14 DAY TRIAL // Paulina Pinsky, the 21-year-old daughter of Susan and Dr. Drew, has been struggling with eating disorders for the most part of her adult life and, while she’s been relatively open on the topic, her famous father has never tackled the topic in the media. Until now.
Dr. Drew, who is famous for his shows on addictions, has opened up on his daughter’s issues with Entertainment Tonight, in an interview that will air today, Monday, February 24, 2014.
As of now, we have no video preview available, but ET has already issued a release to announce the exclusive interview. It also includes a statement from Drew and Susan.
“We are so proud of Paulina and her outreach to help others and particularly empower women. When she recognized she needed help she sought treatment and actively engaged in the process. And now she is using her insights to help others,” the statement reads.
Page Six did some digging and uncovered that 21-year-old Paulina, a junior at Barnard College in New York, wrote several blog posts on the topic of her eating disorders on the website of the Columbia Daily Spectator.
In them, she explained how she developed the eating disorder as an attempt to cope with pressure to be “perfect,” which stemmed mostly from her mother Susan. Paulina also wanted to have a career as a competitive ice skater, so that helped make matters worse as well.
Paulina also wrote about the moment she came clean to her mom about purging several times a day, and how Susan told her she must get her teeth checked. It was then that Paulina realized her mom “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,” she wrote.
Now, Paulina is a year and a half into recovery. She’s using her voice and the platform her father can make available to her to raise awareness on the issue of public shaming and bullying, and how they impact self-esteem and, ultimately, health.