By BRIANA SPINA
Layout Editor
Eugenia Cooney—many people know her as the sweet pastel-goth girl from YouTube who loves fashion and cosplay, is really good at makeup, and has a ton of stuffed animals. Others know her because of her appearance. She has been the subject of intense scrutiny and cyberbullying over the way she looks and people’s assumptions about her health. Back in January, Cooney announced that she was taking a break from the internet to work on her health. Fans, haters, and everyone in between assumed it was severe anorexia, though none of these people were her clinicians and had no right to diagnose her. Cooney has recently come back to the internet upon the release of a documentary about her by YouTuber Shane Dawson titled “The Return of Eugenia Cooney.”
The film starts with a montage of videos from her channel and videos of people criticizing her. We see the hateful usernames tuning in to her Twitch livestreams: killyourselfeugenia, PleaseEatSomething666, disgustingbagofbones. We see petitions to get her off the internet, citing her as a bad influence on young girls and people with eating disorders, even though she has never overtly done anything to promote disordered eating or diet culture on her channel. Then, we see a heartbreaking clip of her crying and saying “I feel bad about everything… I didn’t mean to make everyone upset… I don’t know… everyone’s mad at me now,” though, again, she did not do anything wrong.
Dawson cuts in here to give some backstory. Then, he has a conversation with mental health clinician and fellow YouTuber Kati Morton. It was wise of him to seek her input. Morton is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has extensive training and experience in eating disorder treatment. She emphasizes, however, that since she is not Cooney’s therapist, she does not know whether or not Cooney has an eating disorder. This is important to note. Multitudes of people assume that she has an eating disorder, and obviously those people have not worked with her in a mental health setting, so they have no right to diagnose her. Eating disorders have multiple symptoms, some physical and some mental, and no one can truly assess a person’s health from what that person presents behind a computer screen.
Dawson expresses his concerns to Morton about approaching this project without being triggering to Cooney and viewers. While it is likely impossible to prevent all viewers from being triggered, Morton explains that Dawson should avoid commenting about Cooney’s appearance. A photo of Cooney taken by her hairdresser surfaced online while she was still on hiatus from the internet, and Dawson had already texted her about the photo, saying “You look so healthy and happy!” Even though Dawson had the best intentions, Morton explained that people’s eating disorders warp their interpretations of their appearances, so a person with an eating disorder may interpret that statement negatively. Later in the film, Dawson apologizes to Cooney for it. It was a sign of good character that he did so. It showed that he absorbed Morton’s expert advice and truly wanted to have a positive impact on Cooney with this documentary.
Morton and Dawson both agreed that the interview with Cooney must be on her own terms. She is the only one who can decide when she tells her story and how much of it she shares. People criticized this documentary for not getting that deep into the details of Cooney’s struggles. That just goes to show the morbid curiosity of the masses. Because she is a public figure, people think that they have the right to her personal life, which is not the case at all. Dawson handled the film the right way. He did not prod at Cooney to go deeper into her answers than she was comfortable. Even though many viewers want to know her diagnosis, that’s no one’s business but her own and her health care providers’. Dawson did not use the clickbait tactics and shock factors that other channels use. It was not a gossip film; it was a carefully crafted documentary meant to help Cooney tell her story and what she has learned through treatment.
When Dawson arrives at Cooney’s house, he does not jump right into the questioning; rather, Cooney takes him on a tour of her home, and Dawson fawns over the many eccentricities: the Disney and pop art wall murals, the patterned wallpaper, the circular front hall painted like a garden gazebo, and of course, Cooney’s iconic pink bedroom. Dawson asks about her Twitch streaming area, a computer setup with a pink desk chair. He comments, “This is where you sat and you were just like being so nice to mean people.” The scene cuts to a previously shown clip from Cooney’s channel in which she is sitting in the chair in front of the Twitch camera, and the screen popup reads “killyourselfeugenia is now following!” Cut back to the present. Through a smile that seems to always be present on her face, Cooney responds “Yeah some people are not really the nicest… it’s a little scary sometimes.”
Dawson asks her how she can be so nice in the face of haters, and she says “It’s hard for me to imagine being mean to people… I would never want to make someone feel like that.” Interspersed in this exchange is a video clip from Cooney’s channel displaying her being polite in the face of a rude comment. On a video chat, a person with a blurred-out face says, “I think you’d be prettier if you weren’t dying,” and Cooney responds by keeping her smile and complimenting the person. She gives people the benefit of the doubt, saying that they probably just don’t realize behind the screen how hurtful they are. The way this scene plays out shows how genuine Cooney is and that she is not just putting on a persona for Dawson’s camera.
Dawson asks how the people in her life have responded to her situation. Cooney’s smile falters a bit at this as she says that some people have been “trying to make decisions for me…and not wanting to hear how I’m feeling,” but there were others whom she said have been supportive and caring. The online hate, she says, “put [her] in a worse mindset,” and as she says this, the camera cuts to nasty comments on her Instagram and several YouTube thumbnails from different channels claiming that she had died or was going to die. The way Dawson edited in these screenshots shows that the cyberbullying Cooney experienced was not being exaggerated for the film; it was real and horrendous.
