pressures on both women and men to look and be "perfect"! We're bombarded with messages in the media that say "skinny is the ideal" and that you're not a good person unless you're a size zero. Well, "zero" literally means you're disappearing! Five year old kids today are saying "I'm fat". And that's crazy. My own struggle started as an over-achieving, chubby little girl with big dreams in Portland Oregon. Then I became a mother and a working actress for over twenty years in a size zero Hollywood. Talk about pressure. To deal with it, I spent thirty years with my head hanging over a toilet, and nobody ever knew. When my daughter fainted in school from her own E.D., I knew the cycle had to stop with me.