Anorexia

Today

Alexander Larman

Ariana Grande’s wicked body weight

From our US edition

By rights, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande should be at the peak of her profession. She won acclaim for her performances in the Wicked films – the first one of which she was Oscar-nominated for – and has consistently released successful albums, including last week’s new record petal. Under normal circumstances she would be looking forward to continuing her world tour, Eternal Sunshine. And next year, she was slated to make her London stage debut opposite her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey in Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George. There is, however, one rather significant issue with this, which has been discussed in the media with a mixture of prurience and genuine concern.

ariana grande petal

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Riveting and exhilarating: Miss Julie, at Park90, reviewed

Some Demon by Laura Waldren is a gem of a play that examines the techniques of manipulation and bullying practised by shrinks on anorexics. The setting is an NHS referral unit where Sam, an 18-year-old philosophy student, arrives with a minor eating disorder. Like every patient, Sam is told that her personality is immersed in a civil war and that two implacable forces – the ‘diseased self’ and the ‘whole self’ – are fighting for control of her destiny. It’s a brilliantly simple trick that any bully can learn in a few minutes. If the patient says something unwelcome, the shrink ascribes the statement to the ‘diseased self’ and adds: ‘I don’t negotiate with the disease.

Thursday

Stephanie Sy-Quia

Mommy issues: Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder, reviewed

This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and her mother has always been preoccupied by her daughter’s weight. ‘Anorexics are much skinnier than you’, she tells Rachel when she develops the condition as a teenager. ‘They look like concentration camp victims.’ Rachel’s therapist, Dr Mahjoub (who, we are told, fills her consultation room with elephants in trinket form) recommends a total break in contact between mother and daughter for 40 days. Before this begins, Mahjoub makes Rachel perform an art therapy exercise: to create a sculpture of how she sees herself out of modelling clay. ‘I made massive thighs, weighty calves, a voluminous ass.