Dawson apologizes for commenting to her about her appearance when the photo from her hairdresser surfaced. He asks her how she feels when she sees that picture and the way she looks now. She mentions that she has “never really had the highest self-esteem” but is glad that she has made the decision to work on herself and get to a healthier place. Before he delves any further into the details of her situation, Dawson has a conversation with Cooney, unheard by viewers, about what topics are off-limits or triggering. This consideration is vital to making a responsible film that does not hurt Cooney or the audience. Dawson’s respect for her privacy makes this an excellent film.
Cooney reveals that she was indeed struggling with an eating disorder, though she does not delve into the specifics of her diagnosis. In response, Dawson does not push her to reveal more. Next, he opens up a bit about his own disordered eating and asks her what her day to day looked like pre-recovery. Cooney speaks a bit about how her family was concerned that she wasn’t eating enough, and how she would have periods of time that she was taking better care of herself, and then worse care of herself. She says also that it was hard to stop the negative self care and get help, a fact to which anyone who has tried to break a bad habit can relate. Cooney then talks about how hurtful it was when people online would make videos about her body. The fact that she did not go into detail here is important. It is understandable why she would not want to discuss her unhealthy behaviors, lest she be interpreted as promoting them.
Dawson shifts the conversation to her treatment. Throughout Cooney’s response, viewers see clips from Dawson’s talk with Kati Morton as well as clips from other documentaries, one of which was “Thin,” a film that followed four women inside an inpatient eating disorder treatment facility. Cooney says that getting help was overwhelming and “not the easiest.” The treatment was an adjustment for her, specifically dealing with the food plan she was put on by the clinicians.
Cooney was surprised to learn how low her weight was, and she did not share the measurement with the audience. Specific numbers, especially related to weight, can be extremely triggering to those struggling with eating disorders, so I was glad to see that the number was avoided. There are many morbidly curious people who would have grabbed the number and blown it up all over the internet, which would be detrimental to Cooney’s recovery and people susceptible to disordered eating behaviors. Additionally, concerned people online have been urging “pro-eating disorder” blogs and accounts to remove all pictures of Cooney’s pre-recovery body so the images don’t trigger her.
Lightening the mood a bit, Dawson asks her how the food tasted. They laughed about how in theory, leaving your phone behind and eating all day would be so relaxing, but of course, having an eating disorder complicates that. It’s a daily struggle, Dawson says, because “you have to eat to stay alive.” Cooney says that she was eating pre-recovery, just not enough. Following this is a clip of Morton echoing that it is typical of people with eating disorder to still eat, and cautioning Dawson not to ask Cooney specifically what she ate pre-recovery. I am glad he heeded that advice, otherwise we could have seen people latch on to “The Eugenia Cooney Diet.”
Cooney did not reveal the effects of her disorder on her physical health, but after being prompted by Dawson, she confirms that many of the doctors were surprised that she was not suffering from more medical complications as a result of the disorder. It then cuts to Morton explaining that eating disorders are the deadliest mental illnesses because when deprived of food, the body eats away at its fat and muscles, including the heart, which can cause heart attacks. This part could come as a surprise to people. Many may think that weight loss is the only thing that happens when one doesn’t eat enough, but this clearly reminds viewers that engaging in a very restrictive diet is dangerous and potentially fatal.
The most vital points in the film come from Cooney’s response to the fact that people will be asking her questions about her eating disorder now that she has opened up about it. She says that she will still not be completely comfortable talking about it, which is completely understandable. Eating disorders are rooted in secrecy in the first place, so of course she does not want to pour her heart out to millions of strangers. And more importantly, her mental health stuff is none of the public’s business! That’s between her and her treatment team, and Dawson clearly respects that in his making of the film.
Moving forward, Cooney says she just wants to make videos about what she enjoys. She then talks about how it seemed that people only cared about her body and presumed eating disorder. They treated her like she “wasn’t even a human,” and her message to other people who struggle with mental health conditions is that their illness “is not who they are… there is a lot more to them then just that.” She should not be treated as if her body is the most interesting thing about her. She is a whole person with interests and beliefs. She is far more dynamic than people have painted her out to be. As evidenced in Dawson’s documentary and in Cooney’s many YouTube videos, Cooney is a sweetheart. She is not the mean-spirited cause of anyone else’s suffering. No one can make another person behave in a certain way. Eugenia Cooney existing in her specific body is not the cause of anyone’s eating disorder. A person who has a predisposition to develop an eating disorder may view Cooney’s body and other bodies like hers in ways that perpetuate their disordered eating behaviors, but eating disorders are not just about looks. They are complex diseases rooted in emotional unrest and are often comorbid with other mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
On this, Cooney mentions that she is not an expert on recovery, but would be happy if people could see through her journey that they can also get through their own struggles and stay positive. Dawson ends the documentary by showing two United States eating disorder recovery resources, The National Eating Disorders Helpline (800) 931-2237, and the 24/7 Crisis Text Line (text “NEDA” to 741741).
Overall, Dawson did what he set out to do. He gave Cooney a platform from which she could share her story, all while giving her support and respecting her privacy. The film was not intended to be a hard-hitting documentary about eating disorders. It was about Eugenia Cooney, the whole person, coming back stronger than ever.
