Media s Effect on Eating Disorders
... That is the ideal girls grow up with, and the media perpetuates this by constantly showing us how we should look, and trying to sell us those things that would help us to attain such an impossible goal. Because there is so much pressure to become what the media considers beautiful, girls often starve themselves or become bulimic. ... For years women have fought these eating disorders, but in the past few years there has been an increase in eating disorders as well as an increase in media consumption showing that media plays a major role in lowering women’s self esteem and causing them to turn to eating disorders to become what they perceive as “perfect.” According to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, anorexia is “an eating disorder primarily affecting adolescent girls and young women, characterized by pathological fear of becoming fat, distorted body image, excessive dieting, and emaciation. ... Bulimia, related to anorexia, is “a habitual disturbance in eating behavior mostly affecting young women of normal weight, characterized by frequent episodes of grossly excessive food intake followed by self-induced vomiting to aver weight gain” (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary). ... ” Many women are diagnosed with either or both of these eating disorders, and there are many others who are not diagnosed, but go through many different types of eating disorders. ... Low self-esteem has been found to be related to body image dissatisfaction and various eating disorders/disturbances according to Naomi Wolf. Obesity, on the other hand, is a chronic condition that develops as a result of an interaction between a person’s genetic makeup and their environment. ... Obesity, also known, in this case, as Binge Eating Disorder can be characterized by “eating, in a discrete period of time, an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances, and a sense of lack of control over eating during the episode” (Weight. ... According to the National Eating Disorders Association, “eating disorders are complex conditions that arise from a combination of long-standing behavioral, emotional, psychological, interpersonal, and social factors.” These social factors include “cultural pressures that glorify ‘thinness’ and place value on obtaining the ‘perfect body,’ narrow definitions of beauty that include only women and men of specific body weights and shapes, and cultural norms that value people on the basis of physical appearance and not inner qualities and strengths” (National Eating Disorders Association).