ELLE.com spoke with Kahnweiler, who has been in recovery for her bulimia in the past, about how she decided to make a show about it, her breakout short film Meet My Rapist, and why this is the best time ever to be a woman in film.
Tell me a little about the genesis of The Skinny.
I had made a short about two years ago called Meet My Rapist and it dealt with a very personal topic. A little before then, I had gone into recovery for my eating disorder. I always wanted to do something about my bulimia because it was everywhere, but I never saw on TV, and I am an avid TV watcher. I was always confused about why no one ever showed it on TV—it’s not illegal. But it’s not sexy, like drug addiction. You can’t OD on donuts. But I was starving for it, excuse the pun. I really wanted to see it on TV.
It’s so hard to make a film on the indie level. You’re scrapping for money, so I had to be obsessed with the project to make it happen. I had written the pilot [for The Skinny] and I had been fundraising, and I kept hearing ‘No, this isn’t sexy, this is weird,’ and I said, ‘Fuck it, I have to do this. I’ll go crazy if I don’t.’ It was so personal, but it is so much bigger than me. It’s a societal epidemic, both with eating disorders and body image and the shame around them. I’ve been a feminist since I could talk. I was a feminist in utero. This series a lot about how you reconcile being a strong woman and a feminist, but also being completely taken down and demoralized by this self-hatred spiral. Some people respond, like, ‘What’s the deal, eating disorders aren’t funny.’ I’m used to [this response] from the rape short. But from my point of view, this is my experience, and in my life the things that are most hysterical are also the most heartbreaking.
Was it cathartic for you to make it?
It was cathartic, but it was also really terrifying. Taking this thing…it’s like, let’s say you’re dating this really ugly guy who’s really embarrassing and has no job. But he’s with you every day, and no one else sees him because you’re so ashamed of him. It’s like taking that guy and presenting him to the world as your husband. This is me, for better or worse, and that is fucking terrifying. Obviously this is scripted, it’s not a reality show, so a lot of it was about that whole process: how to create this character, and what story are you going to tell.
So what story did you decide to tell?
It’s really about a girl that’s trying to get control over her life, and find love and meaning in her life and make it in her career, and how her eating disorder affects that. And getting over her eating disorder is part of the story. That’s not a pretty, color-in-the-lines kind of story. It’s messy, but it’s life. With the show, same as the rape movie, the question was: How do I make this something everyone enjoys watching? It’s a hard sell—a show about some girl who pukes on herself all the time. But it’s a universal need to be loved an have approval and try to not hate yourself.
How graphic is it in terms of showing the bulimia in action?
It’s been an interesting process deciding how much we want to show and how graphic we want to get. I will say we try to keep it real. It might sound weird, but it’s been really fun because it’s really challenging. You don’t want to be gratuitous, but you want to be real to the experience. When I came out as bulimic, people were like: You’re not skinny, you have white teeth, and you’re really happy. They were so surprised because I’m not the prima ballerina or Princess Diana. I’m interested in showing that side of it—this is how it really is for girls like me. This is not everybody’s story, this is my story of the past 10 or so years of living with it and also thriving. It’s not this straight ahead—I have bulimia and I didn’t do anything because of it. I’ve had a fortunate great life, but bulimia has always been there and I don’t think it ever fully goes away, like any addiction.
Eating disorders always seem different from drug or alcohol addictions, because you need to eat to live.
You constantly have to walk this fine line, asking yourself: Is this healthy, or is this a problem? I had a really fun time talking to people about it when I was working on it. As a writer, you’re not supposed to reveal what you’re working on, but I’m the worst. Because I’m so insecure and needy, I asked everyone: Would you watch this? Asking the postman, the rabbi. Everyone is so annoyed. But then people would be like, ‘My grandma was bulimic,’ or ‘I was bulimic for a summer when I was 16.’ The way people interact with food and their relationship with it, there’s so much there.
What else are you working on?
Right now we’re doing this Kickstarter to finish the editing of the pilot for The Skinny. We have an extended pilot that’s going to be online in early spring. We’ve been working with Wifey.tv and working to get distribution. So we’re fundraising and looking for the best place for it. It’s super exciting and super scary. It’s also surreal, just having people react to it. It’s like, ok [eating disorders] need to be talked about.
It seems like a particularly great time for women to be telling stories about formerly taboo subjects. Like Wifey co-founder, Jill Soloway, with her show Transparent.
Um, yeah. I think it’s the best time ever in history for being a woman. It’s so much about autonomy now. From my experience, if I was a woman 10, 20, 30 years ago, let’s say I pitch this thing and nobody wanted to buy it, that would be the end of it. But now I have people like Jill who can give me support emotionally and inspire me in her work, you have Broad City and Girls and people doing it on the fringes. And the key to it really is autonomy. You have all these women telling stories that only they can tell. Like Awkward Black Girl. It’s such a shift, that’s what Wifey is all about—women as the subject. I spent so much of my life, saying ‘How do you want me? How do you feel about me?’ Now it’s about: what do I want, what do I see, rather than how am I seen. That’s the revolution.
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