Kirsten Haglund's Struggle With Anorexia Nervosa

Many young women suffer from eating disorders. Criticized and shamed by the many for their body, weight, and looks, insecurities are abundant in these women. Especially female celebrities, whom are constantly held to unreachable standards by the public. These insecurities can lead to a plethora of psychological problems or disorders, including eating disorders. An eating disorder is defined as “an illness that causes serious disturbances to your everyday diet, such as eating extremely small amounts of food or severely overeating” by the National Institution of Mental Health. In the past few years, many celebrities have come out as suffering from an eating disorder, one of the more recent to be the pop star Kesha.

The film “Dying to be Thin” followed the cases of several individuals who have struggled with an eating disorder at some point in their lives, showing the different factors that play a role in eating disorder onset. Different individuals in the film have different reasons for developing an eating disorder but there are some over-arching themes such as the media’s influence, career-related pressures, and certain personality types.

Helwig begins her article by drawing attention to the idea that it is “normal for North American women to have eating disorders” (Helwig 1). Pointing this out makes the audience think about how often they notice someone with an eating disorder, and when they do if they are shocked. It also makes the audience consider how they react when they discover someone has an eating disorder, and it makes them wonder if they would truly be concerned, or even surprised. The amounts of people with an eating disorder continues to grow every day all across the United States, but the highest numbers of eating disorders are found among “well-off young women” (Helwig 3). Eight out of every ten

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, Volume 5 (DMS-5), Shelly’s low body weight, her lack of food intake, and her purging were all qualifying symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa. In addition to these symptoms, she exhibited the additional symptom of a fear of gaining weight. She explained to her therapist that she feared weighing as much as her twin sister, even though her sister only weighed 100 pounds.

In a study done of female beauty icons, two time frames were studied, 1959-1978 and 1979-1988. In the research, the women who were portrayed as beautiful, and the icons in the media, were observed and over half of them had fit into the standards of having one of the eating disorders, anorexia nervosa (Vonderen & Kinnally, 2012).

Beauty pageants are an unnecessary entertainment of society because they set unrealistic beauty standards for an audience of easily influenced young women. In the world of beauty pageants, there is only one kind of beauty. This one kind of beauty is "Barbie": tall, long-legged, tiny waist, straight white teeth, long thick hair. These beauty pageants can be misleading and harmful, not only to women without this body type, but also to society as a whole. The standard that beauty pageants strive for is not an all-encompassing idea of beauty, but one that is shallow and looks only at a woman's physical appearance. In a study released in September 2013, 131 female beauty pageant contestants from 43 states completed an anonymous study. 26% reported that they had been told or perceived they had an eating disorder, 48.5% reported wanting to be thinner and 57% were trying to lose weight. Beauty pageant organizers have striven for years to ensure that contestants have an opportunity to show their skills before they are crowned a "beauty queen", but the reality is that a woman not fitting the unrealistic ‘Barbie’ physical standards of beauty competition would never be considered to win a competition.

Anorexic danger close to dying after weight fell to 35kg, recounts the story of a 20-year-old girl, Korey Baruta and her battle with an eating disorder, anorexia. Korey is a dancer, and constantly receives criticism on her size 10 appearance. The disorder first develops at the age of 15 and lasts for four years, until she is forced to seek help at an eating disorder clinic. Once arriving at the clinic, she is required to immediately transfer to an emergency ward, here she is given a warning on her life. Baruta has lost a large percentage of her body mass, has been diagnosed with “kidney failure, liver problems, and a heart murmur”, due to this loss in weight.

During the time of Caesar (700 B.C.)…” where people would hold lavish banquets, and people would force themselves to vomit so they could eat more. The first actual recorded case of anorexia was an upper class Roman woman. According to the article, her behavior was driven by her Gnostic religious beliefs. Religion is not the only leading factor towards historic accounts of anorexia. Religious women would starve themselves in an attempt to grow closer to God. Sir William Gull, a royal physician, would treat anorexic women by “force feeding, moral teaching, and a change of scenery.” As a similar form of treatment, a French psychiatrist, Charles Lasegue, described anorexia from a social and psychological standpoint. Dr. Lasegue inferred that anorexia was a disease, and could be developed only in comfortable homes with an abundance of food. At meals, children were expected to eat everything on their plates, making meal times stressful and leading some to refuse to eat as a form of rebellion. He also suggested that women protested by not eating since they were not socially able to convey their feelings and frustrations. It was not until the 1930s that doctors began to understand that anorexia is not solely physical, but is part mental. Ellen West, unfortunately, only lived from 1888 to

