Cultural Influences On Eating Disorders

In the essay “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo speaks about eating disorders. In society today appearance is a huge factor. Even though appearance has always been a major thing but now day’s people take it to the extreme when trying to have a certain body image. Now day’s people think beauty is whatever is on the outside, instead of the inside and the outside. Most people go on crazy strict diets, surgery and some go through starvation in order to become a certain body size. Eating disorders are becoming more in effect now and not just in the United States , but happens to be going worldwide and not only with just the women, but now with men as well. Within the essay Bordo’s explains about how the body image, media, and culture influence the standard of the beauty leads to eating disorder. Another factor is family that causes someone to form an eating disorder. Those four factors are the main key roles that play apart on how eating disorders are being used.

It has been found that eating disorders are most common in the western and industrialized culture where food is abundant. This is because these individuals attach a lot of importance to their physical appearance and are willing to do anything to get the dream figure. An eating disorder is not just watching what one eats and exercising on a daily basis but is rather an illness that causes serious disturbances in eating behaviour, such as great and harmful cutback of the consumption of food as well as feelings of serious anxiety about their body shape or mass. They would start to stop themselves to go out anywhere just so that they could work out and burn all of the calories of a meal or snack that they had scoffed earlier. Two of the most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The regular description of a patient with either disease would be a youthful white female, with an upper social standing in a predictably socially competitive environment.

Eating Disorders are, “eating behaviors that develop to deal with problems,” such as, “self-esteem, emotional regulation, fear of growing up and relationship problems” according to Mehler and Andersen (2017) in their book Eating disorders: A guide to medical care and complications.

In the writing “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” the author, Susan Bordo strongly uses the pathos appeal to influence the emotions of her audience. This writing speaks in detail about the growing issue of eating disorders, that is not only becoming an international issue; but as well I an issue that now affects young men and women alike. The way that this author uses this specific appeal is in a large part with very personal and relatable dialogue, about the sufferings of young adults that are affected by these issues. The author goes as far as to begin the writing, telling the story of a young girl “never fat to begin with, she’s been on a diet for a couple of weeks and has finally reached her goal weight of 115 at 5 to 4 inches… but in her eyes she still looks dumpy” (639). The author goes on to make a point to this narrative, but just the thought of this girl’s unhappy nature with herself, is enough to captivate the audiences’ emotions. The author uses this type of the pathos appeal throughout the rest of the writing to continue influencing the emotions of her audience, as to make her argument stronger.

This article describes how unrealistic standards of attractiveness set by Western society are internalized by women from a variety of cultural backgrounds and translated into fat-phobia and body dissatisfaction and then discusses alternative cultural influences for food refusal such as issues of control, acculturation, and religious asceticism. The author claims that there is a need for culturally sensitive questionnaires and diagnostic criteria and suggests that the notion of anorexia as a culture bound syndrome is no longer valid as the illness as been identified in a number of non-western societies. A valid point is made

Although a great deal of early research on body image and eating disorders focused on upper/middle class Caucasians living in America or under the influence of Western ideals, many researchers are realizing that eating disorders are not isolated to this particular group. They are also realizing the differences in body image between occur in different races and genders (Pate, Pumariega, Hester 1992). Recently, several studies have shown that eating disorders transcend these specific guidelines, and increasingly, researchers are looking at male/female differences, cross-cultural variation and variation within cultures as well. It is impossible to broach the concept of body image without

In her essay, “The Globalization of Eating Disorders,” Susan Bordo informs her audience of the growing trends in eating disorders. Through her argument, Bordo illustrates the cruel identity of body-image distortion syndrome while she searches for a solution to the eating-disorder problem by looking to its birthplace in culture. Making use of several examples and scenarios, facts and statistics, and appeals to pathos and logos to construct her argument, Bordo shows a strong intent on eradicating the growing crisis in a reasonably sound argument.

