CNN Headline News, aka the Nancy Grace Network, is moving full steam ahead with its new theme of "Life is a crime and we're the survelliance camera." Last night's "Showbiz Tonight" made the parents of many (well, considering ST's ratings, hopefully not all that many) teenage girls very, very unhappy with its feature on "pro-ana," or pro-anorexia, web sites. The feaure also included a segment on the "startling trend" of young girls cutting themselves, just to keep parents tearing their hair out when they walk into the living room and see their teenagers glued to HLN like it's the latest "Hills Have Eyes"-type slash/torture flick.
First of all, these pro-ana websites have been around for years; I first saw one five years ago when a girlfriend on a perpetual diet showed it to me. So HLN isn't exactly breaking any news here; what Showbiz Tonight IS doing is exploiting tragedy and violence directed against oneself (full show transcript here.) ST is providing sick, vicarious thrills to sick people who want to hurt themselves and to the television audience in general. Again, the whole segment was the equivalent of a slasher flick aimed at a teenage audience--but because it's real, the consequences are real, too. Check out this excerpt that is going to make a thousand perpetually-dieting teenagers run for their computers:
VARGAS: And for those of you who haven`t heard about these websites referred to as pro-ana, they`re teaching people, mostly teen girls, how to become anorexic and bulimic. They even provided one primetime TV star with dangerous tips that sent her life into a tailspin. Now, we`ll speak to her in a moment, but first, a look inside pro-ana through SHOWBIZ TONIGHT`s Brooke Anderson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON (voice-over): A hunger to find others like them, a desire to be thin, to be perfect. That`s what`s driving more and more people to sites like these.
They`re called pro-ana for pro-anorexia, or pro-mia for pro-bulimia. They`re places people go to trade disturbing tips. This one recommends using a spoon instead of your finger to purge food after a binge. Many of the pro-ana sites use pictures of stars, "thinspiration" for girls looking to replicate their favorite actresses or models.
LYNN GREFE, NATIONAL EATING DISORDERS ASSOCIATION: Encouraging people to be ill is really what it is, and it`s like a secret cult. It`s a secret society and word spreads around.
ANDERSON: Word has most definitely been spreading around. Sites like these are popping up all over the Web. Do a Google search for pro-ana, and you`ll get thousands of hits, each and every one sending a dangerous message about eating disorders, that they`re actually a good thing.
HAMMER: Actress and singer Scarlett Pomers says she used pro-ana sites while suffering from anorexia. Her illness got so bad, that she had to enter rehab and leave the set of "Reba," that`s the TV show she starred in alongside Reba McEntire. Well, Pomers is now in recovery and is an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association. SHOWBIZ TONIGHT`s Brooke Anderson had a chance to speak with Scarlett and asked her why anyone would even visit websites that teach them how to be sick.
ANDERSON: I was looking at the websites today, looking at some of them, and I was shocked at some of the tips that I read. They included smelling the garbage when you get a hunger pain so that you don`t want to eat, or cleaning something gross so that you lose your appetite. What are some of the more outrageous tips that you learned, and you used, and that also you were teaching others?
POMERS: Well, I actually don`t really like to talk about specifically what I did when I had my eating disorder or the tips that I learned, because I know that other girls who do have eating disorders, even though they might see someone like me who is in recovery and who is being, you know, more -- making healthier choices and living a good life after an eating disorder, they will use the tips for, you know, destructive behavior. So I prefer not to talk about it specifically what I did or what I learned, but definitely the ones that you described are some of the less extreme ones, I would say.
Well, Scarlett Pomers has some sense--she knows that if she talks about her illness, she'll trigger vulnerable girls to engage in the same behavior. Brooke Anderson, on the other hand, is just salivating over the prospect of polluting the airwaves with "some of the more outrageous" tips out there, like we're talking about a new way to wear your makeup or your jeans, or do yoga or kiss someone, and not about a deadly disease that kills young girls and devastates families.
But wait--there's more. Did you know, for example, that all the cool, pretty cheerleaders are doing it--self-mutilating, that is?
ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Driven by hope, 16- year-old Danielle and her mom traveled all the way from Tennessee here to Linden Oaks Hospital outside Chicago.
JACQUE OBENHUBER, MOTHER OF SELF-ABUSING DAUGHTER: You OK?
DANIELLE HURST, WANTS TO STOP HURTING HERSELF: I`m cold.
OBENHUBER: OK. Cold is good, better than other things.
UDOJI: Other things, dark and dangerous things brought them here in search of help.
HURST: I`m ready. I`m ready to change. I really want to do this for myself.
UDOJI: For years, Danielle, a cheerleader, a gifted student, a budding actress, has kept a secret from nearly everyone: always smiling, but battling depression and teenage stress using scissors and knives to cut herself.
HURST: It made me feel like all my troubles were flowing out and it wasn`t blood; you know, it was my troubles with my mom, and my problems at school, and my body image.
UDOJI (on camera): Shocking to some, but experts estimate up to six million Americans injure or mutilate themselves, often through cutting, and that number, they say, is growing.
Self-mutilation has also been around for years among vulnerable teenage girls; anybody who went to high school in the past 10 years has known someone who's done it. Ask any guidance counselor. Again, Showbiz Tonight isn't providing information. This is not news; this is a sick kind of entertainment. It's exploiting and glamorizing the saddest kind of gore in the most salacious way possible. Why is this segment even on Showbiz Tonight? Well, CNN would probably say it's because anorexic teenagers are starving themselves to look like celebrities. But that's weak and lame. CNN is doing it for the same reason that teenage girls in bikinis always got slaughtered first in the old "Friday the 13th" movies: because it's salacious and disturbing. But unlike R-rated slasher flicks, unlike parental controls on internet software (which thousands of parents are now forced to update tonight to block keywords like "pro-ana" and "thinsperation,") the news is supposed to be a source of information, not a source of vampirish entertainment, not a self-destruction manual for miserable adolescents staying up late without their parents' knowledge.
I'm not saying the news shouldn't make parents aware that this stuff goes on. I'm just saying it could have been handled in a much more sensitive, much more sober, much less vivid way (CNN kept flashing pics of very thin models and actresses during the segment, like it was a rock video made in hell.) CNN is going to increase the number of kids visiting pro-ana, pro-mutilation sites, not decrease them. And you can bet that lunch tables in high schools all across America today are trading those website addresses today, thanks to Showbiz Tonight.
Life's all about intention, and though CNN would protest, CNN's overall intention with this story is not good. And if I were a parent, Showbiz Tonight would have a parental-control block on my cable system from now on.
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