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Shameless shrine to Tyra Banks that it is, I have been known on more than one occasion to curl up on the couch on a Sunday afternoon and veg out to America’s Next Top Model marathons. What can I say… ANTM is a trainwreck, but I can’t help but rubberneck.

Part of the draw of ANTM is that it establishes these women (not girls, as they are called on the show) are more than pretty faces. In campy one-on-one cryfests with Tyra and candid confessionals, we learn that many contestants struggle with insecurities and personal challenges. Throughout the competition we learn a lot about them, their families and lives and the vagaries of the modeling world they hope to break into. Strangely the one topic rarely mentioned is that of eating disorders. This is, despite the fact that at least three top models have died from eating disorder-related causes in the past two years.  This is, despite the fact that sample sizes now hover near negative digits.  This is, despite the fact that in the modeling world, anorexia and bulimia are often the rule, not the exception.

Britain’s Next Top Model is changing the conversation, but not necessarily in a good way. BNTM contestant Jade McSorley was selected to compete in the reality show even though she currently struggles with anorexia. In fact, the 21-year-old’s body weight dropped so sharply that she was hospitalized shortly before filming. The show, which was filmed last year, airs in the U.K. April 20. Read here and here for more.

In a sense, McSorley’s honesty is refreshing: Eating disorders are rife in the modeling world and yet shows like this – as well as the national fashion councils – typically sweep them under the collective rug. Eating disorders have been estimated to be the tenth leading cause of death in the United States, with anorexia having the highest premature fatality rate of any mental illness. Downplaying or dismissing their prevalence and seriousness only stigmatizes eating disorders further and contributes to their irrelevancy. And it really isn’t fair to discriminate against McSorley for being open and honest about her medical condition — and it is a medical condition, not a choice — when it’s very likely that many other BNTM hopefuls secretly struggle with the same.

Nevertheless, the casting of a model who is actively struggling with anorexia on a national television show viewed by thousands of aspiring girls and women raises serious concerns about how McSorley’s disorder will be presented and the ways it will be received by audiences. Will BNTM show the agony in whether to eat a salad? Will it catch McSorley doing endless rounds of leg lifts and crunches in the middle of the night? If her disorder is of the purging kind, will camera crews zoom in on McSorley hunched over the toilet, wiping vomit from her mouth? Will it show her collapsing, weak and white-knuckled, after a long grueling day on set? Considering that McSorley’s body isn’t so very different from other show contestants — just try picking her out of the lineup — will viewers see her bony arms, knobby knees, prominent ribcage and gaunt frame as ghastly… or glamorous?

McSorley and show producers rationalize her casting by insisting that viewers will see McSorley being lectured on the need to put on weight – as if all it takes to “cure” anorexia is the chance of winning a modeling contract in the same industry that celebrates and promotes an anorexic ideal. They say that during filming, McSorley was even denied for some jobs because of her low body weight. This may be the case for this competition, but in the real world, McSorley’s look is in high demand. Keep in mind: The British Fashion Council has, to date, refused to ban models with BMIs under 18 despite government insistence to do so. While it did issue an appeal for designers to use “healthy” models, the BFC argues that barring too-thin models “is neither desirable nor enforceable.” Casting McSorley in this competition is like show producers throwing a wounded woman to the lions before blood-thirsty Roman crowds.

BNTM producers also maintain that the making of psychologists and dietitians available to McSorley – at her discretion — absolves them of any ethical responsibilities to her or their demographic. As anyone who has struggled with anorexia or who has cared for someone with the disorder well knows, anorexia is one of the most sly, cunning and obstinate disorders of all. Only about 50 percent of people with anorexia will ever recover fully, with one in 10 dying from anorexia-related complications. I can see it now — McSorley will put on just enough weight to avoid the scrutiny of judges and after the competition, resort back to the only life she knows: anorexia.

To be fair, McSorley, who says she never intended for her weight to be an issue even as she readily admits that she promotes an unhealthy body image, insists that the show has greatly improved her confidence and that it helped her to put on weight. And modeling, she says, has always been her dream. It is the nature of eating disorders to wholly consume its sufferers, to replace lifelong goals with Machiavellian obsessions and unachievable expectations. It’s wonderful that McSorley is persistent in not letting her disorder thwart her ambitions, but I have to question the dangers of working in an industry that values voiceless girls for extreme thinness and empty stomachs while simultaneously trying to recover from a disorder that thrives on the same.

Above all, I question the kind of morality that makes it culturally acceptable and legal to exploit a young woman’s private pain and fragile health as a vehicle for increased ratings and financial gain –and a captive audience that tunes in to view such struggles as entertainment.*

TipToe has more on this at her blog, Beyond Living and Existing.

* Neil Postman’s 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” suggestively argues that by treating serious issues as entertainment, television inexorably changes their context so that they’re viewed not as the serious issues they are, but as mere amusement. In time, the public becomes no longer aware of these issues in their original sense, but knows them only as entertainment.