Analysis : A Dull Gray Day

Do readers believe that any one person can turn their life into something beautiful, even when all they have seen in their life is ugly? Based on this non-fiction poem the narrator finally realized his life wasn’t as bad as it could be. In Baca’s “Cloudy day,” readers find a speaker very attuned to the outer world while being incarcerated. Born in New Mexico of Indio-Mexican descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother and later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age 13, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison that he began to turn his life around: Jimmy learned to read and write and unearthed a voracious passion for poetry.

Food. It is essential for survival. Without it, people die. However, oddly enough, many struggle to live without it to accomplish the standards that our culture has created for us. We are taught that being thin is perfection and will lead to a happier life. However, lurking are the health risks that one pays for obtaining the “perfect body”. Still, along with a distorted body image, others struggle with keeping weight down and fall into the diet fads that the world parades. From movies, magazines, and television, the media also sends us messages that being fat is bad and unhealthy while being thin and beautiful is acceptable. The impact of such influences has increased eating disorders in America. These disorders do not

Some people may wonder what effect social media has on people worldwide. Many people are using social media daily and because of that, they might not know the effects that can be lurking behind a screen and causing harm to their mental health. Social media has many negative effects on mental health. Some people could think that mental health and social media has no relation, when it does. It is a fast-growing issue with many “cause and effect” reasons behind it. Each cause needs to be recognized along with the effect it has on the people who use social media.

Technology throughout its existence has improved the overall quality of life for many people around the world. Its impact is evident in our generation, where many people rely on technology to gain information on current events, increase work efficiency and even helping us understand ourselves. “Advances in neuroscience, technology and research sophistication have greatly increased understanding of mental illnesses and improved the treatment of these disorders.” (Wahl, 2011). Despite our knowledge on various mental illnesses, many individuals stray away from professional assistance due to the stigma that is attached to the illness; many individuals do not opt for help because they do not want a label attached to them. Social media is a huge platform that influences many people and the slandering that many media platforms do when they discuss the topic of mental illness is slowly increasing and is an issue that must be discussed.

Donna, who suffered from bulimia for 13 years, refuses to have social media in order to protect herself. She was in an online discussion forum in high school where people compared their weights, binged together and helped one another avoid eating which affected her so greatly that it drives her to stay away from social media because she doesn’t want to compare anymore. There is social media pages very much like that discussion forum that Donna was in that motivate those who suffer to get worse by saying things like “Pretty girls don’t eat” and “skip dinner, be thinner” on the pictures they post. There always has been “Pro-ana” (pro anorexia) and “Pro-mia” (pro bulimia) websites but social media has given those type of sites a global platform where they can share their ideas and photographs to support the self-destructive behaviors that they treat as a lifestyle choice, instead of as the serious mental illness it is. The constant stream of images of we are exposed to cause eating disorders to thrive. One study shows that the more time teenage girls spend on facebook heighten the likeliness of them developing an eating disorder. These websites and social media pages may cause triggers but they are never the sole cause of someone’s eating disorder. There is also very many testimonies of recovery on social media that could have a positive effect on someone’s eating disorder as well, but it's

One example of how social media has impacted the eating disorder problem comes from Fiji. In 1998, Television became available to the residents who called Fiji home. In just that year, eleven percent of girls started throwing up and went on dietary programs. Bordo argues that now more than ever, we are taught how to live through the demonstration of pictures. Our would has become digital and we are constantly being shown the “way we are supposed to look.” Bordo also discovered that eating disorders now have been pushed onto men as well, just in a different way. Men take steroids, are constantly working out, and always are looking at ways to become more muscular. With so many enhancement services the medical field has to offer, people think it is easier to obtain their “ideal” weight, when in reality it is just a way for the medical professionals to make a profit. Bordo concludes that families, racial, and cultural backgrounds all contribute to the way a girl wants to be perceived. Yet, until we can figure out how to halt the dysfunction and twisted view of ideal bodies through images and social media, this problem will never go

The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds (Chojnacki, 2017). Those models’ digitally enhanced pictures are published in magazines, posted online, and shown on television. Individuals scroll past filtered images of the “thin ideal”, flip through the pages and images of magazines as they stand in check out lines, and are drawn to advertisements of beautiful, happy, and skinny people. All of these encounters happen several times daily without even thinking twice about the message that is being sent. The enormous audience that the media can now reach due to advancing technology is both a blessing and a curse. Technology has allowed the public to connect with people thousands of miles away at the touch of a button and

