  urlLink This little tidbit came from an understandably amused Alan (alliteration unintentional). You see, the Olsen twins are fair game for jokes. They're twins. They're kinda cute. They've been dressing like they're in their twenties since they were about 12.
And the icing on the cake is that we've seen them grow up - since they were wearing nappies and asking for "ouce cream" on full house. Then they started selling their "style" to little girls, including a line of g-strings for 12 year olds, which I think I remember laughing at in Target one day. Then the skinny one went and got herself a whole pile of scrutiny from the media for looking painfully thin, and everyone shouted "egads! it's anorexia!". So, as urlLink Alan has brought to light, she has now sought help for her eating disorder, and the twins have consequently urlLink cancelled their trip to Australia which is a shame, because I had my Mary Kate and Ashley thong ready for the girls to sign.
On the serious side, I feel that this just proves that the cause behind eating disorders lie far deeper than the media and pressure on girls, such as Mary-Kate, to be constantly skinny. Eating disorders are too complex to be reduced to simply the need to look good - if it was a matter of looking hot, she'd be exercising and eating a strict diet rather than fearing food completely.
There's so much research out there on the matter, and I'm hardly an expert. Yet it is an issue that is personally important, as someone who has experience with an eating disorder. The causes and complexities surrounding obsessive behaviour about food - or limiting it - are so much bigger than just physical appearance. Josephine Brain's incredibly urlLink interesting article discusses the dominant cultural narrative on anorexia; it's well worth a read if not slightly convoluted for a light-hearted blog such as this.
Yet it makes important ground in tying together theories that stress eating disorders as psychological conditions rather than a simple cave-in to the cultural products around us. Mary Kate, with her access to all the teen literature on eating disorders, and all the minders and employees out there looking out for her safety was no doubt aware of her predisposition to anorexia by virtue of her line of work; yet she still contracted the disease.
I am not saying that the pressures arising from her fame and exposure have not contributed to her eating disorder. I'm saying that there's just more to it than that. So before we get all deterministic and dismiss the media for its negative portrayal of body types, let's look holistically at the problems that give rise to eating disorders, and quit blaming the media for showing skinny chicks. Because, after all, the media only show us what we want to see. 
