The highly anticipated premiere of Impeachment aired on the FX channel, Tuesday, September 7th to mixed reviews. It is the story of an emotionally needy young woman who sought to soothe her low self-esteem with eating binges and unavailable men, and how her affair with an equally needy and adolescent man (who happened to be the President of the United States) threw the country into a tabloid free-for-all, and the first impeachment trial in 131 years.
Lewinsky is actually a producer on the show and everything portrayed about her is accurate, she says. The criticism over the first episode stems from the portrayal of Linda Tripp as the “villain” instead of the acting President. However, the rest of the series may prove to move into the President’s role in the scandal.
Lewinski holds the title of the most famous paparazzi-hounded woman on the planet (a title once held by the late Princess Diana.) Monica and Princess Di definitely have their similarities, however. They are both survivors of dysfunctional childhoods, both were neurotics afflicted with eating disorders and unhappy in their love lives.
Lewinsky has said, “the President should have shown more restraint and left it as a flirtation and as an un-acted upon fantasy”, that it was “too much of an emotional burden for someone my age.”
Sex and self-esteem aside, Lewinski, like many others in emotional turmoil, turned to binge eating and extreme dieting. The official term “binge eating disorder” was first made official in May 2013 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fifth Edition. Research showed that binge eating disorder was a significant enough condition that it warranted its own specific diagnostic label.
It oftentimes goes hand in hand with situational depression as in Monica’s case. The mental health side seems to be more severe if the person already has problems with their weight which Lewinski did.
