Blog 7: "Eating Disorders"

An eating disorder is a condition that affects an individual's eating habits. It may be that one may not eat or one may overeat. It is an emotional disorder that appears as an irrational craving for or avoidance of food. It involves a lot of mental aspects that effect the victim of an eating disorder.

The influence of fashion, film, media, and diet industries have greatly influenced the notions of beauty and have effected the rise in eating disorders. Many women look to celebrities as their ideal. Celebrities have to maintain a standard for their body so that they may continue to work. If a celebrity's body changes, their work changes. A plus size celebrity can lose weight, get praise for it, and maintain a job,even gain more work, but if a celebrity becomes plus size they become ridiculed and it is harder for them to maintain a job. Celebrities and the media make it look so easy to be thin and beautiful. As regular women and men, we are constantly presented this standard of beauty and comparing ourselves to them because we are also seeing them as beautiful and what we want to be. Celebrities pin it all on eating healthy and exercise, so when someone is not thin and beautiful then it is assumed that they are not trying hard enough. Only a small portion of people can actually attain this ideal body image through health and exercise and many result to disordered eating habits. Often these issues are swept under the rug, but it is a real issue that needs to be answered. I don't think that the entertainment industry is the cause, but it is an influence.

Food and diet addiction has become a preoccupation with the American society because so many people have become overweight. In America, food is so accessible and its everywhere so we just eat. You eat to live, to comfort, to socialize, to overall just enjoy. Diet pills and the new IT diet are constantly being advertised and publicized because everyone is looking for the easy way out but the way that they are eating has become a lifestyle. Changing a way of life is a lot harder than people might think which is why diets don't work. The easy way out never works unless the lifestyle changes. Its hard to stop eating the way you did before because you need food to survive. I have also heard that diet pills don't work because the body gets used to them after a while. Diet pills are also dangerous. Not too long ago, it was reported that Hydroxycut killed some nineteen year old boy and was taken off the market. You really don't know what you are putting into your body and it could be harmful to you. All you know is that it makes you lose weight, but I doubt anyone looks at what it truly does to make you lose that weight.

There is a preoccupation with food. It is given good and bad media images. When it comes down to one's appearance, it is given a bad image. When it comes to enjoyment and satisfaction, it gets a good image. There is a constant battle of food's image.

I don't think that society can be reintegrated until there is a realness put back to the media. Images of celebrities should not be retouched to portray impossible images. I think there should be a move to real body images publicized instead of thin, emaciated bodies. Nicole Richie is a prime example of the influence of the media. In the picture on the left, she was actually bigger when she first came on the hollywood scene. She still denies that the picture on the right was due to an eating disorder and claims it was due to stress and how she deals with her emotions. Many victims of eating disorders also mention the same reasons behind their eating habits.