EAT IT UP! (Eating disorders - how are they caused?)

Member Name: Crypzy

Product:	Eating disorders - how are they caused?
Date:	24/04/01 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dieting can kill

Disadvantages: Dieting can kill

This is one illness that I think society has brought upon itself. I think it is so sad and awful to think that people, especially teenagers are starving themselves to death because they are not happy with their body image. Who has said to them that they should do this? Who has told them they were fat? Well, surely the friends and family of people with eating disorders are not going to tell them they are ugly, or that they should lose weight? I don’t think so. So that rules out almost everyone apart from peers at school or the media. Personally I blame the media.

Around the beginning of the 90’s, "supermodels" were created. Gorgeous young girls were strutting down the catwalk, with their long blonde hair, and blue eyes. But what made them “super” was their amazingly UNREAL tall and skinny figures. It is a fact that eating disorders have become common in teenagers from around the same time that "supermodels" were created. Of course, there was Twiggy in the sixties who was stick thin but she was an exception, which reflected society. Most girls are not stick thin, so why are all the models like this? Models should portray real life, not look like anorexic stick insects.

So someone, somewhere decided that this was the figure to sell their products by. Now, without realising, teenagers are being brainwashed into thinking that these people are gorgeous, and that if they looked like them they could have an amazing life, or cute bloke! etc WHO has the right to say what is beautiful and what isn't? Why can you only be a model if you are at least this tall?

Another media product that I feel contributes to eating disorders are teenage magazines. They are obsessed with body image and “fashion”. Unfortunately, teenage girls are very passive readers at this age and will start to worry about what they look like – which they don’t need to.

In January 2001, a 14 yr old gir
l died from a heart attack in her sleep. The cause of this was from taking laxatives and water retention tablets to keep her weight down. The coroner in the case blamed teenage magazines and said that the laxatives shouldn’t have been so easily available.

A recent personal example of a lost childhood is when I met my cousin from America. Am I glad I don’t live there. She is only just 13 yrs old and is worried about how big her breasts will grow and how “fat” she is. She definitely isn’t fat at all....

What is fat though? Most people who think they are fat are not at all. If you want to find out if you are at a healthy weight then go to your doctor. I swear they would not lie to you, if you think they are lying and you still feel fat then you could have a problem. Some people are extremely overweight and need to diet because of risks to their health, but the majority of society just needs to exercise. What with lifts, escalators, cars, buses, trains etc Society could be accused of becoming lazy, or sometimes I wonder if we have become too clever for our own good...

I studied media at college and I think there is such a strong link between eating disorders and the media. It makes me sick to think that our fellow beings are indirectly causing such horrible things. It makes you think doesn’t it?

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