...The Psychology of Eating Disorders Does the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” stand to be true? For some the answer to this question would be yes. But, to the many health aid companies who advertise in popular teen magazines, commercials, movies, and television shows the answer might be different. The companies that sell “health aide/beauty products” have made a science of understanding the most effective way to advertise and market their products. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year targeting specific age groups and races to make sure that their voice and opinions on the best way to attain those “movie star looks” are heard. However, in my opinion, this mass advertising crosses the line when every magazine in a newsstand promotes unhealthy body images and ways to lose weight. Young woman, who are not wise enough to know that everything they read or see is not always true, can take many of the promises that such health/beauty aids promotes to a whole new level. What these girls/young women fail to understand is that there are sellers of products, who in some cases are more concerned with their profits than the health and well-being of the consumer buying their products, . A large portion of the female population has felt the pressure to look or act a certain way at some point in her life. The real problem is how these girls deal with that pressure. More often than not, they will resort to doing extreme things to their bodies. Actions that...
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...Dying To Be Thin 47% of young girls reported that they wanted to lose weight because of pictures in magazines that they saw. Movies, magazines, and the media all contribute to girls not being comfortable in their bodies because of airbrushing the models or making the actors excessively workout or diet to get to a specific size. Famous people are supposed to be role models to teen girls, but the way the famous people are portrayed actually makes young girls not love their bodies and themselves. As girls reach a certain age, they begin to look at their bodies differently and want to see a change. These girls will try anything like dieting, diet pills, or even starving themselves to see this change, but the emotional and physical effects are never thought of when trying to lose weight a certain way. Average sized people should be portrayed more in the media because of the medias impact on body image perception of young women. Anorexia is a disease that involves unusual eating habits and self-starvation. The people who are affected are mostly young women, but people of either gender can become anorexic at any age. The most common cases of anorexia are found in young females, athletes, and people portrayed in the media. There are many physical effects that an anorexic person will experience. Weak bones are a common negative effect which really hurts an athlete. Hair loss and skin discoloration are other effects that effect both men and women. Other diseases can result from anorexia...
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...In today’s world, one simply cannot escape the judgment of others. At the most judgmental time of their lives, teenage girls in the United States struggle to accept themselves while craving the approval of others. As young women strive to reach perfection, the view on women today may influence their dedication for a perfect body. While society shames bigger women for their weight, degrading thoughts begin to take-over the minds of developing teens. Studies show that negative psychological thoughts of oneself often result in eating disorders among teenage girls in the United States; these degrading thoughts can come from clothing companies, the media, and society’s view on women. First, clothing companies can have a big impact on the view that...
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...Drivin to be Thin Throughout the years, eating disorders have been on the rise. In a society that prizes thinness, anorexics and bulimics are often just one who looks good in clothes, hiding themselves from their real problem. Before 1995, bigger was better, and if you were trying to lose weight, people worried. “Back then big was beautiful and bigger was more beautiful...Everyone worried about losing weight but not the way they are now” (Goodman 79). Young girls and women strive to look like the models they see in magazines, and unrealistic body images promote dangerous eating disorders; therefore, photographers and magazine editors should not be able to photoshop pictures of women. To start out, anorexia nervosa is one of the two most common eating disorders. Anorexia is a disorder that makes one scared to gain weight, therefore, they starve themselves and go to an extreme with dieting and exercising. In fact, they are almost always hungry and thinking about food, even as the disorder impels them to deny their bodies the fuel needed to function properly. (Walsh, Cameron 62,63) It starts out as a diet, but because they have a fear of gaining weight the diet can spiral out of control. They may be bone thin but they can continue to eliminate more and more food, over time or they will eat very little or nothing at all. (Fanning n. pag.) In addition, bulimia is the second most common. Bulimia is a disorder in which one will eat an excessive amount of food, and then to get...
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...When a girl becomes a teenager, her mother rewards her with plastic surgery so she can look more “caucasian” (Hidayat). The previous statement was written about young asian women in Japan and Korea. Nina Hidayat wrote an article about the expectations and body image issues for young women in Asia. When people think about body image, they only think of the US. Not many people think about how those in other countries have the same issues we do. Studies show that the more reality television a young girl watches, the more likely she is to find appearance important (Web 1). The media plays a large role in how women perceive body image and themselves (ie, magazines, internet, television, etc). The results said peers predict the negative outcomes...
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...Anorexia: The Role of Media Hillary Indako University Of Nairobi Eating disorders have a higher mortality rate than any other mental illness. As many as 20 percent of those who suffer from anorexia will die prematurely from complications related to their eating disorder, including suicide and heart problems. While there are many possible causes and triggers for these disorders, the media’s influence on body image cannot be overlooked. The media has been playing a central role on the growth of eating disorders such as anorexia. As adolescents we are convinced with images and messages that tend to further the idea that to be happy and successful we must be slim. Nowadays, It is nearly impossible to open a newspaper or listen to the radio, or turn on a TV without being confronted with the ideas that to be fat is to be undesirable. When adolescents feel as though their breasts, weight or hips don’t match up to those of supermodels and actors, they feel fatally feel secure. This in turn makes to feel insecure about their body image and thus resulting in this eating disorder. Surveys show that there is plenty of evidence demonstrating that the media encourages slimness and weight loss and over-emphasize the importance of beauty and appearances. It appears that beauty and fashion magazines significantly impact the process of identity development in young women, especially with regards to gender-role learning, identity formation, and the development of values and beliefs (Arnett...
