Body image issues and eating disorders in women

Body image issues and eating disorders in women.


Body image is how someone would perceive, think and feel about their body. A distorted body image can lead to self-destructive behavior such as developing anorexia or bulimia, which are two of the most serious eating disorders. More than fifty per cent of Australian women want to lose weight, although most are well within the acceptable weight range. 28.8 per cent of teenage girls admit to throwing up after a meal, while 15.2 per cent weighed themselves everyday. At the same time 150000 women are dieing from anorexia each year in America. (www.eatingdisorders.org.au, 2001)
So why are these women risking their lives and their health to lose weight? While eating disorders can be caused by social/cultural, psychological, biological and family factors, the main concern is the idealization of thinness in today’s society.

Anorexia is a form of self-starvation. It usually first emerges in early adolescence in response to the body changes which come with puberty. The patient may feel unhappy, unworthy, unattractive or ineffectual. Anorexia involves a preoccupation over body weight, eating, and food and the person is determined to control the amounts of food they eat. Some symptoms of anorexia include: loss of at least 15 per cent of body weight resulting from refusal to eat enough food, despite extreme hunger, overestimation of body size, even when they become thinner, intense fear of becoming ‘fat’, and preoccupation with the preparation of food.

The unrealistic attitudes about body size and shape may be why anorexia affects two out of every hundred teenage girls. (www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au, 2001)

About 40 per cent of people with anorexia will later develop bulimia. Bulimia affects up to three in every hundred teenage girls. (www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au, 2001) Patients with bulimia may be characterized by: eating binges with large amounts of high calorie food, during which the person feels a loss of personal control and self disgust, attempts to compensate for binges and avoid weight gain by self-induced vomiting, and/or excessive use of laxatives and fluid tablets, and a combination of restricted eating and compulsive exercise. 83 per cent of bulimics vomit, 33 per cent abuse laxatives and 10 per cent take diet pills (eatingdisorders.org.au – Information About Eating Disorders, 2001) The bulimic sufferer fears fatness from loss of eating control, and usually maintains a normal body weight, appearing to be fit and healthy.

The physical affects of anorexia and bulimia can be serious and if left untreated can be life threatening. Both illnesses can cause: chronic indigestion, loss of menstruation of irregular periods, strain on most body organs, chronic indigestion, seizures, harm to kidneys, urinary tract infections, dehydration, constipation, diarrhea, receding gums and rotting teeth just to name some.

The causes of eating disorders can be very complex. A big part of the problem is that western countries have societies and media, which give the impression that the ideal woman is very slim through television, films and magazines. They normalize or even glamorize what is abnormal or unhealthy. Media, advertising and popular culture has glamorized the lean look for women and has promoted thinness as a desirable state, associating it with beauty and success. Many girls and women are influenced by these stereotypes of the ideal female shape and this without a doubt would have a connection to the fact that the incidence of eating disorders in the western world is increasing. Girls feel they must be very slim to fit this “perfect” image (which is often reshaped through plastic surgery, or retouched, airbrushed, and computer enhanced) and become very conscious about their weight and looks. They feel that they are not as good as the people they see everyday in the media and start to form a low opinion of themselves; they are pressured into desperate attempts to lose weight. 68 per cent of 15 year old females are on a diet, of these 8 per cent are severely dieting, with females who diet severely being 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder. Statistics such as these are outrageous, with girls as young as seven developing eating disorders something has to be done to stop it.

Magazines should stop promoting the gaunt skinny images of size 8 models on every page and start trying to give teenage girls positive role models to follow. They should show people who have success, but not because of how skinny they are. We need to be seeing women in a wider range of shapes, sizes, ages and attractiveness on television advertising and movies. We need lots more role models for the 95 per cent of girls and young women who will never achieve the “ideal look” (Frances M. Berg, 2000, p.32) Young girls and women also need to be warned and educated of the life threatening and physical effects of developing an eating disorder and why they don’t need to starve themselves to be successful. Magazines and other media forms should promote these types of messages to the age group most affected. Models around the world should be made to have a healthier look to be idealized rather than the skeletal one at present.

Progress can be made on the growing number of women who are obsessively body conscious because of our society’s unfair ways towards the topic, but action needs to be taken in the right way in order for this to happen.

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