...Dying to be Thin: America’s Obsession with the Anorexic Profile. Matthew Smith Strayer University SOC100 Sociology Professor Sheila Farr April 29, 2012 In today’s society we have a standard by which we compare ourselves to others. We judge the people around us by physical appearance before we even meet and get to know them. Mental disorders revolved around eating stem from this kind of mass judgment. These standards are often not based around our own appearance but by the standards set for us via the Media. We allow ourselves to become over saturated with these images of the ”perfect” person. Why is it that the people who aren’t even in our live get to decide the way we look? We put our bodies through hell trying to meet and manage these expectations that society has placed on us. Is this really necessary with all the other pressures we face on a daily basis? Which begs the question, why is our society dying to be thin? In many other cultures it is a sign of wealth and prosperity to be overweight. This girth is afforded by a station above all others and looked upon with envy. (Popenoe, 2004)As a result there are few without this stature within these cultures. The small and skinny are those who can’t afford to eat as robustly. Other societies, like our own have taken an opposing stance on this. The small are suspended on pedestals while the over -weight are rejected. It has not always been this way, however. Through the years our perspectives have been skewed by...
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...Dying to be Thin While I can say that I knew what anorexia nervosa and bulimia are when it comes to describing the disease, I had never really seen anything quite like this video. It really opened up my eyes to the serious dangers of these diseases and the importance of finding ways to combat them. Seeing the young girl Erin standing in front of a mirror and saying she looked fat, all while being a good 20 percent below her normal body weight, is something that is very hard for me to understand. Then it is pointed out that anorexia nervosa is the most deadly psychiatric illness and it becomes obvious to me just how serious the issue is. Since the 1950’s anorexia nervosa has continued to increase every five years by 36 percent according to The Mayo Clinic. This blew me away, I grew up in a home where my sister was the oldest and she says she always worried about her weight but not to the extent of doing anything harmful. The rest of my siblings are all boys and we always worried about gaining weight not losing it, so while I knew what this disease was I never actually knew anything about it and how it can lead to death. The media seems to be a major factor into contributing to women suffering from these diseases. Whether it’s on T.V. or models in magazines the media continues to use these very skinny women and it only seems to lead to women all over feeling the need to live up to what they see in the media. Another interesting thing I learned was that most victims have an...
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...Watching the video “Dying to be Thin” as well as reading the two articles provided by Dr. Chen opened my eyes to numerous facts and implications regarding the issues raised for the diagnosis of an eating disorder. The majority of the video talked about the disorders of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Learning that eating disorders lead amongst other DSM disorders in most deaths is a huge issue raised in the documentary. Furthemore, the treatment of an eating disorder often takes place in steps, first ensuring the patient’s health and then delving into deeper issues. This treatment process needs further exploration and insight as to the complexities of a specific eating disorder. Seeing how anxiety serves as a key preliminary factor often seen in childhood pinpoints yet another implication seen. The two articles serve as one of the first qualitative research designs used to measure a DSM diagnosis. By giving the factors studied a specific description, the researchers provided easy interpretation. However, this...
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...Simpson Psy 230 - 003 17 September 2013 Dying to be Thin – Societies Dirty Little Secrete In the video “Dying to be Thin “ Nova takes an investigative look into the world of eating disorders. This investigation reveals the truth about the causes, complexities, and treatments people go through as they battle with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. This video allows for an inside view into the personal lives of real people and reveals the mental and physical struggles they face in their daily fight for recovery and survival. The exploited and unrealistic image of being thin is a sad, but true portrayal of what people go through, women especially, in today’s society and the pressures they face not just for acceptance, but also for survival in the brutal world of fashion and sports. America has fallen captive to the unrealistic belief that in order to be beautiful, successful, athletic, or even socially accepted one needs to be thin. Statistics displayed in the video state that an estimated eight million people suffer from anorexia and bulimia. This epidemic will continue to grow, because the media continues to run ads that portray under weight female models as sexy and successful, and society as a whole strives to become just that. Society tends to relate the image of a thin person to a person who is healthy and happy, when sometimes that portrayal could not be further from the truth. As shown in the video, being thin doesn’t always mean a person’s healthy...
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...Morgan James Biology 1020 March 3, 2015 Video Title: “Nova: Dying to Be Thin” Plot Summary The video I viewed was “Nova: Dying to Be Thin”. The video tells the story of some young girls who face anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders that are on the rise. I chose to view this video because I use to always want to be thin and at one point in my life I found myself struggling with bulimia. Not many people would believe that I struggled with bulimia because of how I appear to look, but you would be surprised what a person has gone through. That is why you should never judge a book by its cover. The main focus of this video is telling different stories, views, and situations dealing with eating disorders. According to the narrator a ballerina...
