anorexia

Eleven million women in the United States suffer from eating disorders- either self-induced semi-starvation (anorexia nervosa) or a cycle of bingeing and purging with laxatives, self-induced vomiting, or excessive exercise (bulimia nervosa) (Dunn, 1992). Many eating disorder specialists agree that chronic dieting is a direct consequence of the social pressure on American females to achieve a nearly impossible thinness. The media has been denounced for upholding and perhaps even creating the emaciated standard of beauty by …

…to many woman and unhealthy to most people. However, due to the effect of poor body image influenced by several factors women fall prey to this cultural ideal of thinness. The impact that the media has on women’s body image is generally poor and often detrimental to their perception of their body image. This poor perception can cause several vulnerabilities in woman including the need to create poor eating pathologies to achieve this ideal.