Analysis Of Dying To Be Thin

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.

There are many different psychological illnesses in the world, each with different causes. While eating is an key function of life, some people may be doing harm to their body with their eating habits. Eating disorders occur when a person has a bad relationship with food and can be deadly. The book Elena Vanishing, by Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle, gives a better understanding of the background of eating disorders and many reviewers are impacted by the book’s vital message.

The author of this article begins her analysis of the rise in eating disorders by acknowledging America’s obsession with being the ideal weight. From an extremely young age, American children are being taught that women in movies and on the covers of magazines possess the ideal figure. The author states “Children are being taught…being fat is the worst thing one can be” (Bordo 1). This is disturbing to say the least. There many attributes worse than being overweight: dishonest, cruel, and murderous to name a few. Bordo also uses an example in the first paragraph of her essay that is appalling. Alicia Silverstone, the lead role in Clueless, was completely bombarded with insults about her weight, though she had only gained a few pounds since her starring role. The advertisers did

There are 70 million individuals around the world and over 14 million Americans who are affected by eating disorders; of those 14 million Americans in the United States 200,000 live in Minnesota. According to the United States Census Bureau there are 5.4 million people living in Minnesota. Eating disorders are a big problem considering that 4 out of 100 people have an eating disorder, just in Minnesota. There are three main eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating. Although doctors still don’t fully understand what causes eating disorders, the disorder can affect someone's body and mind years after getting over an eating disorder (Eating Disorder).

“Dying to be Thin,” produced by PBS, is a documentary that examines the troubles that persons who are affected by eating disorders go through and the constant, daily struggles they face with health and body image. The film tells the story of a number of young women who battled mainly anorexia and bulimia and mixes a variety of ages to give a “during” and an “after” perspective. Many of the women in the video were ballet or some similar type of dancer. Dancers, by their own account, are encouraged to be thin. The issue really came to the forefront after a young ballet dancer from Boston died of heart failure at the young age of 22, with an eating disorder deemed to be the cause. The narrator goes on to introduce more young women and detail the potential illnesses that their eating disorders can cause. Chronic low blood pressure, kidney and liver damage, severe early osteoporosis, and heart failure are all common things seem in patients who suffer from eating disorders. Most patients have dangerously low body weights, body fat percentages, and, often, young women will experience amenorrhea, which is the loss of menstruation. All of the people in the video wanted to be better and were seeking a road to recovery. The video showed though, how difficult that can be since the eating disorders can be so wide ranging and have a number of different root causes. Often patients develop eating disorders as something that they have control over, in a world that they feel is out of their

It seems like every young girl dreams of becoming a model these days. Every young girl has the desire to get thinner than other girls in order to look like models on T.V, magazines and so on. The New York Times publishes articles for the majority of the audience to read, which is mostly adults. Mim Udovitch’s article, “A Secret Society of the Starving” talks about two major eating disorders that are anorexia and bulimia within many girls. Udovitch reports stories about three girls that are going through these disorders or have gone through them. The three girls Udovitch includes are Claire, Chaos, and Futurebird. Ken Jackson’s interpretation of

     Something that Mary Pipher has brought up in the first chapter of her book was how society is causing young women to suffer many different problems. One of the most common and worst problems that arise is eating disorders. The media may be the culprit for this issue. Girls who are striving to be thin, and fit the mold of a star may never reach their goal, under natural conditions. As a result

The movie “Dying To Be Thin” follows the lives of multiple different girls who are suffering through an eating disorder. The movie shows how extreme an eating disorder can be and how serious this addiction is. We were also able to see different types of treatments that can be used to help these girls. There are many different types of eating disorders and Dying To Be Thin shows the characteristics of each different disorder.

Today’s society is a consumers’ society in which trying to obtain perfection is one of the fastest selling businesses (DeLaMater Pg. 12). Mass media, advertising, and fashion industries are being accused of feeding off females dissatisfaction with their bodies by portraying unhealthy thin role models in order to sell their products. This unachievable physique and lifestyle has led today’s adolescence down a dark path of such extreme eating disorders as anorexia and bulimia. Although it may sound nice to be societies perception of thin, there are consequences to these eating disorders such as cardiac failure that lead to horrifying defects or even death.

According to the internet, 10 million American women suffer from eating disorders? Eating disorders are serious illnesses which are caused by irregular eating habits and concerns about body weight. As a result, eating disorders are caused psychological and environmental behavior which can often result in a fatal illness. This is what Kathryn Arnett experiences in her life. She explains how she developed an eating disorder in her essay, “Media and Advertisement: The New Peer Pressure.” The factors that contributed to Arnett’s eating disorder was media idolizing and portraying fake body images, teens developing and having low self-esteem, and parents not being present in their children's’s life.

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).

In longing to reach the norm many people fall victim to these detrimental illnesses. Sadly, women are more subject to these eating disorders than men, the number of men suffering from eating disorders is on the rise. Our culture puts pressure on each of its inhabitants to attain this ideal body type that is unrealistic for most people. The images that pollute television and magazines make us all feel inadequate if we don't meet the credentials of slenderness; therefore, continuing the role of our society in the development of eating disorders.

The book breaks down the stereotype of what an eating disorder really is. In today’s society having an eating disorder means that you have some kind of “psychological frailty or illness” (1). When thinking about those that have eating disorders typically it is “young, middle to upper class, heterosexual white women” comes to mind (1). Their motivation is to take on the unrealistic appearance of models and reach the “standards created by advertisers and clothing designers” (1). The author in no regards is trying to down play women that have eating disorders because of the pressure of the media but is showing that there are other people and reasons for having eating disorders. This image that we currently have leaves out “women of color,

Strasburger supports her argument that the media is to blame by using a study that was done in Fiji. A natural field experiment in Fiji revealed that the eating disorder rate increased dramatically after American television shows, which show excessively thin female lead characters, were introduced. There are also now over 100 pro-anorexia Web sites on the Internet that not only encourage disordered eating but also offer specific advice on purging, severely restricting caloric intake, and exercising excessively (Strasburger). Recent studies have shown that adolescent girls describe the “ideal girl” as being 5’7”, 100 pounds, size 5, with long blonde hair and blue eyes (Developmental…Eating Disorders, Section 2, Chapter 10, Pg. 235). Girls related this “ideal girl” look to being

“The attention-grabbing pictures of various high-flying supermodels and actors on different magazine covers and advertisements go a long way in influencing our choices” (Bagley). The media is highly affective to everyone, although they promote an improper image of living. Research proved says those with low self-esteem are most influenced by media. Media is not the only culprit behind eating disorders. However, that does not mean that they have no part in eating disorders. Media is omnipresent and challenging it can halt the constant pressure on people to be perfect (Bagley). Socio-cultural influences, like the false images of thin women have been researched to distort eating and cause un-satisfaction of an individual’s body. However, it