Culture And Anorexia

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.

Beauty standards in the media are one of many reasons feeding and eating disorders are a rising problem. The unrealistic body types of being extremely thin, in pop culture, are influential factors for many teens, especially teen girls. According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), anorexia nervosa is a “restriction of energy intake, intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in the perception of one’s body size” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Individuals diagnosed with anorexia tend to place a high value on their shape and weight, which can interfere with their daily lives. Individuals diagnosed tend to view of their body shape in a distorted representation. The motivation to become

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 China there has been a huge growth in young girls with bulimia and anorexia. Bulimia is when girls are obsessed with losing weight and after they eat they have to throw it up or they go crazy. This also includes, depression, and purging. Anorexia is when someone doesn’t eat, so anorexia is essentially when someone starves themselves because they think they aren’t skinny enough. These conditions are due to what social media and technology stereotypes girls

The first article, “Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescent Girls: A Culture-Bound Disorder of Western Society?”, focuses on the talking about anorexia adolescent girls in western society. This article would be labeled the social science and discipline because there are clues given from not only the title, but also within the article itself. Social sciences are a mixture of the humanities and natural sciences which means there are not only human experiences, but also scientific evidence to rely on. First, we would start with the structure of the article. When the article is shown it is in the APA format which is widely known for this form of discipline. Even if it was not known you see how the author set up the information for the readers to know the

"86% of young readers of YM magazine are dissatisfied with their body." Even at 8 years old, children know what fat is, and 1/3 girls from ages 9-12 think they're overweight! At this age children should be enjoying their childhood, not feeling insecure and place themselves in deep pit of vanity. In this chapter, the author is looking deeper into the stereotypes of anorexia, and how it isn't just based on rich, privileged, white girls, and that a multitude of races, genders, and a variety of ages can have it as well.

Anorexia is an ongoing problem within the United States as well as other places around the world. In the article, Anorexia May Be Habit, Not Will Power, Study Finds, focuses more on women than men. Women, “...are often thought of as having an extraordinary degree of self-control, even if that discipline is used self-destructively.” (Goode 1), but what if they don’t have as much self-control as others believe?

“It’s almost normative for 16-year-old girls to loathe their bodies. That’s certainly a byproduct of the culture… I don’t think the culture causes eating disorders, but it absolutely contributes to it” (Prah 126). The example shows that culture, and a person’s surroundings do, even slightly, lead to eating disorder triggers as he denied before. Bunnell stating this as a “normative” also shows how popular eating disorders are considered as they spread through

1Body Images, Eating Disorders, Cultural Imperialism1beauty is a motivation factors. Since looks are so important; and many adolescents are unhappy with their size and shape, teens with sever body image dissatisfaction, often begin to judge their worth and decide that they have to improve their image and themselves by dieting. "Social pressure that appear to be partly responsible for the number of eating-disordered adolescents" (Robinson, Stephen. March 5, 2010) Also, models who are generally thinner seem to set the standards for the ideal, although unrealistic body type.

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.

Many individual’s today would argue that most health problems develop from media. For example, the Modeling Industry is mainly nothing but tall and very slender women. Most would agree that adolescent females see the size of most models and assume that is what is considered beauty. Media does not promote anorexia to distort women’s body images. Most women that starve themselves do not do it because of television, movies, or magazines, etc. They starve themselves to make them feel better and to uplift their self-esteem. Media does not play a role in anorexia because of three main reasons: environmental factors, exercising, and dieting.

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.

Anorexia nervosa results from a complex interplay between biological, psychological, familial and sociocultural factors. Alice’s development of anorexia nervosa can be viewed through a psychoanalytic lens. Many of Alice 's needs were not met or interpreted correctly in early childhood by her parents, particularly her mother causing Alice to develop ego deficiencies in identity and need for control. This thought is supported by Hilde Bruch (1974) who regarded “anorectics as being in a struggle for control and their own identity - the pursuit of thinness was seen as a critical part of such a struggle”. Bruch considered that there were two main characteristics of parents that made the development of anorexia nervosa more likely in their

“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

Self image seems to be a high factor in women and teenage girls. Appearances seem to be everything to some people, especially for women or teenage girls. By believing this, people do not even realize that for some girls go through great lengths to have those looks or self image. The measures women take to do so most likely results in making risky decisions. Anorexia is usually the result of low self-esteem, or self body image of the individual. Women do not seem to understand this leads to a mental disease. This disorder is called Anorexia, this affects mostly women, but in some cases men. Anorexia is a type of medical condition that causes an individual to obsess over the desire to lose weight