Media And Eating Disorders Essay

     Plato once said, "We behold beauty in the eye of the mind...." What some people consider beauty others may not. From the actresses that are shown on television, movies, models that are in magazines, and the pop stars that create hip and modern music videos, one could be under the impression that to be beautiful you must thin. Actresses such as Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Michelle Gheller, Clarista Flockheart, Courtney Cox and Debra Messing all have staring roles in their own television shows and are all extremely thin. The audiences of these shows being mostly women and adolescent girls, what kind of message about body image are they sending out?

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Three of the most discussed are anorexia, bulimia, and what researchers call EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified). Each of the eating disorders can be fatal in their own way. What are the signs, what do they do to you and your body, and what can be done to treat the problem? Researchers have studied long and hard into these three disorders so that those questions could be answered to the best of their ability. In this paper, the outcomes of the research that was done and the thesis

As of the year 2013, an estimated 805 million people worldwide suffer from Hunger. This number represents a group of people who suffer from food insecurity. This means they have inadequate access to food and don’t know when their next meal will be. This being said, an estimated 70 million people worldwide suffer from some sort of eating disorders as of 2015 with 30 million being made up of Americans. Eating Disorders can be defined as any eating habit that negatively affects ones overall health. Media has had a large impact on how both males and females see their bodies.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that involves extreme weight loss, restricted food intake, and an intense fear of becoming fat. The American Psychiatric Association outlines four diagnostic criteria for anorexia. The first is refusal to maintain body weight. The second is intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight. The third is denial of the seriousness of low body weight. The

Eating disorders have become a major problem throughout the world, specifically in the United States. The key factor that has an influence on eating disorders is the media. Including people of all ages and genders, up to twenty-four million people suffer from an eating disorder in the United States (ANAD np). This is a huge problem in the world today but what makes it so much worse is the fact that it can be prevented and it is in our control to change it. Young adults look to these celebrities, which are often their role models, and try to look just like them. What they fail to remember is the fact that celebrities have a lot of money, money that can afford nutritionists and personal trainers. They also fail to remember the extensive measures the celebrities may have to go through to look the way they do. An example of extensive measures can be considered plastic surgery. Ultimately, this creates a false goal that is almost unattainable for the “average” or “regular” person. Overall, the media has overtaken a huge impact on what the “ideal” body image has become today. Eating disorders are still on the rise and it is proven that an eating disorder such as anorexia affects up to 5 percent of women from ages 15-30 years old ("Media, Body Image, and Eating Disorders | National Eating Disorders Association np"). This may not seem that significant but it is also not considering other eating disorders such as bulimia. All in all, eating disorders

According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, “the body type portrayed in advertising as the ideals is possessed naturally by only 5% of American females.” (“ANAD”) Body image has been a controversial theme because of the influence of the media. It is a widely known fact that eating disorder cases are on the rise. The concept of body image is a subjective matter. The common phrase, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” holds true meaning in this sense. One’s view and value of their body is self-imposed. Falling into the destructive eating disorders reveals much about a person’s psychological and emotional state. Examining the mental, physical, and emotional conditions behind recognized eating

Media has greatly evolved since starting, but has bad evolved with it? Print media, digital media, and now social media surround everybody today. Media surround us when we go to the store and see magazines, when we sit and home and watch TV, and especially when we go online. Over time, media has created its own idea of beauty. Medias influence on body image can’t be overlooked. Media and eating disorders have a cause and effect relationship. In Helens article, “Eating Disorders: A growing problem on college campuses”, she expresses that, “In today’s media-saturated world, young women are bombarded with one message: be thin” (Helen, 2014, Paragraph 9). Today media shows that to beautiful you have to be an unhealthy weight. If media doesn’t change its view of beautiful, then the rate of eating disorders triggered by media will go up. We need to figure out a way to help now.

Media is a significant force in modern culture, particularly in America. Sociologist refer to this as a mediated culture where media reflects and created culture. Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources. These messages promote not only products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is and is not important. The messages that the media portray are conflicting and it is impossibly hard to achieve both messages since one is orientated toward fast food consumption and the other it orientated toward an extremely thin ideal. Many researchers have hypothesized that the media may play a central role in creating and intensifying the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction and consequently,

In the 1920’s, the perfect body started out as a flat-chested, thin girl with a straight shape with a flapper dress. In the 1950’s and 60’s started out as the voluptuous and curvy figure of beloved star, Marilyn Monroe. But then came the era of Twiggy. Weighing in at 90 pounds and a height of 5’8, she was basically starving herself. She changed America’s vision on the ideal body standard. Soon, super thin models became the norm. This led to an outbreak of eating disorders in girls and women. Anorexia, which described by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a pathological aversion to gaining weight (Merriam-Webster).” It often entails not eating and obsessing over working out. Bulimia, on the other hand is often called the binge/purge disorder, meaning

Anorexia Nervosa is the condition when an individual abstains from food in order to lose weight or prevent more weight gain. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV(DSM-IV) there are four aspects of criteria to be diagnosed with anorexia: a refusal to maintain weight above what is minimally normal for one’s age and height, and extreme fear of weight gain, distorted body image, and (in females) having amenorrhea(missing three or more consecutive menstrual cycles.)(DSM-IV, 2000:589) Anorexia not only affects weight, but also alters bone growth, neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain, and electrolytes.

In this essay I will discuss how far sociologists would agree that the media causes eating disorders in women. Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions characterized by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the damage of an individual's physical and emotional health. Eating disorders include: bulimia, anorexia and obesity.

Another perspective one can look at to better understand the overall influence of the media is to look at it from a male view. Commonly body image is almost synonymous with woman, but men too are targeted by the media. In an article by Huff Post they delve into the male side of body image. The article starts off with a personal account by a mother whose six year old son whose only goal is to get bigger, and he’s so consumed with this he weighs himself at least seven times a day after meals and even wears larger clothes in an attempt to make himself seem bigger. While women are told to be smaller and slimmer, men are told to be muscular and large as to show the level of their masculinity, both of these ideals are unhealthy for each gender. In the article a clinical psychologist Raymond Lemberg states that in stead of the 1 in 10 ratio applied to the

It is funny how so many girls and women today are led to believe that the only way to feel attractive and be beautiful is to have their bodies consist of nothing but skin and bones. Women are dieting more today then they have ever been before. They are striving for an unattainable body figure that is portrayed by the media as being the ideal standard for today's women. It gets worse. Not only are women dieting unlike ever before, but they will ruthlessly harm their bodies in order to achieve these inaccessible standards. This ruthless harm that haunts so many women today just so happens to be what we call eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia are the primary diseases that go in the category of eating

According to the National Eating Disorder Association the media has a major influence on what a woman’s body should look like. Every print and television advertisement suggests that the ideal body is extremely thin. However, most women cannot achieve having a super-thin body that the media favors. The resulting failure leads to negative feelings about one’s self and can begin a downward spiral toward an eating disorder (National Eating Disorders Association).

In a society that discriminates against people, particularly women, who do not look slender, many people find they cannot - or think they cannot - meet society's standards through normal, healthy eating habits and often fall victim to eating disorders. Bulimia Nervosa, an example of an eating disorder that is characterized by a cycle of binge eating and purging, has become very common in our society. Although it generally affects women, men too are now coming to clinics with this kind of disease. This is not a new disorder. It can be brought on by a complex interplay of factors, which may include emotional, and personality disorders, family pressures, a possible genetic or biologic susceptibility, and a culture in which there is an