The other night, I was sitting in an audience listening to an eating disorder survivor speak. I brought my knitting with me (I’m making a scarf right now).

All throughout high school I worked to make eating disorders a more prevalent issue in our community. I brought in speakers, organized events, went to trainings. I did all this to help to friends who had battled with eating disorders for years. So I thought I knew it all.

Wrong.

She started her presentation with a Powerpoint presentation of victims. One of them, also named Elizabeth, shared my birthday. I felt the chills you get when something strikes a little too close to home.

I listened to the survivor tell her story. It was a familiar one. She was a control freak, a perfectionist who wanted to make everyone else around her happy. And then she saw the Lifetime movie “The Best Little Girl in the World.” The movie tells the story, based on the book of the same name, by Steven Levenkron, of Francesca Louise. It follows her fall into a very serious eating disorder. The woman making the presentation said this movie sparked her eating disorder.

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about the role of media in our society. Should we decry movies like “The Best Little Girl in the World” and models that are too skinny to be healthy? Or should we chock it up to free speech?

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said in the Schenck v. United States that free speech doesn’t give us the right to yell fire in a crowded building. But are movies that promote poor body image the same as yelling fire?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. A few months ago, Cheryl Stier, co-chair of Health Promotions, contacted me about mentioning her organization, Screen Out, on this blog. Screen Out has four goals: 1) Give an R rating to any new movies with smoking; 2) Certify that movie companies do not get paid for displaying tobacco products; 3) Require strong anti-smoking ads before any movie with tobacco use in it; and 4) Stop identifying tobacco brands in the movies. For more info, check out screenout.org.

I’ve been struggling with this. Is tobacco use in movies the same as yelling fire? Screen Out would argue yes, that “children with the highest exposure to smoking in the movies are nearly three times more likely to start smoking than those with the least exposure.”

I understand where they’re coming from, and I give them a lot of credit for their efforts. In our area, they’ve been endorsed by Ellis Hospital, the Niskayuna Town Board and various other organizations.

But I think a R rating for every movie featuring smoking is an overstep. G movies should not feature smoking, and you could even convince me that PG” movies shouldn’t. But smoking is right on par with the other things featured in PG-13 movies, like teen partying.

So like everything else, it’s all about a compromise.

Any thoughts?