Eating Disorders

I Won’t Eat: Anorexia Nervosa

The pressures that the media pushes onto women are a large cause of an increased number of eating disorders across the United States. Approximately 2% of teens will develop an eating disorder. This is approximately two out of every one hundred teens. Experts and doctors say that the images put out by the media portraying how a girl is supposed to look cause her to feel inclined to do everything in her power to imitate that image. Anorexia may be developed because of this.(Lain)

Sarah Murnen, a body image researcher and professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Ohio says “The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don’t like their bodies, and body dissatisfaction can lead girls to participate in very unhealthy behaviors to try to control weight”. In Murnen’s research, she had found that only 18% of females can reject the media’s attempt to influence them. Those girls were shown to have the highest body esteem. They found that those who were exposed to the most fashion magazines were more likely to suffer from poor body images.

 

Reflection in the Mirror: Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a type of mental illness where the affected person is extremely concerned with body image. The person thinks they have a defect in either one feature or several features of their body, which causes psychological distress that causes things like depression and social disorders. What we see is not what they see in the mirror. The symptoms of body dysmorphia include psychological depression, social phobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The causes of Body Dysmorphic Disorder are different for each person It is usually a combination of biological, physiological and environmental factors. It has been thought that media pressure may contribute to BDD, for example, glamorized models and the implied necessity of visual beauty. However, BDD occurs in all parts of the world, including isolated areas where access to the media is limited or non-existent. Media pressure is therefore an unlikely cause of BDD. However it may act as a trigger or could worsen existing BDD symptoms.

Although BDD was originally believed to be a disease strictly within women, it occurs equally among men and women, and occasionally in children and older adults. Between 1-2% of the world’s population is believed to have Body Dysmorphic Disorder.