Social Imagination And Eating Disorders

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.

Millions of teens and adults are faced with eating disorders and negative body images everywhere they go. Celebrities promote unrealistic standards and display what the “acceptable” body is. Because of our stick thin role models we have in the media today much of our society holds their own body image to the unobtainable standards of celebrities. People are bombarded with images of what’s “sexy” instead of what’s healthy (Helmich). In a world based around celebrities and media, shouldn’t they be promoting a healthy body image instead of the negative ones we are being smothered with?

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.

There are many misconceptions in our society about eating disorders. Many people choose to have an eating disorders and others don't. Low self esteem, peer pressure, and bullying may cause people to have an eating disorder.

What is social imagination? American sociologist C. Wright Mills describes social imagination as the ability to “think yourself away from the familiar routines of everyday life” and look at them from an entirely new perspective. Quite merely it is the insight offered by the discipline of sociology. An example of sociological imagination is the ability to see things interactively. For an individual too experience a sociological imagination, they must step outside of a certain situation and observe it from another point of view, an individual must step away from a personal experience and see how others are shaped through their values in the way they act.

The social imagination is an interesting topic as it addresses a concept that makes you think more in depth than you are used to. It makes you start to question things that you never thought about in a way that can possibly change your mindset. Sociological imagination is a way of thinking about familiar topics or experiences that you have or experience on a daily basis much differently. A way of looking at this is understanding that certain things that happen in society could lead to another outcome. Students of sociology can acquire the sociological imagination by doing a few things.

Poet Allen Ginsberg once said that “whoever controls the media-the images-controls the culture”, and nothing could be truer than this. Media plays a larger role in society within this generation more than many of us are aware of. It can easily impact people’s lives through aspects such as sports, fashion, movies or hobbies, but unfortunately, one of these impacts is how we view our body. Media constantly posts images and messages promoting a nearly unachievable and unrealistic image of what beauty looks like and it almost always has negative fallout when we struggle to meet this. This is known as an eating disorder. An eating disorder is a psychological sickness that results in dangerous eating habits and both short and long term affects on the body. People with eating disorders generally have a negative perception of their self will try to control their weight through unnecessary dieting, exercising or purging. But how does this illness begin? Social media sites, advertising, celebrities and other forms of media through society are all social pressures that are influencing people to be “perfect” and causing this expanding matter.

We live in a society ruled by the media. At every turn we’re bombarded with images of what a girl is supposed to look like, what she’s supposed to wear, and how she’s supposed to act. Models range from stick thin to plus size, with no representation of average size six girls to be found. All around the world, girls are starving themselves to look a certain way, with terms like “thigh gap” and “collarbones” running rampant in their minds. But why? What are those things really worth?

Eating disorders: noun. A group of psychological ailments characterized by intense fear of becoming obese, distorted body image, and prolonged food refusal (anorexia nervosa) and/or binge eating followed by purging through induced vomiting, heavy exercise, or use of laxatives (bulimia nervosa).These ailments are not pretty. In this society, where only the fit and thin bodies are accepted and appreciated, eating disorders are more common than they should be. Children, starting at a young age, see skinny people on television and in magazines. They hear comments on how their bodies look, then hear the same people turn around and make nasty comments on someone else’s figure. This is not okay, because it is teaching young people that anything

Symbolic Interactionism is a theory focusing on the approach that has evolved from social behaviorism and that stresses the symbolic nature of human interaction (p. 46). In society, there are norms and expectations that people are expected to follow and live by and trying to achieve this ideal self-image, people sometime behave in a self-destructing behavior. Because the media creates an image that we are suppose to fit, people will go to the extreme measures to meet this look even if it involves developing an eating disorder (DeGroat).

In America, the words “beautiful”, “fit”, and “thin” are often used to describe someone that has the ideal “perfect” body, everyone’s perception of it can vary and about half of the population has the body that many people adore or aim to have. However, not everyone has or can achieve the ideal body type, some people will go to extreme measures to either gain or lose weight just to feel accepted in today’s society. These dangerous actions can result in a person developing an eating disorder that can alter their lives both physically and mentally. “An eating disorder is an illness that can be defined as having irregular or abnormal eating habits while being concerned about body weight or shape”

Why are women and men pressured because of an image of skin and bones or walking muscles? Most commercials and magazines flicker photos every second of photoshopped or unrealistic bodies. In addition, Americans on average spend 250 billion hours watching television. More importantly, children and teenagers gape at 20,000 commercials a year. Using unflawed advertisements, they gnaw at children's minds into thinking they aren't beautiful. For example, women are accentuated to live up to the expectations of a Victoria's Secret model--a skinny waist, huge breasts, and meaty thighs. Men, on the other hand, are bombarded with pictures of a projected, heavily built abdomen. In society, people are driven to look like living Barbie dolls. Human beings shouldn't have the weight on their chest to look like the model on an advertisement. Several people can have higher expectations of a person, develop eating disorders, and even lose self-esteem.

The article“Body and Mind: Understanding Eating Disorders” by Bridget Lowry & Mae Puckett, starts off with sharing Jenna who is a Tam student, experience with both anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Jenna didn’t really notice any changes or symptoms of the disorder, but instead it was her mother that noticed the changes and that something wasn’t right with her when she fainted out of nowhere. The fainting occurred because she was skipping all of her meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and was not consuming any type of food at all. The reason Jenna developed eating disorder was because she was concerned with the way her body image looked. The authors then move on to talk about the two types of eating disorder which are anorexia and bulimia and they are both described as “intense fear of gaining

The media’s false portrayal of body image has a great influence on the development of eating disorders. There are three types of eating disorders; anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating. Eating disorders are major issues in today’s society. Instead of people using the media to influence good eating habits, they use it to influence bad eating habits. The numbers of people who have an eating disorder are rising at an alarming rate. It affects not only women, but also men, teens, and young children of all ages. It is not surprising that the number of young children who have an eating disorder is increasing each year. This is an issue that people do not take seriously. The media gets the attention to continue to

What happens when a person looks in the mirror and doesn't like something about his/her self because of what society perceives as beauty. This is something that someone who has anorexia or bulimia feels every day of their life. According to "The Socialization of Eating Disorders" by Loretta F. Kasper, socialization is a very important process in our development because it enables us to fit into and to function within the society, but not everything we learn through socialization turns out positive. People try to lose weight and exercise because society says it is healthy, but when body image and beauty are linked it can become something lethal for some