Eating Disorders vs. Pop Culture

Statistics say that eating disorders affect 90-95% of females in the Western society. According to the Massachusetts Eating Disorders Association approximately 40% of female college students have an eating disorder in this country. I find this to be quite shocking statistics because I am in college and I hang out with various females, yet I’ve never come across someone suffering from such a disorder. But it’s probably not that I haven’t come across a person suffering from an eating disorder, I just haven’t encountered someone who has come open to me about their problem.

I think it’s quite unfortunate that there are so many young ladies out there that are dealing with this problem. Eating disorders seem to be very silent. Silent in the sense that sometimes you can’t judge or tell by a person’s appearance that they are dealing with an eating disorder. And even if one was to know or sense that their classmate or friend is suffering from an eating disorder, the person can easily deny the accusation and take personal offense to your thought of it.

My main question is why are eating disorders so common? Why do a majority of eating disorder cases occur among females? Why are eating disorder rates increasing? In my opinion, the chief reason lies within popular culture and societies’ norm of what is “beautiful” and not so “beautiful”. Thinness is commonly associated with health and beauty. If you are an overweight, young female, then you are not considered to be the ideal woman because you don’t fit society’s norms of beauty. Now, who wouldn’t want to be considered beautiful, especially in the eyes of male counterparts? Everyone, especially females, rely so much on their outer beauty to get what they want in life and that includes being desirable to men, attention, advantages in work places, etc. It’s no wonder why so many women feel the outward pressure of keeping the ideal thin figure, even if it means depriving oneself of food or throwing up forcefully.

In addition, one of the other reasons that lie behind the motives of those who deal with eating disorders, I think, depends on their self image. The way we perceives ourselves, greatly influence what we do in response to fixing any problem we see or enhancing ourselves. I think it would be correct to say that people, who suffer from an eating disorder, don’t have positive views about themselves and pretty much have self esteem issues. I feel this way because many times, they are not as “big” as they perceive themselves to be and they tend to seek other people’s acceptance.

As society has evolved over the years, more and more people are becoming self conscious about their image. We are constantly reminded of society’s non acceptance of people who are overweight through movies and television that make overweight people the source of humor. It’s sad to see the damage that popular culture has made around the world and now we have to deal with it until the day that everyone can be accepted the way that they are and when the definition of beauty is more than skin deep.