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...Causes of Eating Disorders Elwyn Daroya Ryerson University Word Count-1695 For a lot of people, eating is a major aspect of everyday life; you eat to keep your energy up and to stay alive. There are however, people who face varying degrees of psychological problems in regards to eating. Eating disorders are a major concern, more so for women than men. According to Statistics Canada, women are ten times more likely to develop eating disorders than men, and of these individuals that suffer from eating disorders, the majority start developing eating disorders in their teenage years. Binge eating, which is an eating disorder where in which an individual uncontrollably eats, is the more prevalent eating disorder among many age groups in Canada. Furthermore, the latest studies have shown that in Canada, the two most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. Among young people in Canada today, 0.04% of females are diagnosed with the complete definition of anorexia nervosa, while young males are 0%. Bulimia nervosa on the other hand is common among 0.3% of young women and 0.2% on young men. Anorexia nervosa in the simplest terms is a condition in which a person is unwilling to maintain a healthy body weight. Likewise, bulimia nervosa is a condition in which an individual uncontrollably over eats in one session, then tries to balance this action of over-eating by getting rid of it through various ways (usually vomiting). Unlike bulimia nervosa, people who...
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...Eating Disorders in Young Girls Imagine flipping through magazine pictures and you see model after model with the “perfect body”, or you turn on the television only to see the same thing right in front of you. In today’s world young girls minds are molded by media all around them to think that their bodies have to fit in a cookie cutter mold of what society deems as perfect. Statistics have shown that one in ten girls will develop an eating disorder. In today’s society girls feel the pressure from main stream media and this can often end in death. As Dan Rather reported in a 48 Hours documentary, As Dan Rather reported in a 48 Hours documentary, Women are far more likely than men to be unhappy with the way they look, and their weight is the biggest reason why. The worrying starts early. Nearly half of all 13-year-old girls say they don’t like their looks. By 18, it’s up to 80 percent. One study even found that young girls are more afraid of being fat than of nuclear war or getting cancer. Health professionals state that there are three different kinds of eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa, is where a young girl has an irrational fear of getting fat or gaining weight; in which they will starve themselves to the point of starvation or exercise to the point of exhaustion and their bodies at that point suffer extreme consequences. Anorexia nervosa can cause the organs to shut down, heart failure, and hair loss just to name a few repercussions of this disease. The American...
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...develop eating disorders or depression. Teens in this era are at a great risk to the exposure of self-harm and judging themselves all because of the current stereotypes for men and women. Everyone at some point in their lifetime have dealt with body-image issues, some more severe than others. Many people have died from severe cases of disorders like anorexia or mental disorders because they were so obsessed with their bodies or faces being perfect. Many people commonly binge eat then do strenuous exercise to work off all the weight they just gained, but that makes people...
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...Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia Abby looks at herself in the mirror, she turns around and takes a good look at herself, she is thinking “How can I be so fat and everyone else is so skinny?” To top it off Abby is a high school student everyday her situation gets worse and worse. Not only does she feel guilty when she eats, but she also purges it up after she’s done eating. This can be the beginning of an eating disorder called Bulimia Nervosa. Many teens around this age feel insecure about their changing bodies because our society is obsessed with being thin which makes teens want to be thin so they can begin to feel loved and valued. Many times it can also be that they want to look like their favorite actor but the ones who think that need to realize that every individual is different, we all have our different style and taste which makes us have our own unique look. Eating disorders are amongst the most common psychiatric syndromes, this leads to impatient hospitalization and suicide attempts for morality. According to recent studies both anorexia and bulimia are most common in the United States. This research paper will point out the importance of eating disorders: bulimia and anorexia, how the theory “Social comparison” can be used for this topic when comparing the US to other countries that are the opposite of bulimia and anorexia such as force-feeding and will also state how different it is in a little town in Africa called Mauritania and a prison...
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...102 Prof. Rhodes October 25th, 2010 Are Eating Disorders Caused By the Media? Have you ever looked in a magazine or watched a fashion show on television? If you have then you have been subjected to the media portraying models as the hottest thing on the planet. What you don’t know is that a good portion of these models are suffering from eating disorders. I believe the media is to blame for our nation’s epidemic of eating disorders because, not only do magazines and television portray skinny to be in, but also songs in our culture convey the attitude “…that only the beautiful and thin are valued and loved” (Hesse-Biber 88). Some women and men in the world are happy about how they look. Some think that they are ugly and reach toward plastic surgery, but even more think that the only way they can be happy is by starving themselves, or throwing up everything they have eaten that day. In this paper I will discuss facts and information on how the media is to blame for our nation’s epidemic, the pro’s and con’s to eating disorders and the media, and a few possibilities on how to fix this epidemic before it starts to spiral out of control. When you think about the billions and billions of people in this world, it is hard to believe that “2 million Americans-most of them women and girls-do suffer from eating disorders” (Gorman 110). That number is shocking isn’t it? How about the fact that “approximately 1 in 150 teenage girls in the U.S. falls prey to anorexia nervosa… Not...
