Media and eating disorders Essay Example For Students

Media and eating disorders Essay Eating Disorders and the Media’s Role. It is not surprising that eating disorders are on the increase due to the value society places on being thin. In modern Western culture, women are given the message at a very young age that in order to be happy and successful, they must be thin. Every time you walk into a store you are surrounded by the images of emaciated models that appear on the front cover of fashion magazines. Women are constantly bombarded with advertisements catering to what is considered desirable.Thousands of women and girls are starving themselves this very minute trying to attain what the fashion industry considers to be the ideal waif-like figure. During this paper I will mainly be discussing the effects on females, though males are afflicted with eating disorders, the causes are different than those in the opposite sex. The average model weighs 23% less than the average woman. Maintaining a weight that is 15% below your expected body weight fits the criteria for anorexia, so most models, according to med ical standards, fit into the category of being anorexic (Brumberg 205). Women must realize that societys ideal body image may in fact be achievable, but at a detrimental price to one’s body. The photos we see in magazines are not a clear image of reality. Adolescents and women striving to attain societys unattainable ideal more often than not, increase their feelings of inadequacy. In contemporary society young women easily cling to dieting precisely because it is widely practiced and an admired form of cultural expression. In the twentieth century, the body—not the face—became the focus of female beauty. As a consequence of this media portrayal of beauty, dieting has moved from the periphery to the center of women’s lives and culture. Dieting has manifested in two noticeable and important ways that have consequences for eating disorders. First, upon comparing physical appearances throughout the twentieth century, the female body size has become significantly slimmer. According to Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of â€Å"Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa,† (1988) society experienced a â€Å"brief flirtation with full-breasted, curvaceous female figures during 1950s, our collective taste returned to an ideal of extreme thinness and an androgynous, if not childlike, figure.† Our cultural tolerance for body fat has dimi nished over the years, causing an infiltration of these feelings to adolescents and young women, the group most afflicted with eating disorders. Second, society projects an image that being thin is tied to attractiveness, popularity with the opposite sex, and self esteem—all primary ingredients in adolescent culture. Nearly 50% of all women are on a diet at any given time (Bordo 140). The fact that women have such strong concerns about attractiveness is compelling evidence for the power of dieting message. Given western culture’s longstanding admiration of thinness, it is no wonder that so many young women resort to dieting and that eating disorders have become part of the psychopathology of females. Diet commercials are constantly appearing on our television screens telling us that once we lose the weight, we will be happy, content, and successful. You stand in the check out line at the grocery store surrounded by magazines claiming to have the newest and best diet. Each month another new diet appears claiming to be the diet to end all diets. Whatever happened to last months diets that claimed the same thing? Dieting has become an obsession in modern western culture. Many of the diets on the market right now are unhealthy. They deprive you of the proper nutrition your body needs to survive and can lead to health problems. The diet and fashion industries are not totally to blame for societys obsession with thinness. We are the ones keeping them in business. We buy into the ideal body image. We allow ourselves to believe the lies being thrown at us constantly. We buy their magazines, diet books and products, hoping that this time they will work. We are throwing away our hard earned money trying to live up to the standards that society has set for us. Be prepared to spend lots of money on your quest for the perfect diet and be prepared to never find it, because there isnt one. Eating disorders were first diagnosed in the 1950s or early 1960s and have spread rapidly over the following decades (Brumberg 3). Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa, the two officially recognized eating disorders, have become major focuses of attention among the public due to rapid increases in occurrences. Both of these diseases are associated with one overriding desire: all encompassing drive to be thin. (Chernin 28). The causes of these disorders are numerous. Some are biological, but the strongest causes are due to sociocultural factors. There are several sociocultural causes of eating disorders. For instance, an improvement of the economic conditions of woman, family characteristics, and visual exposure to ideal image of the female body in the media would influence eating disorders (Bordo 52). Guns on Campus EssaySociety is brainwashing young people into believing that being thin is important and necessary. Its unfortunate, but in todays society, people have forgotten that its whats inside a person that counts, not whats on the outside. We need to start loving and accepting each other for who we are not what we look like. Next time you decide that you are going to start another diet because you feel you are too fat, stop; sign up for a self-esteem class instead. That would be money well spent. If we learn to love and accept ourselves, we will also begin to love our bodies, no matter what size we are. We also need to teach our children to be proud of whom they are. We need to remind them that people come in all shapes and sizes, and we need to teach them to accept everyone for who they are. Parents need to also teach their children the value of healthy eating and not send the message that being thin is important. Many children, under the age of 10, are becoming obsessed with dieting and their bodies. They are afraid of becoming fat. They dont just learn this from the media; they also learn this from their parents. If their mothers are constantly dieting and expressing their desire to be thin, these young children will start to believe they also need to be thin. We need to encourage and support our children, especially teenagers. They need to feel good about themselves and their accomplishments, they need your approval and they need to know that you are proud of them. If a child is raised to love and accept who they are and what they look like, they will be less likely to strive to fit into societys unattainable standards. Bibliography: