Body Image And Social Media Analysis

Words: 1455
Pages: 6

Body image issues in our community are extremely common. Approximately 91% of teens are not happy with how their bodies look and turn to unhealthy weight control behaviors such as fasting, skipping meals, vomiting and taking laxatives to achieve the glamourized body shape that is portrayed in the media. The “ideal” body shape is promoted on television, magazines, social media outlets as the skinny, but still curvy, girl with perfect skin and beautiful smile. Palmer, Mario (2014) states that, “Only 5% of women naturally possess the body type often portrayed by Americans in the media”. When a young girl sees a famous person retouch their photos or cut out chunks of their thighs off the picture they post on social media it sends a message that …show more content…
The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that “58% of college-aged girls feel pressured to be a certain weight”, Pressure to look a certain way can come from family, friends, community and the media. Families can directly affect a teens body image or self-esteem by making comments about
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weight or developing bodies. Depression, anxiety and eating disorders are thought to somehow relate to low self-esteem and body image issues. People usually struggle with their body image the most in their teen years because it’s during this time that significant changed happen quickly. Body image can be even harder to deal with when an individual’s puberty begins after others do. Teens usually have a hard time with their body image when they start going through puberty. During this time their body starts to change, and it can be hard for teens who develop slower than
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The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) is the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individuals and families affected by eating disorders. (NEDA) Feeding Hope describes eating disorders as “serious but treatable mental illnesses that can affect people of every age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic group”. There are many different types of eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa which is an eating disorder characterized by weight loss (or lack of appropriate weight gain in growing children), Bulimia Nervosa is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by a cycle of bingeing and compensatory behaviors such as self-induced vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge eating , Binge eating disorder is a severe, life-threatening, and treatable eating disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of eating large quantities of food (often very quickly and to the point of discomfort), Orthorexia, people with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being, as well as Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders (OSFED), Pica is an eating disorder that involves eating items that are not typically thought of as food and