Perfectionism In Anorexia Nervosa

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

Marya Hornbacher’s memoir, Wasted, describes her lifelong battle with eating disturbances with focuses on anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In modern day society, thinness is associated with “wealth, upward mobility, and success” (Hornbacher, 1998, p. 46). Thinness is “an ideal symbolizing self-discipline, control, sexual liberation, assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with a higher socio-economic class.” (p. 46) Not eating also suggests that one have such a full life that food is not a priority. The media influences children to believe that one must be thin in order to be beautiful. To Marya, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she must be perfect in order to be successful. She believed she could only be perfect if she had a perfect body, a perfect career, perfect relationships, and perfect control over her life and herself (p. 231-232).

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

Desire for the unachievable goal of perfection is constantly stimulated by media’s portrayal of skinny women and muscular men. Many people who view all of these images are highly effected, and begin to think they are not normal. For example, Danny Bowman, who at nineteen years old tried to kill himself because he did not take a ‘perfect’ selfie after ten hours of repeatedly trying (Aldridge). He dropped out of school, stayed home, and was violent when asked to stop (Aldridge). Danny tried to overdose after not taking a perfect selfie, because it was what he based his life around (Aldridge). Danny says that posting on social media, “becomes a mission to get approval and it can destroy anyone” (Aldridge). He was distressed when getting comments of disapproval on his selfie’s and getting rejected to be a male model, because he didn’t have the ‘right’ body or skin (Aldridge). He would look at and compare himself to the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and feel down about his appearance (Aldridge). Likewise, a woman named Gina was diagnosed with anorexia after three years into the disorder, without knowing the cause (Gina). She barely ate and excessively exercised, and became obsessed with losing calories (Gina). After meeting with a therapist, Gina realized that her disorder, “was a product of every single advertisement, every little comment, every nuance and whisper and Photoshopped magazine cover”, and, “tended to by flash diets and juice cleanses and guilt-free foods and bikini

After reviewing the “Dying to be Thin” (2000) video and the two studies on anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) my view of these two disorders has been expanded and somewhat altered. The “Dying to Be Thin” video looked at the history, triggers, medical complications and treatments. It documents the struggles of models, dancers and teenagers with the disease. The two studies on AN and BN asked patients in a therapeutic setting to write letters to their disorders from the friend and foe perspective. The results were interesting and merit further studies.

Eating disorders have become an increasing public health problem once thought to be an affliction amongst young women, now an epidemic across culture and gender boundaries. Anorexia gives rise to serious socio-economic and bio-psychological circumstances of our ever vast, growing society. Awareness of eating disorders have increased but perhaps only in proportion to its advancement of its research and treatment. That which still leaves us in a position for a much greater demand for education and heightened awareness of this perplexing disease.

Eleven million women in the United States suffer from eating disorders- either self-induced semi-starvation (anorexia nervosa) or a cycle of bingeing and purging with laxatives, self-induced vomiting, or excessive exercise (bulimia nervosa) (Dunn, 1992). Many eating disorder specialists agree that chronic dieting is a direct consequence of the social pressure on American females to achieve a nearly impossible thinness. The media has been denounced for upholding and perhaps even creating the emaciated standard of beauty by which females are taught from childhood to judge the worth of their own bodies (Stephens & Hill, 1994). To explore the broader context of this controversial issue, this paper draws upon several aspects on how the media

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that consists of self-regulated food restriction in which the person strives for thinness and also involves distortion of the way the person sees his or her own body. An anorexic person weighs less than 85% of their ideal body weight. The prevalence of eating disorders is between .5-1% of women aged 15-40 and about 1/20 of this number occurs in men. Anorexia affects all aspects of an affected person's life including emotional health, physical health, and relationships with others (Shekter-Wolfson et al 5-6). A study completed in 1996 showed that anorexics also tend to possess traits that are obsessive in nature and carry heavy emotional

The next study subject studied how perfectionism can translate into eating disorder pathology. The purpose of the article is to examine the relationship of eating disorders with the role of body dissatisfaction (Boone, Soenens, & Luyten, 2014).

