The world was shocked when last week, Olsen twin Mary-Kate Olsen checked into a clinic for anorexia. It isn’t anything quite as immediately harmful as drug or alcohol abuse, but eating disorders are still deadly serious problems that can be fatal if they go unchecked. It’s something many young women deal with every day. In all cases, especially Mary-Kate’s, it’s something that has gone on for far too long, and quite unnecessarily.

She’s looked like this for at least the past two years, and I’m sure the pattern of behavior that led up to this has snowballed from long ago, perhaps even from early childhood. Normally, when a star enters into either some sort of rehab or eating disorder center, the first public reaction is something along the lines of:”That’s just too bad. They knew what they were getting themselves into from the start.”

Where are these so-called parents of the Olsen sisters? Judging from other media coverage and just the whole trend of coverage of the twins over the years, it would almost seem as if they sprouted from the ground like garden gnomes and grew into insanely money-savvy vixens. That’s what I said, ‘vixens.’ They’re legal now; I feel no shame in it.

What concerns me the most is why did she wait so long to come out about her eating problem? She came out right about the same time she turned 18. Is it possible she wanted to wait until she was legally an adult so she could legally be in control of her affairs? Who was holding her back before? Did the parent/parents know but do nothing for fear of a scandal and, thus, lost profits? Could Ashley feel Mary-Kate’s hunger pains? Does she actually have parents, or are they actors paid to portray her parents since she and Ashley are actually angels who fell straight from heaven as wee cherubs? The plot thickens.

There is another issue rooted in all this, and it’s the time-tested factor of over-weight people not being visually appealing to viewers on TV. Fat people are generally only allowed on TV because they’re funny. Either they’re funny to look at in the physical humor sense or they’re outstanding comedians, such as John Goodman, Roseanne Barr-Arnold-Whatever, the semi-portly Jason Alexander (George Costanza) or Kevin James – OK, maybe not Kevin James. I did say “outstanding comedian” after all. SIUC alum Dennis Franz on “NYPD Blue” was allowed to not only star on television, but to appear nude because housewives and secretaries secretly lusted after him.

However, the big difference with the Olsen twins is that nobody ever really wanted them to be good actresses or comedians in the first place. They were just expected to stand there and act disturbingly cute, all the while planning their overthrow of the nation by the use of telepathy – or at least try to figure out how many people’s heads they could mess with before nap time.