Danielle's Body Image

When she wasn’t focused on drinking, her addiction turned to self-loathing in a different form of control. Anorexia. At her lowest weight of 80 pounds, she had gone through months of using food and exercise as forms of self-control, much like the way she used alcohol in the most destructive way, she was trying to cure, medicate or eliminate the feelings of self-hatred, shyness and anxiety that loomed over her like a dark cloud.

Marya Hornbacher’s memoir, Wasted, describes her lifelong battle with eating disturbances with focuses on anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In modern day society, thinness is associated with “wealth, upward mobility, and success” (Hornbacher, 1998, p. 46). Thinness is “an ideal symbolizing self-discipline, control, sexual liberation, assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with a higher socio-economic class.” (p. 46) Not eating also suggests that one have such a full life that food is not a priority. The media influences children to believe that one must be thin in order to be beautiful. To Marya, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she must be perfect in order to be successful. She believed she could only be perfect if she had a perfect body, a perfect career, perfect relationships, and perfect control over her life and herself (p. 231-232).

The guilt and shame she felt regarding her struggles with food and body image are evident in the way she hid her behaviour from others. After her pageant coach became privy to her struggles, she confided in him that once she began indulging in a craving, she was unable to stop, subsequently feeling guilt and shame. Her pageant coach stood stunned when she revealed her distorted belief that everyone must have the same experience with food. Throughout the show, she had flashbacks to the bullying she experienced before her weight loss, and she stared at her reflection in the mirror, meticulously scrutinizing her body. Indicating that her fluctuations in weight were not simply because she wanted more food, but rather a coping mechanism for her insecurities and inability to regulate her emotions.

(Demi Lovato) Bulimia this year demi lovato has been through more than people twice her age has been through. She has battles through Bulimia, bipolar disorder, addiction, and she has self-harmed. At the age of 18 she went to a facility for a whole year. She now lives a healthy lifestyle with diet, exercise, and learned to embrace her curves. {I did not find anything on how it affected her}

Danielle is an avid smoker and drinker which is, in fact, a large risk of developing cancer. Before she discovered that she had cancer, she smoked every day and consumed at least two alcoholic beverages in one sitting.

A seven year old girl is sitting in her living room watching her nightly hour of television while eating an after school snack. A Victoria’s Secret commercial comes on depicting the image of beauty for her and she is immediately enthralled. She goes to bed that night thinking about how beautiful the “Barbie Dolls” on television were and she strives to be like that when she grows up. Ten years later, the same girl is now seventeen years old and living in a world inhabited with eating disorders and anxiety. She is living in constant fear that she is not “pretty enough” and feels that people will “like her more” if she lost “just a couple more pounds.’’ For the last two years, she has been overly obsessed with perfecting her body image. Teenagers,

Desire for the unachievable goal of perfection is constantly stimulated by media’s portrayal of skinny women and muscular men. Many people who view all of these images are highly effected, and begin to think they are not normal. For example, Danny Bowman, who at nineteen years old tried to kill himself because he did not take a ‘perfect’ selfie after ten hours of repeatedly trying (Aldridge). He dropped out of school, stayed home, and was violent when asked to stop (Aldridge). Danny tried to overdose after not taking a perfect selfie, because it was what he based his life around (Aldridge). Danny says that posting on social media, “becomes a mission to get approval and it can destroy anyone” (Aldridge). He was distressed when getting comments of disapproval on his selfie’s and getting rejected to be a male model, because he didn’t have the ‘right’ body or skin (Aldridge). He would look at and compare himself to the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and feel down about his appearance (Aldridge). Likewise, a woman named Gina was diagnosed with anorexia after three years into the disorder, without knowing the cause (Gina). She barely ate and excessively exercised, and became obsessed with losing calories (Gina). After meeting with a therapist, Gina realized that her disorder, “was a product of every single advertisement, every little comment, every nuance and whisper and Photoshopped magazine cover”, and, “tended to by flash diets and juice cleanses and guilt-free foods and bikini

For the next 2 years Emily continued to restrict her eating, while her parents tried everything to make it stop. When she was 11 years old she had to be hospitalized against her will. Emily couldn’t run, walk or even hit a baseball; but she noticed a young muscular women and realized she wanted to become healthy again. On a mission trip 9 years later, she abandoned all thoughts pertaining to weight. Someone made a comment that she had put on weight, she immediately dropped the sandwich she was eating.

“Losing weight is hard enough: you faint, you vomit, you stop menstruating but it’s even harder when you do not have the support of the people around you,” she said. “Even when I did lose twenty five pounds, my friends were so jealous, telling me I looked terrible. My mom is the worst of all. She’s just afraid that if I am thin and beautiful, it will make her look bad.” Fernandez is sick of her mom, therapist, the paramedics, and doctors trying to control her. “They do not have to live in this horrible body, I do.”

Read Katie’s story. Then identify the DSM-5 diagnosis you think best fit Katie’s presentation. The client meets criteria for Anorexia Nervosa

In the film Dying to Be Thin, Anorexia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder are mainly discussed. Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is commonly found in ballet dancers, usually their weight is 15% below their ideal weight (McPhee, 2000). These dancers strive to be thin because their careers depend on it, Katy Tracy, a ballerina, describes that she received better roles and was treated better by her teachers when she was anorexic thin. Ballerinas are not the only group that suffer from AN and other eating disorders, young girls are also developing eating disorders in order to be model thin. The film presents the case of Erin, a 14 year old in treatment at the DePaul-Tulane’s Eating Disorders Unit.

Many thousands of years ago, upon the earliest creations of civilization, there were two thriving civilizations. Both of which knew little to nothing about each other’s existence. In this ancient world, there was no connection of the two civilizations, no trade in commerce or culture. It was not until the second century BC that Europe and Eastern Asia interacted in a significant way. What is known as “The Silk Road” was established during the Han Dynasty of China, it was a network of trade routes that created a link between these two regions during this ancient world (ancient.eu). Though these routes have history prior to the Han Dynasty, this is when many historians see the routes in full practice. This time during the second century BC was crucial in the connection of these separately thriving civilizations, connecting them through commerce, religion, and exploration.

​The issue of nutritious meals for children has become a common topic in the media in the last several years. “Significant excess body weight affects over 25 per cent of children in developed economies…” (Hawkes and Lobstein, 2011), which presents one of the major markers for poor nutrition- childhood obesity’s prevalence. Although there have been highly publicized pushes for our children to be healthier, such as Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, American children are faced with a future that paints them as being unable to become anything but obese and nutritionally deficit. Changing the content and eating behaviors of children can “...prevent immediate health problems as well as promote a healthy lifestyle…[which may] reduce the risk of a child developing a chronic condition…later in life.” (Brown, 2011). Essentially, the focus has become preventing health problems rather than treating them after disease onset.

The documentary Thin, followed the lives of four different women, as they struggled to rehabilitate from their eating disorders. The documentary followed these women as they were short-term residents at an impatient treatment facility in Florida that specialized in helping those with severe eating disorders. One participant, Shelly was admitted into the facility after complications relating to her excessively low body weight of 82lbs. She restricted her food intake to the extent that she required administration of a feeding tube to absorb nutrition. However, it was revealed during the documentary that she had been using her feeding tube to purge food.

As Brandy got into Oklahoma State University, she lost control of her disorder. She no longer had any normal eating habits. She is becoming quite miserable with herself, despite appearing to be thriving in everything she attempts at Oklahoma State. Her disorder has caused her to become susceptible to social pressures of thinness. She has finally sought