Sharing the Secret

On the surface, Beth Moss appears attractive, popular, and successful in school and ballet. Inside, she feels out of control and struggles with growing up, turning to bulimia as a way to regain some sense of control. Her outward success hides a deeper fear of not fitting in and meeting expectations.

During a ballet class, Beth experiences a dizzy misstep that unsettles her. She begs her instructor not to tell her mother, fearing how she will react. This moment marks the first visible sign that her disorder may be emerging.

Beth begins to hide severe symptoms from friends, such as bleeding gums. She also teaches her friend Kady Cole how to purge by inducing vomiting, normalizing the behavior in her circle and escalating the danger.

While playing a game with Sophia, Beth cites her mother's complaints about patients in her father’s practice as the cause of her greatest fear—not fitting in in some way. She asserts she does not want to be like those people.

Beth passes out in the school hallway and, to avoid telling her mother, she asks her stepmother to pick her up. Her father’s involvement pushes for medical evaluation, signaling a struggle she hopes to keep private.

At her father’s insistence, Beth sees a physician who diagnoses anemia. The doctor asks about her eating, but Beth downplays the problem, claiming she usually eats properly even though she hasn’t lately because she’s been sick. She also hides the scars on her knuckles from the exam.

Beth’s mother notices signs of trouble later, but Beth explains them away as old cat scratches. The lie deepens the conflict between mother and daughter over truth and illness.

A sympathetic school counselor confronts Beth with the observation that she may be bulimic and encourages her to discuss the problem. The counselor’s empathy prompts Beth to consider counseling, though she remains guarded at first.

Beth begins counseling and is initially defiant, but she begins to open up when her therapist shares her own history with anorexia. The sessions gradually reveal Beth’s deeper feelings and pressures driving her behavior.

The film mirrors Beth’s struggle with Dr. Moss’s patient Rachel and touches on Beth’s resentment toward her stepmother, whom she refers to as a trophy wife. These parallels deepen the sense of being squeezed by family expectations.

A friend tells Beth she is 'skinny enough,' prompting Beth to snap that she does not vomit to lose weight. She admits she does it because she is 'screwed up,' revealing the emotional underpinnings of her behavior rather than a simple quest for weight loss.

Beth returns home to find her mother in the bathroom, cleaning out the medicine cabinet to remove items that could be used to purge. When Beth refuses to back down, she vomits in front of her mother and breaks down, describing hair loss and a racing heartbeat. She asks to be checked into inpatient care.

Beth is admitted to an inpatient facility, where she begins to show signs of improvement. She notes that after-meal supervision has decreased to two hours, signaling progress and cautious hope for recovery.