On last week’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Crystal Minkoff opened up to the ladies about her struggle with an eating disorder. The topic came up when they were discussing her stressful time in Lake Tahoe with Sutton Stracke. After she returned home Crystal found she’d lost five pounds from stress. The women erupted into congratulations over this news, Kathy Hilton even told her to “thank Sutton” for this development. However, for Crystal, the weight loss wasn’t a cause for a celebration.
Crystal tells the group that she has food issues, and is a recovering bulimic. She’s struggled with this since age 11, but it’s now under control. Her troubles were triggered by watching an educational documentary about eating disorders in school.
She said she didn’t expect to bring this topic up but just wanted the women to know that she’s super aware of her weight and to understand the struggles she goes through.
The women think Crystal’s story will help a lot of people. Lisa Rinna’s daughter Amelia had also been open about her eating disorder on the show, so she told Chrystal it was “very brave” to share as well.
In a later scene, Crystal’s husband Rob was surprised to hear that Crystal had opened up to everyone about her eating disorder on election night, and wanted to discuss it further with her. Even Rob doesn’t seem to know much about this part of his wife’s life.
“Well, but you like food,” Rob tells her, a little confused.
“I love food,” Crystal says. “I actually always wanted to say I loved it, and that was really hard. I couldn’t admit liking food because I had so much shame around food.”
Crystal explains that her body stuff is rooted in her childhood because she always felt like “the chubby” one growing up. She also modeled her standard of beauty to be blond-haired and blue eyes, and felt pressured to live up to this white American ideal.
Crystal says the peak of her disorder was in late high school and early college, so her mother never really knew about it. She’s never really even opened up that much to her husband Rob either. Crystal now worries about her daughters’ views of bodies, health, and food, and wants to demonstrate a healthy attitude about these topics for them.
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