Gwen Kraus: Narrator
Quotes
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Narrator : There is a discouragingly high failure rate in the treatment of anorexia. The refusal to eat is so annoying to doctors and family that intervention seems to focus entirely on trying to make the sufferer eat. When the anorectic is unable to comply with the dietary plan, she is often force fed. In these cases, the patient is considered officially recovered when the normal weight is reached and appropriate sex role functioning achieved. Ultimately treatments which assert absolute control over the patient's life only contribute to anorectic behavior, which is often the result of highly controlled, familial environments.
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Narrator : The affliction which eventually destroyed Karen Carpenter is one that plagues many, many young women like her. The name of this private obsession, anorexia nervosa.
Woman #1 : What IS anorexia nervosa?
Narrator : Anorexia nervosa is a condition of self starvation, which affects mostly women in their adolescence or young adulthood. Sufferers desperately want to be thin, and often transform their bodies to such an extent that menstruation ceases, and they revert to a pre-pubescent stage.
Woman #2 : Do anorexics ever get hungry?
Narrator : The term anorexia means lack of appetite, yet those who suffer from it are obsessed with food and its preparation, while they deny their own hunger and their body's need for nutrients.
Woman #3 : Do they really think they look attractive like that?
Narrator : Anorectics often have a distorted perception of their actual body size. Although experts still cannot account for this basic misrecognition, they do point out that the rigorous self discipline imposed by the anorectic is often the cause of an extreme exhilaration or high which accompanies and rewards her denial of food.
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Narrator : Following World War II, and the end of rationing in the early 50s, America was reacquainted with food as plentiful and cheap. There were vast changes in food delivery, availability and storage. Refrigerators, already a part of the American kitchen, became common place and thus eliminated the need for daily shopping. The growth of supermarkets with their rows and rows of dairy products, canned goods, meats, condiments, bakery goods, vegetables, fruits and staples, brought a large display of food into everybody's range. Few could leave the supermarket without more than they intended, and the kitchen, often the center of the home, contained an ever expanding variety of foods. Home life in America, connoted the cozy kitchen, food preparation, and meal time.
