Dreams Of Perfection
...st people think it to be. Some of the physical harm that can be done due to anorexia can be fatal, while others are just the body trying to protect itself. When the person gets to the point where they have absolutely no more fat tissue to keep the person warm, she will start to develop a thin layer of soft hair on her entire body. This is the body’s attempt of protecting the woman from cold temperatures. While they develop more hair on their body, the hair on their head will begin to fall out and thin. Their faces will become pale, gaunt, and sunken in. Women can stop menstruating and may become sterile after a certain time period, and men may have a reduction in sex hormones. One of the most dangerous effects anorexia may have on someone is heart attack and stroke. The blood becomes deprived of the nutrients that it would regularly derive from food intake, but since food intake is virtually non-existent the blood becomes malnourished. The blood then clots either in the heart or in the brain, thus creating a heart attack or stroke. The specific cause for developing anorexia is different for everyone. It may start out as a diet and healthy work-out routine, but a diet can quickly turn from safe to fatal. After talking to a friend of mine who suffered through anorexia, I discovered several new things about anorexia that I didn’t know before. She told me that she started out dieting trying to lose a little weight before she began high school, but after losing a few pounds people started complimenting her and noticing her. She was getting more attention than she ever had because of her weight loss. She said that for the most part she had been overlooked because of being slightly overweight, but once she started losing the weight she’d never been happier. She began to become more and more strict with her eating habits and continued to lose weight. Eventually she became anorexic and had to seek treatment. The point of my reference to my friend is to show that anorexia is about more than losing weight – it’s about finding happiness through dieting. Some people, I’ve read, control their weight to the extreme to know that they can control at least one aspect of their lives even if they can’t control the others. Maybe her parents are getting divorced, her grandmother just died, and her boyfriend is cheating on her. None of those things she can control, but her weight is completely under her demand; if she eats, she’ll gain weight but if she doesn’t eat her weight will stay low and thus, she is under control. Another reason why women find themselves with anorexia is they have very low self-esteem and feel they are not good at anything. After several instances of failure, or simply lack of confidence, the teenage girl might think that being thin will make them successful...after all, all the rich people on television are perfectly skinny, right? When she begins the extreme dieting it makes her feel like she is good at something and has a talent of some sort. Finally, the person knows the feeling of success through watching the numbers on the scale get smaller and smaller. So, what role does society play on anorexia in young women? Beautiful, skinny, flawless, successful women are on the front of every magazine and are the star in every movie. It’s nearly impossible to look through a magazine without seeing this beautiful woman in a beautiful outfit, and she’s made up of skin and bones. Skin and bones may not sound very attractive, but the fact of the matter is that the girls who are skinnier are viewed as more attractive, cleaner, and more in control of themselves. I asked my friend who suffered from anorexia if she thought that the media affected how she felt about herself and if she envied the thin models in magazines. She said that definitely played a role in how she felt about herself because she made comparisons between herself and the women in the media. The media obviously plays a part in the young women’s lives that shows us what “beauty” is. Most young women might like to say that how the...