After more than a decade of battling anorexia, Karin Bowman passed away Tuesday. The 35-year-old model was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Ichilov Hospital after a kidney complication caused by the disease.
Bauman lived in north Tel Aviv in the home of her mother Yehudit and her husband, singer Shimi Tavori. She has five siblings, most of whom have past careers in the glamorous world: Orly (45), a former model and mother of three who lives in London, about whom Bowman said: "Orly is my life. She tries to talk to me as much as possible. She reminds me of my mother in her concern"; René (43), a former model who posed for international campaigns and now does business in Frankfurt; Anna (41), a former model and mother of two living in London; Stephen, 38, a businessman living in London; and Natalie (34), a former model and mother of four. They were all born in Holland and immigrated to Israel with their mother. Their father stayed to live in Holland.
Karin grew up in Nahariya, and she too had dreams of an international career. "I imagined myself walking the most important paths," she said. Her eating disorders and body image struggles began when she was 13 years old.
Karin and Judith Bauman,
"At first it was healthy diets, which almost every woman has done at least once in her life. Then I moved on to fasting, calorie lists. The first time I threw up was during rehearsals for the Girl of the Year competition, when I was almost 17 years old. I wanted to get as thin as possible," she said in an interview with Israel Hayom's Shabbat magazine. "We had lunch, and I took two bites and immediately went to throw up. One of the contestants heard me and went to inform the organizers, but they didn't do anything about it."
In her last interview last year, the countdown seemed to have begun. "I've gotten to the point where I need a kidney transplant, I'm not willing to do dialysis. I can't sit because I don't have fat in my tailbone. If I sit, it's on the bone and it hurts a lot. I can barely get up to go to the bathroom, because I get dizzy and fall, and I don't have teeth," she said.
Karin and Yehudit Bauman at the Knesset Committee on Eating Disorders,
In recent years, Bauman has also been a symbol of the fight against the disease and has also come to the Knesset with the issue. Over the years, she kept a diary documenting her coping with the disease. In an interview with Israel Hayom, she said: "On the last page I wrote that I decided to give up life. I mean, not that I want to die, but that I accept the reality that I probably can't live. I want to, but I can't. And only today am I beginning to understand that."
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