Body Image Essay

I have always been very obsessed with body image. When I was young, baseball was my sport. Soon after, I joined the swim team. During these years I’ve never looked the way that pleased me. When the age of fourteen came around, I decided to join the gym with a personal trainer. At this time, being overweight and unhappy. Never did I think the gym would mean so much to me in the future. Just before the age of sixteen, bodybuilding made a drastic impression on me. The art of building a well symmetrical body. Everything about this sport fascinated me because it gave a chance to create a new me.

There is a focus on helping patients to observe and label their emotional reactions to trauma, validation and acquiring a balance between acceptance and change. This is a fairly new type of approach which is being modified for the treatment of eating disorders. (Santucci, 2010) This form of therapy, according to the data is appropriate for any individual afflicted with this condition as well as many others, but currently does not have a depth of research behind it to prove it individually effective specifically for AN.

In America today, there are unrealistic beauty standards women must face daily. When women can not meet this idea of perfection pushed by society, some women will risk their health just to fit a cultural stigma. Women are held to an insanely high criterion when it comes to beauty which tends to lead to negative body image. Ten percent of women in The United States of America report symptoms consistent with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. Which concludes that a total of 75 percent of all American women endorse some unhealthy thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to food or their body image-UNC Medical Department Although eating disorders are not subjective to women only, after reading “Beating Anorexia and Gaining Feminism” Marni Grossman and “Feminism and Anorexia: A Complex Alliance” Su Holmes, I will discuss how eating disorders coexist in the lives of women who struggle with body image, and what feminism can do to give these women a second chance.

Samantha Callahan, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Danielle Patrick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Sara Roderick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Kahla Stygar, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University.

People often turn eating disorders into an impersonal set of medical details because they forget to consider the personal aspects. In her book Hollow: An Unpolished Tale, Jena Marrow describes anorexia with, “I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth, and when I talk myself into doing so, I taste only shame” (17). Shame prevents many people from seeking treatment for anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder in which the person weighs significantly less than what doctors consider healthy, experiences body dysmorphia, and has an extreme fear of gaining weight (Mayo Clinic Staff). People downplay anorexia nervosa as a rich girl disorder or a cry for attention, but less than 28 percent of people

Narrative therapists treat clients that display various symptoms that stem from disorders such as depression, post traumatic stress, and eating disorders. A study was conducted on 47 adults with major depressive disorder who participated in narrative therapy. The clinical trial provided empirical support for the utility of narrative therapy in improving depressive symptoms and inter-personal relationships(Vromans, L., 2008). Women with eating disorders and body image challenges are often self-conscious and have low self-esteem. These problems are internalized and narrative therapists help deconstruct the problem by separating the person from the problem, thus externalizing the problem.

In my research, I explored the world of eating disorders. I wanted to see if there was anything specifically encouraging eating disorders and if there was a way to stop it. Eating disorders affect the community greatly because often times, they go unchecked or unrecognized. As a recovered anorexic, I feel it’s very important to address this issue. It’s a very big problem that is often not addressed at all, or is seen as normal, like counting calories. I hoped to find a way to improve the way that eating disorders are viewed and explain to people about what defines an eating disorder, because many people will never know if it is not explicitly explained to them. My study’s purpose is to bring light into the dark world of eating disorders

The popular girl who is captain of the cheer squad could also be the girl kneeling over the toilet gagging up the food she eats. Often times, women are seen as objects. They are viewed based on their outer appearances. Body shaming themselves and others becomes normal. They begin to question whether or not it's okay for their thighs to not touch or if eating that chocolate cupcake was the right move. Women in today’s society are displayed negatively which influences women to do harmful things to themselves. Social Media Clothing Brands and Fitness commercials can cause serious judgemental harm to women due to not living up to ideal beauty.

A positive correlation between child sexual abuse and disordered eating behaviors has been identified, as has a positive correlation between child sexual abuse and having a diagnosis of a clinical eating disorder. Child sexual abuse has been associated with the increase in displaying disordered eating behaviors and/or symptoms. Abuse experiences contribute to a woman’s development of bulimia, possibly because the woman is utilizing bulimia as a coping mechanism and an attempt to manage the emotional fallout from the abuse. Abuse survivors are

For some, the world can be a lonely and scary place. When an individual is challenged with a life altering experience, such as recovering from childhood exploitation, rape, incest, or being held up at gunpoint, it is almost always difficult to improve without any guidance. Occasionally, a person can be resilient, while others countlessly suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and develop self destructive behaviors such as an eating disorder. When in harm’s way, you have two responses, commonly known as “flight-or-flight.” You are either going to avoid danger or face it head on. With PTSD, this recoil of a decision is altered or impaired. PTSD is established when a terrifying incident places you in jeopardy of being harmed, which later interferes with a person’s life or health. With many PTSD patients, they have developed eating disorders because they find that this is the only way to control their physical and emotional manifestations. Studies have shown dramatically the relation between patients who suffer from PTSD and those who develop eating disorders. In Timothy D. Brewerton’s “The Links Between PTSD and Eating Disorders”, he shares some statistics. “74% of 293 women attending residential treatment indicated that they had experience a significant trauma, and 52% reported symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of current PTSD based on their responses on a PTSD symptom scale.” What are the effects that PTSD have on eating disorders? It is important to keep in mind

This paper reviews the relationships among eating disorders, trauma, and comorbid psychiatric disorders, with a particular focus on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There have been a number of significant conclusions in the literature, applicable to clinical practice, which are essential to the understanding of the relationships between generic eating disorders and some types of trauma. These are summarized as follows: a) children's sexual assault is a non-specific risk factor for most eating disorders; b) the level of trauma linked to those eating disorders has been extended from the child's sexual assault to include a multitude of different forms of assault/abuse and; c) trauma is much more common in bulimic eating disorders compared to a non-bulimic disorder; d) As such, those findings linking eating disorders with traumatic ones have been extended to both male and female children and adults with eating disorders; e) findings linking eating disorders with trauma have been extended to both male children and adult males with eating disorders; f) several episodes or types of trauma are associated with eating disorders; g) All trauma is not always associated with severe eating disorders; h) trauma is associated with greater comorbidity (including

To compare rates of sexual traumata among eating disordered women to those among women with other psychiatric disturbances (eating disorders excluded), a group of 21 women in hospital inpatient or outpatient treatments was formed, all within the age range of the eating disordered subjects who were not actively psychotic or heavily medicated. A normal control group contained 24 women consisting of hospital staff, parents, friends, and students comparable in age to the eating disordered subjects.

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough, our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

At the end of my speech, the audience will have a better understanding on how society plays a big role on women’s body image. They will also be able to identify the relationship between body image distortion and eating disorders. Finally, I will provide further understanding on the crucial factors of eating disorders, as well as the different treatments available.

Often, people of all ages, race, and gender catch themselves gazing into mirrors for hours, blaming themselves for the way they look, not realizing that the media is actually the one to blame for many people’s body image. Body image is the way people see themselves, or how they assume other people see them. It is not likely to see a plus sized model in a magazine or a model on the runway with blemishes on her face. A person’s negative perception of their own body is not because they think it is wrong to look and be healthy; it is because the media is telling them that being a size 2 with flawless skin is healthy and beautiful.