hi ! i was wondering what are your thoughts on the doctors scene in franks pretty woman as dennis comes across as a lot more restrictive than bed there ? id love to hear your take on the scene and episode in general cos theres a lot of food talk in it !!
hello friend, and thank you for the question!
i do kinda know what you mean, but honestly, it really isn’t. dennis is a notoriously unreliable narrator that wants you to think a certain way about him, so he’s obviously going to want you to think he is restrictive even if he isn’t.
firstly, binge eating disorder does involve sporadic restriction. one of the main symptoms of BED is attempting to go lengths without eating, which then typically results in caving, overeating even worse, and negating any attempt to restrict in the first place. this is quite literally what happens to dennis in the episode; he feigns restriction only to cave the very same day with mac later at the bar.
his claims in the episode are also false;
“i’m also constantly in motion. even right now, i’m doing leg lifts that are imperceptible to the human eye” or whatever the fuck he says i can’t remember word for word right now lmfao
this isn’t physically possible 😭 the joke is that he isn’t doing that.
“although i seem relaxed, i’m actually incredibly tense at all times”
he doesn’t seem relaxed. that is the joke.
the entire gag of the scene is that he’s lying. you are not supposed to take him seriously. the only thing that is true about it is that yeah, he’s probably dieting a little bit, but he fails immediately and ends up mirroring mac’s diet hours later, which he continues to do throughout the season to the point where he actually ends up “needing” shape wear. even the joke about the bahamas shirts - “you’ll grow into yours buddy” - is foreshadowing for dennis’ immediate relapse, which is then proven again in season 8 with mac completely slimming down and wearing the shirt that was supposed to be dennis’.
ultimately, his behaviors in the scene do not reflect those of someone with a restrictive eating disorder, they reflect those of someone with very little impulse control trying to curb their appetite and failing. that’s the point.
they even further prove that he’s talking out of his ass when mac tries to lift him. this is a double gag, because it’s clearly meant to show that mac isn’t as strong as he thinks he is, but the fact that he can’t even lift dennis is visible evidence that dennis isn’t this thin frail flower that everyone tries to pretend he is all the time. the joke is that his attempted restriction isn’t working.
dennis lies about this kind of thing all the time. he drives himself crazy trying to convince mac how unhealthy and fattening thin mints are, but the only reason he’s doing this is because he wants them for himself. if he had a restrictive eating disorder, he wouldn’t be eating the thin mints. its the same with the gang chokes; he talks about cutting out sugar and carbs and gluten and dairy, but he eats cheese to calm his nerves in the very same season and can’t even tell the difference between blended pizza and a protein shake. he’s also not sick because he’s actually allergic to that stuff, he’s sick because he’s living off of liquidized fast food - anyone would be sick if they were being fed that 24/7, and he still wants the blue shake later on in the episode! the few moments that dennis does attempt to be disciplined are not supposed to be taken as gospel, they are deliberately there to highlight that his actions are the complete opposite of his words, and it is amazing to me how often this goes over peoples heads (particularly as they very clearly have the capability of reading between the lines when he says he’s straight or says he doesn’t like mac).
another thing from the hospital scene that people like to use as “proof that he’s restrictive” are the deficiencies he’s diagnosed with, and i find this in bad taste for many reasons. for one, that promotes the idea that vitamin deficiencies are exclusive to people restrictive eating disorders, which is straight up just medical misinformation and fundamentally untrue, and secondly, most of the deficiencies on the list he is given are more common in people who aren’t underweight but more often the opposite, so the argument for anorexia nervosa there is incorrect and doesn’t even make sense. does that make sense? a person of a healthy weight or more can very easily be malnourished, and malnourishment isn’t exclusive to skinny people/restrictive eaters, and this rhetoric is precisely where many people go wrong and just end up reinforcing the very stereotypes the show is trying to go against.
all in all, the scene really doesn’t change anything. dennis has been canonically established as a binge eater from season 4 - where he quite literally admits it - and even prior to that he already displayed many of the symptoms, so to suggest that one attempt at restriction negates the 100+ instances of his compulsive behaviors is pretty unsavory, especially as repeated attempts at restriction are part of bed anyway. one wouldn’t suggest that someone with anorexia nervosa is suddenly a binge eater just because they have one binge episode during 6 months of restriction, so it shouldn’t be the opposite with dennis either, does that make sense?
just to clarify, none of this is directed at you! i don’t at all think that YOU are perpetuating any of these stereotypes by asking the question, and if anything, i’m glad you asked me about it! i just mean some of the thinkpieces i see surrounding this scene are incredibly misinformed, and very obviously from people that don’t actually have any experience with either ed and instead base their perceptions on the subject off of misinformation spread by harmful internet spaces, so honestly i’m glad you asked the question, because the general consensus around it is really harmful and stereotypical, and i really want it to change.
at the end of the day, the scene is about mac. like, it doesn’t actually have a lot to do with dennis, but is more there to subvert the idea that fat people are inherently unhealthy. they’re trying to make the point that you cannot base health on physicality, and its really irritating to see so many very obviously non-disordered people try and use this one tiny scene (out of 178 episodes) to misrepresent a very real eating disorder - that clinically does not manifest this way anyway - and end up further perpetuating the idea the scene is trying to subvert in the first place!
its also just not accurate. having suffered clinically diagnosed anorexia nervosa myself for 19 years now, its extremely frustrating to see people endlessly reduce the disorder to “trying to diet a few times”, because its simply incorrect, and not only does it completely undermine the very real and gruelling experience of anorexia nervosa, but it also ignores and dismisses so many of the blatant symptoms of BED he exhibits in the process, which are just as serious and far more interesting to analyze than wrongly labelling him with a disorder he simply doesn’t have.
i hope this all makes sense! the question really is great, and i hope i haven’t come across like a dickhead because i do 100% understand where you’re coming from. i’ve also talked before about how, because the general knowledge of eating disorders is so limited, its only natural that non-disordered people are more likely to recognise one attempt at starvation as disordered over many compulsive behaviors, as restriction is unfortunately far more associated with eating disorders by society than compulsiveness, so i do get why people are quick to jump to that conclusion, but it’s just not true, and basing headcanons about real mental illnesses off of one surface-level joke (intended to prove the opposite anyway) is pretty damaging to ed rep in general.
thank you again for the question, and i hope this helps!!! also apologies if any of it is phrased badly! its 2:56am and i’ve had such a long week at work, so i’m sorry if its just an incoherent mess!
amandla
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
discoholicmusic
jimmyeatworldofficial
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