The research study examined possible correlations between various types of perfectionism and levels of recovery from eating disorders. The researchers conducted their experiment by comparing different conceptions of perfectionism across a healthy control group and fully recovered, partially recovered, and current (active) eating disorder groups. The researchers who conducted this experiment were Anna M. Bardone-Cone, PhD, Katrina Sturm, BA, Melissa A. Lawson, MD, Dr. Paul Robinson, MD, and Roma Smith, LPN. Anna M. Bardone-Cone, Katrina Sturm, and Melissa A. Lawson are from the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia Missouri. Dr. Paul Robinson and Roma Smith are from the

The life of a young girl taken by the pressures to be perfect happens all too often in today’s society. It is not uncommon for a teen girl to diet, purge, or even stop eating all together to achieve the standards of beauty that the world has forced upon her. Most of the time these pressures cannot be escaped because they are pushed onto a girl from the time she is born and sometimes she does not even realize the brainwashing. There is too much pressure put on girls to have a perfect body because it is impossible to be perfect, girls are developing eating disorders, and being imperfect is resulting in bullying and peer pressure.

Fairborn (2005) points out that there is a range of treatment options and a variety of treatment settings for anorexia nervosa, however there is inadequate empirical support for this abundance of options as what minimal research on the treatment has been inconclusive. One reasoning behind this is that anorexia nervosa has been an uncommon disorder and sample sizes for studies have been low. Furthermore, the lack of evidence based treatment research can be attributed to the individual’s avoidance of treatment and dropping out of treatment. Many individuals with anorexia nervosa are unwilling to change as their identity and self-worth are intertwined with their distorted body image; they tend to deny that anything is wrong with their weight and are ambivalent on changing (Abbate-Daga, Amianto, Delsedime, De-Bacco & Fassino,

Ultra-thinness then becomes their preferred state of health and they are driven to lose weight. This leads to self harming behaviors and a declining academic performance (“Dishonest” 1). Yet satisfaction is still unfounded after one has succumbed to an eating disorder. The magazines construct the belief in them that anorexia revolves around “control, discipline, abstinence, transcendence, and denial” while depicting bulimia as “out-of-control, undisciplined, greedy, and indulgent” rather than as illnesses and present dangers that they are (Whitehead and Kurz 347). 1 out of every 100 adolescent girls develop anorexia (“Dishonest” 1). Along with bulimia, it is the most prevalent disease attributed to the use of heavily edited images in teen magazines (Whitehead and Kurz 350+). Pathogenic dieting was also greatly attributed to it. Participants in a study by Steven R. Thomsen, Michelle M. Weber, and Lora Beth Brown responded that 52.2% restricted calories to 1200 or less a day (Thomsen et al 2). Fifty-one percent reported that they skipped two meals a day (Thomsen et al

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a visible, psychological illness that is detrimental to both the physical and mental well-being of an individual (Bulik et al., 2005). It is an eating disorder that is characterized by not only an unwillingness to gain weight, but a fear of gaining weight. Individuals suffering from anorexia are often perfectionists, who are neurotic, obsessive, and retain a low sense of self-esteem (Kaye et al., 2008; Bulik et al., 2005). These individuals tend to prioritize their physical image over their health, and as a result, AN has retained the highest mortality rate over any other psychiatric illness, occurring at a prevalence of 5% per

Individuals with anorexia nervosa are so successful at losing weight that they put their lives in a great deal of danger. Although dramatic weight loss is the most noticeable feature of the disease, anorexics also have an intense fear of obesity and pursue thinness with unparallelled ambition (Bruch, 1986). Anorexia is most common among females, with only about five percent of those suffering from the disease being male. It is also most likely to develop in young females as a result of societal pressures on women to remain slim. The DSM-4 criteria for anorexia nervosa contains the following factors : maintenance of a body weight