Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber Address Red Flags in “Full House” Eating Disorder Episode

The characters on Full House missed troubling signs and “red flags” in an infamous 1990 episode that found teenager D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure) skipping meals to lose weight, according to a nutrition expert.

Full House alumni Andrea Barber and Jodie Sweetin recapped the season 4 episode, “Shape Up,” on their rewatch podcast How Rude, Tanneritos earlier this week, calling it “uncomfortable to watch.” They also pointed out the many moments in which the felt the show’s other characters, including the adults, should have recognized D.J.’s worrying behavior, like skipping meals and eating ice cube pops.

In a follow-up Tanneritos episode, posted Friday, Feb. 7, the hosts were joined by nutritionist and former Fuller House production coordinator Melanie Samuels, who agreed that the Tanner adults could have done a better job helping D.J. before her crash diet got out of control.

Related: Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber Revisit What They Call the 'Worst Episode' of Full House

Barber pointed to a scene early in “Shape Up,” in which Becky (Lori Loughlin) finds D.J. taping “thinsporation” photos of supermodels to the family’s refrigerator to stop herself from eating.

“I was like, Becky, that's a red flag,” Barber noted.

Samuels agreed that this was one of the many “missed signals” she’d noted in the episode. She went on to explain why Becky’s advice to D.J. about healthy eating may not have been as sensible as it seemed.

“The problem is when Becky says, you know, ‘Well, you just have to eat like this, and here's the standard meal plan,’ that already makes D.J. feel like she has failed because she's like, well, what if she's already doing that and it's not working for her body? Or what if she doesn't know how to do that and enjoy it?” Samuels said.

Related: The Facts of Life's Nancy McKeon Says the Show’s Young Stars All Faced Scrutiny About Their Weight

Sweetin took issue with the fact that the other characters essentially reinforced D.J.’s anxiety about her weight by providing solutions to the perceived “problem,” rather than simply telling her “you're healthy, you're fine.” According to Samuels, those “solutions” were another misstep the show’s adult characters made.

“Again, kind of back to Becky's comments about a meal plan, Jesse's comments about, ‘Oh, you just have to exercise,’ ” she said. “Maybe just provide [D.J.] a safe space to express her needs. But if you see, like, serious signs, then, you know, somebody does need professional help.”

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Sweetin, 43, and Barber, 48, had also noted in their recap that Barber’s character, Kimmy, seemed entirely oblivious to her best friend’s insecurities, and wanted to know how she could have been more supportive of D.J.

“I think it's important to just maybe ask more questions. You know, ‘Why do you feel like that? And maybe, yeah, point out those red flags, but not in a way that's accusatory,” Samuels said.

Asked what she would change about the episode, Samuels said that she would “rewrite the adult script.”

“Maybe having more of a check on how they talk about their own bodies,” she explained. “Because the transfer of stress from adult to child is real, and especially when it comes to food. And so I think I would rewrite how they explained what healthy is and how to obtain that, and to also celebrate [D.J.] for who she is before any changes.”

Barber, meanwhile, wished the episode had revealed that her character was also insecure about her own body. The show, she said, posited that “Kimmy has the perfect body, and D.J. wants to look like that. But I felt so uncomfortable being that thin as a 14-year-old girl.”

“For as much as, you know, Candace was self-conscious about her chipmunk cheeks, I was self-conscious about how skinny I was on my chicken legs, because that didn't feel right either,” she recalled. “And so, you know, Kimmy's confident and she's oblivious, but I wish they had kind of revealed at the end that, you know what? Kimmy is just as insecure as D.J. It's just that thinness was held up as … the dream to achieve. And it's like, no, it's not. Everybody feels self-conscious about something even though you look different.”

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