My problem with Eugenia Cooney — Trigger Warning
By: Luna Principe
Tags: Ed, Eating Disorders, Recovery, Eugenia Cooney, Power Of Words

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Ok, clickbait title, sorry about that, the truth is… I don’t have any problem with her.

She’s an American Youtuber, 27 years old, passionate about fashion and make-up, who sadly suffers from an Eating Disorder. Since her first appearance on social platforms, she has shown worrying signs of her illness, combined with a dysfunctional family. The situation went so downhill, that some friends of Eugenia, worried sick for her life, asked a qualified team to evaluate her for a 5150. In her case, it ended up being forced into rehab because considered a danger to herself. After that, she made a great return on the internet scene thanks to another famous YouTuber. This happened five months after being in recovery. Nowadays she already slipped back into her deadly habits. She is so deep in her disorder that she can’t understand how tragic is what is going on.

She can’t do much by herself, not considering the state her brain is in right now, it’s the sad truth of mental illnesses. She isn’t doing anything harmful on purpose, her mind is trapped in a quest to be purity itself since she was little, her family doesn’t appear to be supportive, caring, or a good environment for her to heal in general. She doesn’t know any better than what her ED is telling her in her mind.

My problem is mainly her audience and how people, even in the era of fast knowledge, accessible to the masses, manage to keep themselves as much ignorant as they possibly could.

I stumbled across Eugenia’s channel something like three years ago and since then I have developed a small understanding of this illness, fill in my knowledge gaps, and feel more confident in talking about the subject even with no real and direct experience of it, luckily.

In total, I’d have spent maybe three hours of my life learning notions on this topic, not even in a row, more like ten minutes one day, five minutes another day, nothing for months, and then again a few minutes of research in my spare time.

And I feel blessed how today there are so many sources and insights about a subject, that just a few decades ago was treated like a taboo, misunderstood, and hidden in every possible way.

Eugenia’s audience consists, for the most part, of people who have been following her for years, some of them even since she created her channel.

They follow her on every platform and yet their comments show how clueless they truly are about eating disorders, simple common knowledge about what to say, what not to say, and so on.

Now, this doesn’t affect just me, this does affect everybody, even you who are reading this.

Because Eugenia is a girl like many others out there, surrounded by people who not only are not helping, but worse, people who, even when guided by good intentions, end up hurting someone who is already struggling.

Many of her followers probably even know someone like Eugenia in real life, someone close to them, a family member, a friend, a neighbor, someone in need. Or one day, God forbid, they’ll be the one who needs understanding and the right kind of support.

Don’t get me wrong, not having the right competence to help someone is understandable and expected, the real problem is engaging in some damaging behavior and keeping being involved in a difficult situation without developed the proper skills first. Without actually spending some time to learn the facts.

I’m not talking about the cyberbullying, classic stupid comments as —” Go, eat a burger”-, I’m referring to the good-hearted people, who desperately want her to get better, but still, put their efforts in wrong and harmful directions.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll make a short list of some ED facts versus the general reaction Eugenia’s experienced after admitting she’s been in recovery:

-One of the first consequences of recovery implies puffy cheeks and a swallow stomach, as soon as a malnourished body starts to be fed again.It has nothing to do with how much weight you are or you are not gaining.

When Eugenia came back on the internet, her face had nice puffy cheeks. You can clearly see the detrimental state her legs still were in though (and the same goes for her shoulder bones which you could see sticking out her back *even if she was wearing a cardigan*. That’s how bad her situation was.)

Everybody’s reaction? Yeeeeeah, puffy cheeks! She’s doing so much better, unbelievable!!! She looks so good now! I’m so happy for her! No comparison to before! A completely different person, omg!

This sure nice but wrong reaction probably proved to Eugenia she could easily fool everyone, with no much effort, and that no one really could tell the truth. Maybe also that everyone was complimenting her on how gorgeous she looks, while she was risking her life, as if they actually like her malnourished.

Are you starting to see the problem, here?

How lack of knowledge and wrong replies can lead to fuel a dangerous fire?

-While in recovery, most ED survivors will start wearing baggy clothes and cover themselves as much as they can, ’cause they’re scared and repulsed by the way their bodies are changing.

Eugenia showed herself wearing some not so revealing clothes only from the waist above, ’cause the camera wouldn’t have shown anything below. In her comeback video, one of the first things you could see, even just for some brief moments, is that she’s wearing a skirt. A skirt. With her legs exposed and…in the same awful and worrying state as before. Remember: a slightly better appearance isn’t due to weight gain but to swelling.

She had never felt the need to cover up her body ’cause it was changing for better, because… it simply wasn’t. She knew or was told to, she had to cover the upper body to avoid grabbing too much attention to her illness as it occurred before.

Fast forward to when the things calmed down and the air cleared, she felt safe, also due to the incredibly positive comments she received, so she immediately went back showing as much skin and bones she possibly could. Thinking she could keep fooling everybody since everybody has proved her so.

Once again, nobody spotted a wrong behavior and also mistaken it as a positive one. Even worse, they praised her for that.

-Recovery isn’t linear. It’s normal having ups and downs, relapsing, even more than once.

Absolutely true. But of course, when you’re dying the body doesn’t care that recovery isn’t linear, do you get it? It needs to be restored with a healthy weight as soon as possible to avoid the worst-case scenarios and then you can have ups and downs, relapses and recover again.

That’s why you can’t justify the detrimental state of Eugenia’s health right now, as many of her fans have actually done, with the belief she’s relapsed and it’s just a normal step of the process, ’cause she doesn’t have time to fool around too much to avoid permanent consequences or even death.

Imagine being seriously underweight, your life is at constant risk, you’re blatantly faking your recovery, and yet people are so uninformed and clueless that they jump in and justify you, believing it’s just a phase or even an actual step you’re supposed to go through.

While you’re in fact dying and in need of immediate help. Isn’t it scary?

-Recovery takes time, it’s a battle that can last years and often a lifetime, it certainly cannot be rushed in a few weeks or months. Your body and mind need a long time to fully heal and learn healthy habits.

Eugenia came back online after few months, considered herself recovered, affirming the illness (she couldn’t even pronounce the name of, a huge red flag of how she still was in denial) was something that belonged to her past. And most people believed this.

Furthermore, as soon as a very worried and scared Jaclyn Glenn, one of the few Eugenia’s true friends, who asked for the 5150 evaluation, immediately wanted to warn everybody not to be fooled by this fake narrative, that Eugenia was still in great danger indeed, everybody felt entitled to throw shit at her, insulted her and offended her because she was just ruining a perfect moment of success and happiness of Eugenia.

Isn’t this incredibly absurd? Are people even aware of the consequences of their choices and words? Are they aware of how important is not to be a mere sheep, jumping on the first bandwagon, but take time instead(time they would waste anyway on some social platform, let’s be honest) to educate themselves before taking sides so passionately, just to realize they were wrong, very, very wrong? And meanwhile they contributed to putting someone in even more danger? Face it or not, these people are partially responsible of the situation. Not completely, ça va sans dire, but they need to understand they’re an active part of this, because they chose to be an active part of this.

So when someone decides to share parts of their life on the internet and you state they have a responsibility towards their audience, especially the youngest and most impressionable one, it’s true. As it’s true that the audience itself (especially the oldest and most mature viewers) has a responsibility on how it engages with these influencers.

I appreciate the awareness a situation like Eugenia’s is rising, it would give the impression the world is paying more attention to mental disorders, but at the end of the day, it just shows how little people understand about this widespread problem.

You have so much power in your hand, you could make such a difference, you can help somebody else with your words and reactions.

Please, choose to be wise.