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...Dying to be thin In the DVD “Dying to be Thin” Nova takes an investigative look into the world of eating disorders. This investigation reveals the truth about the causes, complexities, and treatments people go through as they battle with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. This DVD allows for an inside view into the personals lives of real people and reveals the mental and physical struggles they face in their daily fight for recovery and survival. It is a sobering but ultimately hopeful documentary which examines a disturbing increase in the prevalence of eating disorders. It interviews students, dancers, fashion models and other young women who are seeking recovery or are doing their best to conquer their disease. The exploited and unrealistic image of being thin is a sad, but true portrayal of what people go through, women especially, in today’s society and the pressures they face not just for acceptance, but also for survival in the brutal world of fashion and sports. American has fallen captive to the unrealistic belief that in order to be beautiful, successful, athletic, or even socially accepted one needs to be thin. Statistics displayed in the video state that an estimated eight million people suffer from anorexia and bulimia. The target population for the DVD is all young women who are dissatisfied with themselves based off the belief from society that relates being thin person is happy and healthy, when that portrayal could not be further from the...
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...In two different books, The Odyssey and Into Thin Air, the main characters, krakauer and Odysseus share three kinds of guilt, guilt about withholding information from their companions, guilt of surviving instead of their companions, and finally about maintaining their selfish ambitions to reach their goals even when their companions were dying off. Example one, guilt over withholding information. In Into Thin Air they withhold information about how many people made it back to camp from Rob Hall to try to keep him going. In the Odyssey Odysseus withholds information from his crew to keep them from running away from Scylla and Charybdis. Next example, both Odysseus and Krakauer experience survivor guilt when they lose their companions. ” It can't...
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...the street or look in the mirror and it becomes a case of welcome to the "real" world, us. Where everyone is in all shapes and sizes, colors and ages. Like in the book The Mouse that Roared, the authors shows how Disney attempts to hide behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, while simultaneously exercising its influence as a major force on both global economics and cultural learning. In the fashion industry I feel that it is the same way, while forty percent of the United States is obese, Vogues magazines and many others show those unreal skinny bodies that everybody is dying to have. The fashion industry has shaped women’s ideals of what to wear and what to look, and until the industry can shift from encouraging people to be a shape which nature never intended them to be, however, the media will continue to form young people’s view of the world, a world that is apparently populated by only thin girls. The words "eat" and "boring" are usually never found in the same sentence, but leave it to a supermodel to accomplish this task. Bodies in a bathing suit, underwear, or a skimpy tank top flood magazines magazines today. How many times have you flipped through the pages of a Vogue magazine and spotted an article about how women should have a good perception of themselves and "celebrate those curves?" However you then turn the pages the only thing you see is skinny no curves at all. The Mass media influences lot teenagers. Therefore, it is much more difficult...
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...Dulce Lozano Pierce ENC 1102 30076 28 July 2013 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock One’s social class in society and what society thinks of one has a huge impact on one’s self esteem. One is not ranked only by their money and possessions but one is also ranked by what they wear and how they present themselves (Association for Psychological Science). All of this affects the way people interact with each other and how they treat each other based on their social class (Association for Psychological Science). People from different classes have different views of life and the world around them; because of different environments they were raised and educated in. According to X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, the authors of a literature book, T.S. Elliot, the author of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, grew up of a middle class family that was well educated. Elliot went on to achieve a higher education and soon became a well-known poet, he had a high social ranking in society. In 1915 Elliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was published in a magazine (Kennedy). The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is about a man who is very self-conscious about his appearance and worries what other people think of him. Prufrock has such a low self-esteem he is unable to approach women of a high class, because he thinks he is not good enough for them. Throughout the poem Prufrock explains and vividly describes the emotions he feels about himself and the social world around him. In T.S...
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...Jon Krakauer was a part of the deadliest expedition in Mount Everest history (at that point), with 8 people dying on May 10 and 11th in 1996. Into Thin Air was written by Jon Krakauer, an avid mountaineer in his youth and a journalist as he is climbing Everest. Jon writes about his expedition and personal experience of climbing Everest. In the book Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer uses rhetorical appeals to express the dangers of climbing Mt Everest. Jon Krakauer triggers readers emotions with careful wording, and uses human nature to justify climbing Mt Everest. Jon is explaining the history of Mount Everest, when he exclaims that it's human nature to want to climb everest. “Once Everest was determined to be the highest summit on earth, it...