Urban Outfitters, a popular retail company released a small line of clothing doing just that after they released t-shirts with phrases like “Eat Less” and “Depression” displayed across the front, further validating the concerns of the author of “I’m tired of the media glamorizing mental illness”. While it caused quite the uproar in the media, the clothing still has the potential to essentially do more harm than good. Media’s tendency to cultivate the negative stigma of mental illness lives in television, literature and social media. Since these are all powerful components of today’s society, their representation of mental illness has become very important. Media, more often than not, encourages stereotypes, which essentially discourages those living with a mental illness to seek help, further defeating the purpose of vocalizing the topic and raising awareness. However, while the media has failed to improve the overall well-being of our society today, it has a great potential to normalize the topic and get the conversation started about what to do

The ability to exchange weight challenges and thin body photos is at an all time high due to the Internet. There is a constant stream of images that have global platforms to support self-destructive behavior. These platforms can support eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, and binging (Rojas). According to Marcela Rojas, "Social Media, where users exchange information and photos and communicate over common interests, has become a bastion for some struggling with eating disorders. Images of spindly, concave stomachs and jutting ribs emerge on various sites" (2). Today's media creates dissatisfaction on various platforms; but bullying creates social conflicts as well as inner conflicts. Bullying can cause extreme emotional distress. It can lead to depression, which can lead to eating disorders. This constant cycle of depression leads to a repetitive cycle of eating disorders. As bullying can happen face-to-face or online, it can slowly dig away at a person's self-worth. Bullies can degrade individuals suffering with eating disorders' self-image, which can lead to worse things than eating disorders ("Does Social Media Cause Eating Disorders in

During your lifetime 250,000 people will die due to an eating disorder. Is this really the type of society we want to be a part of? One which causes people to die needlessly due to media influences which cause the augmentation of a detrimental body image? In the eyes of society emaciated celebrities are the embodiment of perfection. This media ideal of thinness presents society with an unrealistic body image and is projected through the means of television, commercials and magazines, causing women to replicate this ideal. False idealism is the jurisdiction of the 21st century with the number of teenage girls in Britain being admitted to hospital due to anorexia doubling in the last decade. The fundamental reason I chose this topic is

Along with the unrealistic body images on social media it drags along obsession with dieting, food, and appearance in young adolescents creating eating disorders. “Adolescents diagnosed with serious eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia often report that their symptoms can be linked to the bullying they received from their age peers as well as the unrealistic media images presented as an ideal for them to follow.”(www.phycologytoday.com) The unrealistic body ideal that they feel they need to follow has a big impact on the way teens look at what they are eating, and their weight and shape which can lead to serious eating disorders. “Adolescent females who are unable to conform to the ideal being put forward by movie, television find themselves taking extreme measures to be more like their role models.” (www.phycologytoday.com) Teens feel that it is important to become like their role models that they see on social media and go to extreme measures to become the ideal weight and shape

An analysis done by the National Institute of Health revealed, that plenty of Pro-Anorexia or "Thinspiration" websites and blogs support extreme weight loss and eating disorders, masquerade as fitness inspiration websites. This caused plenty of body dysmorphia sufferers to restrict their diets, which is potentially hazardous as the content should supposedly be devoted to healthy pursuits. Social media is also an outlet where a person can be exposed to body shaming, which serves as a trigger for those already suffering from the

Cyberspace, something that was once considered a fad, has developed into a tool that allows people struggling with anorexia to potentially find a sanctuary from the regulatory systems in popular culture that are applied to women’s bodies. Cyberspace provides an alternative space for women with eating disorders or body issues. The space created by cyberspace is potentially safer for women to meet because it allows anonymity while simultaneously being part of a community that the built environment is unable to provide. The components that make up pro-anorexia websites are usually considered abnormal, repugnant, or deviant within popular culture, because popular culture does not accept the way

This paper is a critical analysis of how research into pro-anorexia websites effects is insufficient for determining their influence on body dissatisfaction, dieting and anorexia nervosa (AN) disorder. These unorthodox services have received outrage in recent New Zealand (NZ) news coverage because they are seen to advocate engagement in eating disorder behaviour, and disengagement from professional treatment (Hawkes, 2017).

In 2012, 12% of teen girls and 4% of teen males said that they experienced a major depression outburst within the past six months. Depression is the most common chronic illness and many people are accused as victimizing themselves (Wade). Those who turn to social media for support usually do not find it but are instead treated as a freak or as a person looking for attention (A2z). With 200,000 depression blogs it is hard to log on to Tumblr and not see signs of depression and self-harm on your dashboard. Instead of living in the moment, the blogs dread on things in the past and rarely show any sign of happiness in the life of the creator. On the other hand, Tumblr has realized the harm that the blogs pose to those suffering and have created anti-suicide blogs where bloggers can write to the creator and attempt to get help. Still, the anti-suicide blogs would not be necessary if the showing of the depression images were not glorified in the first place (Dewey).