Paulina Pinsky, the daughter of TV’s Dr. Drew Pinsky, has opened up about her seven-year battle with anorexia and bulimia in a series of brutally honest blog posts.
The Barnard College junior wrote on the Columbia Daily Spectator’s Web site that she struggled while training as an ice skater and felt pressure from others — including her mom, Susan — to be perfect. She said in a November 2013 post: “My ability to listen to my mother . . . had disappeared when I had hit rock bottom four months prior and had put myself into therapy. Purging eight times in one day to cope with the emotional stress of being home during spring break had finally scared me enough to take action.”
Paulina, 21, describes how she admitted to her mom during a car ride, “I’ve been throwing up since the seventh grade.” She continued, “After a silence that lasted far too long, she responded, ‘Well, get your teeth checked.’
She said the move helped them forge a closer bond, and she realized her mother “needed me to be perfect . . . I was the pretty blond girl who was a cheerleader and an ice skater. I got good grades, had a boyfriend, and was thin . . . But I was suffering under the weight of ‘perfection’ in a way that even I didn’t completely understand.”
In a September 2013 post on the Web site Endangered Bodies, Paulina expressed dismay over the media coverage of pregnant Kim Kardashian. At a family dinner, “I hadn’t even completed my thought about how disgusting I found the media’s emphasis on her weight gain . . . before my mother interrupted me: ‘Yeah. She got really fat.’ I . . . looked at my father . . . he just mumbled his medical opinion under his breath, saying, ‘You know, it’s very unhealthy for the baby to gain that much weight. Could be eclampsia.’ ”
Paulina, who this month hosted a Body Positivity Week at college, added, “I am a year and a half into recovery after a seven-year battle with bulimia and anorexia, and this spectacle makes me furious . . . This public shaming is making the world a harder place to live in.” Dr. Drew, an addiction specialist, didn’t get back to us.