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...Date Anorexia Nervosa One of the most common eating disorders in the world is anorexia nervosa. A patient who suffers from anorexia nervosa loses at least fifteen percent of the normal minimum weight. Anorexia nervosa incidences are increasing these days with many cases recorded for the past few decades. In every 100,000 persons, there are between eight to thirteen cases of people suffering from anorexia disorders. For instance, statistics show that nearly seven thousand people in Hong Kong suffer from anorexia nervosa. Moreover, anorexia nervosa is more prevalent among girls under adolescent between the ages of 15 to 20 years of age who are a high risk. Moreover, more than 95% of people suffering from anorexia nervosa are females. Anorexia nervosa, and according to research it normally starts affecting adolescent girls from the age young age of around 13 years all through their entire life up to around 20 years of age. As a result, this essay will target the cases of the adolescent girls between 15 to 20 years of age as they have higher risk or have the problem already. Individuals experiencing eating disorder at times find it difficult to differentiate between what is either normal or abnormal. Anorexia nervosa has many behaviors and thoughts among them body image distortion, inability of maintaining healthy body weights, eating habits that are scarce and fear of eating due to weight gain (Bryson, 2014). Anorexia nervosa may not have huge...
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...Kathleen Norris focuses on a small town community in the Dakotas in order to explain a bigger picture on how American society does not want to highlight failures and mistakes from the past. Norris conveys many individuals apart of this community have been trying to remember things the way they want to than how things actually are in reality, and therefore the community masks the truth and hides their history. On the other side of the spectrum, the informative and revealing essay “A Secret Society of the Starving” by Mim Udovitch validates the way individuals, especially young girls, engage themselves in dangerous activities and behaviors because of the familiar environment they have with others who can relate to them. Specifically in Udovitch’s essay, she targets a population of young girls who have an eating disorder and seek an emotional understanding within others on websites that promote an eating disorder community by sharing their experiences. Norris and Udovitch present different issues regarding communities in their essays, but they both explain that acceptance in American society affects how people cope with their problems, how they tell the truth, and what crucial details of their stories they leave out for others to hear. In both essays, females are pushed to follow their role in society if they want to fit in with the rest of their community. In Norris’s essay, she focuses on the expectations of women and what they should be doing instead of thinking about themselves...
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...Contributing Factors to Various Eating Disorders Introduction The proposed topic discussed throughout this research will be eating disorders, specifically on the contributions to various eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, athletica nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating. Through much research, it is shown there are larger causes to these eating disorders. It is no longer a psychological factor (brain chemical misbalance). There are greater forces that influence eating disorders such as the mass media, family, stress (sense of identity), community (peers/school), and negative body image (which links to mass media). It is important to know these contributions to eating disorders because, the more one knows about the various factors for an eating disorder, the easier it will become to treat these disorders (help one suffering with an eating disorder cope and become healthier.) Throughout the 21st century, eating disorders have become more common among North American teens. With a higher percentage rate of eating disorders in the 21st century, (Sneddon, 1999, p.35) it shows it is an area that should have greater focus. Not only does it have a negative impact on the individual who is battling it, it has a negative impact on society; an impact that could destroy our society – mentally if we (as a community/society) do not help or treat this in the way it should be. An eating disorder can tear apart someone’s morals, eat at their brain – which means with it becoming more...
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...Society’s Influence on Eating Disorders Society today applies undo pressure on women to conform to a universal definition of beauty. This unnecessary pressure causes women to develop serious insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, which eventually lead to eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia. Without society and the media creating a false image of beauty, the percentage of women suffering from eating disorders would decrease tremendously, and women would stop trying to reach a body weight that is unhealthy and also nearly impossible to achieve. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia can be stopped, but only if society does something to help prevent it. Anorexia Nervosa is a disorder that causes distorted perceptions of the body and a fear of gaining weight. This disorder causes self-starvation and also extreme weight loss. Those who suffer from anorexia are generally seen as being “painfully thin,” which is quite accurate because many dealing with this disorder have a bit of physical discomfort due to their low body weight (Keel 3). People with anorexia tend to develop daily rituals. Some people will count calories while others will weigh themselves after every meal (Keel 20). Because of the obsession with thinness, the rates of those suffering with this disorders has risen greatly (Keel 59). At least one out of every twenty people with anorexia dies, and when compared to other disorders, it seems to be the most deadly (Keel 16). Though not as harmful as...
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