Anorexia Nervosa Research Paper

The increasing lack of a positive self-image has become a more widespread problem throughout the world, and it is particularly prevalent in young men and women in their teenage years. While the precise cause of every person’s eating disorder cannot be pinpointed down to the same source, there are many instances where pressure by the media has instigated an eating disorder in a self-conscious teenager. Magazines, movies, television, books, even music all portray very idealized standards of beauty; as a result of multiple forms of media standardizing how beauty should look, anyone who does not fit precisely into those standards could come to consider themselves as not being beautiful.

A person’s teenage years are supposed to be the …show more content…
Steven Ehrlich, a scientist at the University of Maryland’s medical center, describes the disorder saying, “people with anorexia may try to lose weight by severely limiting how much food they eat” (Ehrlich, 2013). Unfortunately, as a result of the distorted body images that some teenagers have of themselves, whatever the underlying reasons may be, the number of teens affected by the disorder is growing. As many as 3 in 100 teens are affected by anorexia nervosa and those numbers are continually rising (Ehrlich 2013). Anorexia’s ugly counterpart, bulimia, is another eating disorder that affects numerous victims around the world. Jona M. Rushing (2003), a psychiatrist at the Primary Care Companion of the National Institute of Health, describes bulimia to be “recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by 1 or more compensatory behaviors to eliminate the calories (vomiting, laxatives, fasting, etc.)” (Rushing, 2003). Both anorexia and bulimia are a dangerous, potentially fatal, diseases that takes a detrimental toll on one’s body and …show more content…
With this statement Dovey is able to argue what some medical experts believe. Eating disorders stem from an obsession with one’s need to feel perfect, and also feel in control over all aspects of life. Due to the fact that those needs come from one’s own mind, many believe that media should not be the sole blame of the rise in anorexia and bulimia in young men and women. Just because a teenager sees a skinny model on the cover of vogue, and he or she happens to later suffer from an eating disorder, does not necessarily mean that Vogue caused it to occur. Another argument for the protection of media forums from this critique comes from those who do not think that images and depictions of “normal” people in the media would sell their product, and in the end, all forms of media have the same end goal: to make money. Luckily, however, to the majority of human beings putting income and earnings before the wellbeing and safety of young men and women is entirely

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