A key aspect of this essay is the exposition of the main problem behind it. Bordo believes that Americans are far too caught up in the premise that being skinny means you will be healthy and that possessing fat is the work of the devil (Bordo). Part of this problem is the way America sees health. She relates much of it to something small-scale. During the 1996 Summer Olympics, held in Atlanta, the media reported heavily on the beauty of the muscular bodies of the competitors. Of course this motivated so many Americans and people around the world to want to look just like them. But this is not possible without encountering issues that everyone in America faces. These people do not look the way they do because of genetics. They did everything they could to look like this. Bordo’s point is eating disorders are not exclusive to normal people. She claims that there is no way that a nineteen female gymnast is maintaining her “skimpy level of body fat” without an eating disorder. According to Bordo, there is growing evidence of it

The 2016 Miss America Contest allowed fifty two women to compete for the honor of being crowned as the most tantalizingly beautiful woman in America. However, unlike previous years this pageant featured a contestant who exemplifies compassion and intelligence on and off of the stage in addition to being physically stunning. She galvanized a social movement that brought awareness to a profession within our nation that has been misinterpreted and underappreciated by the public for decades. Kelly Johnson, Miss Colorado, stood in front of millions of viewers during the televised talent portion of the contest wearing navy blue scrubs, and a stethoscope draped around her neck. Johnson waved to the cheering audience, and began her monologue with:

Kristi Belcamino is a mother of a nine-year-old daughter who had suffered from an eating disorder. The eating disorder that her daughter was suffering from is called Anorexic. Anorexic is a life-threatening eating disorder that can cause a person to be extremely obsess about their weight, and what they eat. Kristi Belcamino daughter was showing signs of Anorexic at the beginning of the article. Like for example Kristi Belcamino daughter bones was sticking out, lost interest in foods she liked, unusual fears and concerns.

Shortly after her bulimia began, Marya reads a 'book on anorexia nervosa called The Best Little Girl in the World" and she decides when she grows up she is going to become an anoretic (Hombacher, 1999, p. 43). Marya thought bulimia seemed like a decent starting place. Puberty came early for Marya, as her body matured and developed, so did her bulimia. By the time Marya was eleven she met the diagnostic requirements for severe, uncontrollable bulimia nervosa (p. 51). Marya used bulimia as a way to gain

Famous People wh0 struggled with eating disorders By: Melanie Solland Demi Lovato: Demi Lovato was speaking out about eating disorders to girls, so they could hear about a real-life story and learn the consequences of an eating disorder. Part of Demi’s recovery process consisted of, to get her health back up to what it should be at. Moreover, she needed to get her strength and muscle back that she lost. Her fitness routine had helped her with her bulimia and her bipolar disorders.

As the term "anorexia nervosa" did not exist until 1873” (The first anorexic). In the western world one of the first accounts of anorexia nervosa was during “the 12th and 13th centuries, most famously Saint Catherine of Siena who denied herself food as part of a spiritual denial of self” (A History of Eating Disorders). Most cases of anorexia had to do with fasting as a religious or spiritual experience. However for the women of the Victorian period being thin had transformed and became a way for them to feel successful instead of powerless. It wasn’t till 1970 that the disorder was able to reach the public as it wasn’t just the upper-class that was suffering from anorexia. Again anorexia evolved into the "twentieth-century women progressively idealized the lean, almost 'tubular' body type, deprived of the symbolic emphasis of fertility and motherhood. The thinness of the 'new woman' expressed her sexual liberation and rejection of the traditional female role" (Bremer, J.). Whereas before woman needed to look healthy and capable of having and raising children, now women were aiming to achieve independence the need to be those thing were

Usually, pageants are taught to focus more on their physical appearances during the competition. According to Cartwright (2011), children who participate in beauty pageant from a very young age will only focus on their physical appearances which eventually lead them on feeling unhappy with their body image and this is agreed by many experts. Normally, this is shown when they grow older, they are very determine and optimistic on achieving a perfect body proportion. In order to reach that goal, children will have to struggle with diet or eating disorder starting at a very young age to achieve a particular body image. According to National Institute of Mental Health in the article of Eating Disorder Statistics and Research (n.d), over 2.7% of teens in the average of 13 to 18 years old are struggling with eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. Anorexia is when a person refuse to eat meanwhile bulimia is when a person throw up their consumed food intentionally. They assume that by having such unhealthy behavior will be the main key for them to obtain the winning