An eating disorder is an illness that involves an unhealthy feeling about the food we eat. “Eating disorders affect 5-10 millions Americans and 70 million individuals worldwide” (www.eatingdisorderinfo.org 1). They also affect many people from women, men, children, from all ages and different races. People who have eating disorders usually see themselves as being fat when they really aren’t. This usually deals with women or teenage girls mostly. They watch television, movies, read articles in magazines, and see pictures of the celebrities whom they want to be like because they have the “ideal body” that everyone wants and craves for. The media makes us all think we need those types of bodies to be happy with ourselves, be more successful

An eating disorder is a psychological disease which occurs mostly in women, however it can occur in men as well. It consists of either starving and not eating, or by throwing up after binging. Eating disorders can have many negative effects, fatigue, extreme weight loss, and if bad enough, death. Now what causes these eating disorders? The media has a big influence on women and their bodies. There have been many ideas of what the perfect body looks like, mainly over social media. However, the “ideal body” is very unrealistic and unnatural. Many women have a hard time accepting that they are good enough, which can lead to eating disorders. Athletes can also have a ideal body shape, which is also hard to achieve. This also causes a lot of athletes to suffer from eating disorders as well. The way the media portrays women causes eating disorders.

Are Eating Disorders are a worldwide problem? There are 3 types of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, the fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, Bulimia Nervosa, the act of binge eating then purging or vomiting, and Binge Eating Disorder, eating until uncomfortably full in one sitting. The most common ones are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Even though they have become more common in the 20th century, the first cases of eating disorders were in the Western world and dated from the 12th and 13th centuries. Most famously was the case of Saint Catherine of Siena, who denied herself food as part of a spiritual denial of self. Throughout history, anorexia was caused by ritual beliefs, from the time of Western Christianity, women who starved themselves were thought to be closer to God. Ritual starvation lasted for a couple of days, in order to prepare the individual to receive some sacred message from God. During modern times, eating disorders are very different than before, today it 's mostly the way people see themselves that drives them. They are still more common in women than they are in men, but it does not mean men do not develop them. Eating disorders are made up of physiological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits meaning they do not ingest food regularly, or if they do they purge it. Purging means to force yourself to throw up the food you have ingested. People throw up due to the fact that they don’t feel skinny enough, and

Eating Disorders are serious conditions related to persistent eating behaviors that negatively impact your health, your emotions, your diet, and your ability to function important areas of life.

Furthermore, culture concept of beauty have negatively influenced on the development of anorexia on teen girls. Each culture has its concept of beauty and usually everyone wants to fit on, mainly women and girls. Young girls, being more vulnerable because of their age, they are more likely to feel inferior if they notice that do not fit the standards of beauty on their culture. For instance, according to the book Inside Anorexia: The Experiences of Girls and their Families, anorexia is becoming more and more popular and reaching different social and cultural groups due to the fact in the western societies, thinner female bodies are being considered the ideal ones. It asserts that the government and others, being concerned about the rising rate

For many years now people think that being really skinny will make them more successful and attractive. People tend to think this way because of the media. We see models and celebrities who are all very skinny and also attractive and successful. With our society seeing famous people look like that it makes people take drastic measures to become skinny like them. Some people just don’t eat, others eat too much and then they make themselves throw up, and others don’t eat and then go exercise too much. Also we live in a society that is surrounded by food. In the United States there is a fast food restaurant on almost every corner and yet there is still an issue with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating.

     Thus, eating disorders must be studied in the context of what certain individuals face during their developmental stage, or what they may have suffered in childhood. In general, a combination of the pubertal phase of the female body, the loosening of the individual's ties to parents, and the development of a stable and cohesive personality structure play impacting roles

“The attention-grabbing pictures of various high-flying supermodels and actors on different magazine covers and advertisements go a long way in influencing our choices” (Bagley). The media is highly affective to everyone, although they promote an improper image of living. Research proved says those with low self-esteem are most influenced by media. Media is not the only culprit behind eating disorders. However, that does not mean that they have no part in eating disorders. Media is omnipresent and challenging it can halt the constant pressure on people to be perfect (Bagley). Socio-cultural influences, like the false images of thin women have been researched to distort eating and cause un-satisfaction of an individual’s body. However, it