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...‘BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH’ – Emily Dickinson Summary Death, in the form of a gentleman suitor, stops to pick up the speaker and take her on a ride in his horse-drawn carriage. They move along at a pretty relaxed pace and the speaker seems completely at ease with the gentleman. As they pass through the town, she sees children at play, fields of grain, and the setting sun. Pretty peaceful, right? As dusk sets in our speaker gets a little chilly, as she is completely under-dressed – only wearing a thin silk shawl for a coat. She was unprepared for her impromptu date with Death when she got dressed that morning. They stop at what will be her burial ground, marked with a small headstone. In the final stanza, we find out the speaker's ride with Death took place centuries ago (so she's been dead for a long time). But it seems like just yesterday when she first got the feeling that horse heads (like those of the horses that drew the "death carriage") pointed toward "Eternity"; or, in other words, signaled the passage from life to death to an afterlife. Analysis Death OK, so death is not a new concept to us but Dickinson does a good job making it fresh and strange by having death take the form of a man. You might be tempted to think of the grim reaper, with his black cloak and dangerous-looking scythe (the curved sharp thing he's always carrying around), but, no, Dickinson's Death is a real smooth operator. He's the kind of guy who would hold the door open for his...
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...body image, but his life going forward. Frank Bruni was another man whose body image was shaped by personal experience. As a young boy, Bruni said he grew up, “in an extended Italian American family that staged feats to end all feats” (Bruni). This lead to him being overweight at a young age and his mother took notice. Bruni’s body image was shaped by his mother, whom he described, “did counsel vertical stripes over horizontal ones, and I knew what the message of that was. That made me anxious” (Bruni). His mother also puts him on the Atkins diet at the age of eight. However, he says, “the foundation of anxiety came from elementary school classmates who joked my initials F.B. stood for Fat Boy.” (Bruni) This led to Bruni’s obsession to be thin and it also lead to him having eating disorders at the age of nineteen. Any personal experience from a family member or dealing with rejection can easily alter how a person views their own body which makes it the strongest pressure when forming an opinion of one’s own body...
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...The speaker refers to his "kindness" and "civility." He drives her slowly; is this an expression of tact and consideration for her? If he is the courteous suitor, then Immortality, who is also in the carriage (or hearse) would be their chaperon, a silent one. Is Death actually a betrayer, and is his courtly manner an illusion to seduce her? Because of his kindness in stopping for her, she agrees to go with him ("put away / My labor and my leisure too"). Is Death really cruel? She is not properly dressed for their journey; she is wearing only a gossamer gown and tulle tippet (gossamer: very light, thin cloth; tulle: a thin, fine netting used for veils, scarfs, etc.; tippet: covering for the shoulders). Is Immortality really an accomplice to Death's deception? The drive symbolizes her leaving life. She progresses from childhood, maturity (the "gazing grain" is ripe) and the setting (dying) sun to her grave. The children are presented as active in their leisure ("strove"). The images of children and grain suggest futurity, that is, they have a future; they also depict the progress of human life. Is thereirony in the contrast between her passivity and inactivity in the coach and their energetic activity? The word "passed" is repeated four times in stanzas three and four. They are "passing" by the children and grain, both still part of life. They are also "passing" out of time into eternity. The sun passes them as the sun does everyone who is buried. With the sun setting, it becomes...
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...When I was a child my father brought me to the zoo. As we were passing the elephants I noticed they were being held by a rope tied to a spike in the ground. This rope was extremely thin, so thin that this massive animal could have broken free at any point in time. Out of curiosity I decided to ask the elephant keeper how this thin rope could hold back such a large animal. “Well”, he said, “when they were much younger and much smaller they were held by the same rope, so they are know conditioned to believe this same rope will hold them. So they never try to break free.” I was amazed, these animals could break free at any time but because they believed they couldn’t they were stuck right there. In the resent past euthanasia has been frowned upon but I believe it is necessary as long as it is properly regulated, the patient willfully decides, and that the resources saved from the euthanasia would go to another patient. Currently euthanasia as no regulations in the United States, since euthanasia will accrue either legally or illegally I believe it would be better to have a set of guide lines established. Currently with no guide lines there is a pressure set on patients to make a decision alone. This means they could attempt euthanasia themselves or with the help of a loved, causing even more bodily harm to themselves and mental harm to the loved one. If there was a formal procedure, this would mean the patient think about euthanasia would have a support system and a formal procedure...
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...services or products, such as new medications or medical equipment, is affected by many factors. Factors such as the situation of a financial aspect, patient education and the quality of the services or products being distributed. Care of the Dying “Hospice care is palliative care given to individuals who are terminally ill, with an expected survival of six months or less. The focus of hospice care is on meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the dying individual, while fostering the highest quality of life possible.” (Rastegari RN, B.S.N., 2002, para.). In the way that our world is becoming, we are seeing many individuals coming down with diseases that are either not curable or that it has ran its’ course in the body and that there is nothing that can be done to prolong life. This is when this type of service is needed and many of individuals, especially the minorities and the American Indians. Many people do not understand what Hospice is all about. When they do find out about it, then they wish that it was known about sooner. The sole purpose of using this service is to help reduce both the physical pain and the emotional suffering of the patient during their final stages of the illness that they are dying from. According to "Evercare Hospice And Palliative Care" (2012) Hospice is not a physical place, it is a service that comes to wherever people live, whether that’s a hospital, an assisted living facility or a home. Consumer Outlook Many individuals...
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