by Beth Galvin
My Fox Atlanta
We diet, weigh ourselves, feel hopeful and then end up disappointed we haven’t lost more.
But a new documentary screening Thursday at Emory University, sponsored by Timberline Knolls Center for Women’s Treatment challenges us to rethink our fixation with dieting and look beyond the scale.
That’s the question asked by a new documentary, “American the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments.”
Former Miss America – and now an Emory student – Kirsten Haglund knows all too well because she’s lived it.
“In my mind, I had equated thinness with happiness,” said Haglund.
After all, Haglund says, that’s the message she grew up with: if you want to be successful, you have to be skinny.
“I has swallowed that. I believed it. But I wasn’t happy I was skinnier and smaller and tinier that I’d ever been, but I was so unhappy. I was depressed, I was isolated,” said Haglund.
Haglund, a Michigan native and Emory University junior started dancing at three,
I was a ballerina all my life, and just constant body wars with myself, looking at myself in the mirror with leotard and tights,” she said.
She won the Miss America 2008 pageant.
Kirsten says she came close to missing the crown, the competition and the chance to go to college. She said she slipped into a terrifying battle with anorexia, when she was just twelve.
“Every single day was a battle with my body, every single day I woke up hating who I was, and the way that I looked,” Haglund said. I
n his film, Darryl Roberts stares down his own body image demons,
“I go to the doctor, she scared the daylights out of me. I actually thought I was going to die in 2010,” said Roberts.
Roberts knows he’s a big guy, According to his body mass index – or height/weight ratio – he is “obese” and on the brink of “morbidly obese.”
“You get, a little bit of this and you go to the doctor, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ It’s like you’re a mass murderers. Dude, what are you doing! You’re gonna end up with diabetes,” said Roberts.
But Roberts learned he wasn’t the only one with a high body mass index.
“Based on BMI, Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Christian Bale are considered ‘overweight.’ Mel Gibson is “obese.” George Bush is ‘overweight.’ The Rock? Obese,” said Roberts. “So the thing that’s wrong with it is that it’s flat out inaccurate.”
Haglund says it took years of therapy to come to terms with anorexia, “It’s not about food at the end of the day, it’s about a loss of control. It’s about broken family relationships. It’s about stress. It’s about feeling the need for worthiness, or love,” said Haglund.
Now 23, and happily out of the spotlight, Kirsten is a spokeswoman for Timberline Knolls, an eating disorders treatment center.
Finally, she says she feels at home in her body.
“I don’t have it all figured out, still. And I hope that I won’t because I want to keep growing as a person. I keep learning new truths about myself, Every day,” said Haglund.
A special screening of the film is scheduled at 7 p.m. Thursday at Emory University.
Filmmaker Darryl Roberts will be there to talk about the film afterwards.
They suggest making a reservation because space is limited.