Eating Disorders Research Paper

For centuries mankind has unsuccessfully attempted to define beauty. Greek philosophers, including Plato, tried to define beauty as if it were as simple as any other law in nature. However this cannot be so because the idea of what is beautiful has varied throughout cultures and the ages. In the 1800s women who were pale and rather plump were considered objects of desire; but in today’s society, desirable women are slender and tan, among other things. The fact is that today, beauty is as unobtainable as it is indefinable. All of today’s supermodels, as seen in millions of advertisements, have been modified, airbrushed, and photoshopped. Women desiring this beauty have turned to various

Have you ever thought of what true beauty means? In the article “Pop Culture Is Destroying True Beauty” by Rachel Drevno, she explains how pop culture and the media are influencing people to believe that they aren’t good enough because they don’t look a certain way. The beauty Drevno discusses are the actors and celebrities in commercials, movies, and magazines. She believes that people are trying and changing themselves to look like those in commercials or movies because that’s how standard beauty has been portrayed. I strongly agree with her argument because the media only presents images of attractive, beautiful, and sexy figures.

Society tells us beautiful is what you see on magazine covers, But even the people in magazines don't look like the people in magazines. They distort their faces and call it perfection.

2) Research shows that the more exposed to models and pictures in the media, the more one is to believe they have to look like that. “This happens even though women know pictures have clearly been airbrushed,” Tara Diversi, dietitian and

Think back to how many times you have looked at a magazine or an advertisement and saw a person who had an unbelievably fit body and a chiseled face. At some point, everyone has looked at these pictures and wanted to look like that person just because there is something in their minds that want to have the perfect body. There is truly no one who is perfect in this world. The person on the cover of the magazine or in the advertisement is a victim of photo manipulation. Photo manipulation is a huge problem nowadays and people are trying different ways to get the “perfection” that they see in advertisements, magazine covers, etcetera. This has happened for years at a time. Knowing the fact that a lot of what you see nowadays is fake is qhard to

Thousands of people in this world struggle with eating disorders. “Gina battled bulimia for seven years—struggling on her own in secret—before she finally opened up to her mother. Gina wrote her a long letter explaining her shame and embarrassment, and gave her mother a book about how to deal with someone with an eating disorder,” (“Eating Disorder Treatment and Recovery”). This is a big problem all around the world, but it can be solved. To help people with eating disorders around the world people need to work together to educate people, motivate them to change, and to create a healthy body image.

Fear. That’s what this disorder does to a person. The fear of eating certain foods, gaining the weight, going places with food, being near the food. So many fears all put into one. It claims lives, in more ways than just death. It becomes the lifestyle of the afflicted person. They no longer have time for other people or activities.

We've all seen photos of flawless models gracing covers, newspaper advertisements, and larger-than life billboards.

We see beauty in abounding people all over the media, yet the technology of photoshop can trick us sometimes and that is why I am writing this letter about countless ladies being influenced into having the 'perfect' body for the approval of superficial ideas. Consequently, young woman being pressured to have the 'ideal' body or face is inappropriate, for they can become mentally or physically ill, the parents of the child suffer conjointly and the girls will no longer regard what is truly imperative to have a successful and joyful life.

I think that having an eating disorder is affecting young people drastically. An eating disorder is a psychological and neurological problem. The most common eating disorder is Anorexia Nervosa. Having anorexia will mostly lead to Bradycardia, which is an irregular slow heartbeat. Anorexia leading to Bradycardia is the most negative effect of having an eating disorder. We have to stop people from getting eating disorders, and we need to educate young people about eating disorders.

Photoshop and extreme beauty practices create unrealistic standards for men and women. I have always understood this phenomenon on a theoretical level and accepted its effect on my peers. Nonetheless,

Did you know that every 62 minutes, at least one person dies as a direct result of an eating disorder? Anyone can get an eating disorder. People can get a variety of eating disorders including, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, rumination disorder, binge eating disorder, avoidant/restrictive intake disorder, and many more. People can start having symptoms of an eating disorder at any point in their lives. People are born with a mental illness that causes an eating disorder, whereas others develop eating disorders from being bullied about their weight. There are many different types of eating disorders that people suffer from everyday that is caused by not only mental illness but also emotions and society.

Every single day when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look at myself in the mirror. Am I skinny enough? Is my skin clear enough? Do I look like the girl from the magazine I was reading yesterday? No. I don’t. But I’ll keep asking these questions each and everyday because that is what the media tells me I need to look like. Because if my waist isn’t small enough I’m not pretty. Because if I have cellulite on my legs there’s something wrong with me. Because if I don’t slot into this unattainable standard. I'm not beautiful. Airbrushing and photoshopping models in pictures to display through media is something that frankly speaking is appalling. We are alienating beautiful human beings because of the media’s dictations on what we should look like. I am sick of being brainwashed to the point where all I can ever seem to do is single out the ‘flaws’ in myself. If we display, real, beautiful, raw pictures of people in media then so many problems caused by this would no longer exist.

Nowadays, more often than not, images will be altered with Photoshop, making celebrities and models look thinner, taller, and completely unblemished with perfect white teeth and bodily curves. Seemingly ‘perfect’. Thus meaning that society are viewing in some form or another, a fabricated image, yet not knowing this.

In the first few minutes of meeting someone new, a person assumes they know everything about the person, strictly based on aesthetics and body language; and the media capitalizes on this idea. Unfortunately humans have developed a naturalized understanding of the structure of beauty based on the media. They assume beauty equals health or that the “beauty” illustrated is natural. In the True Life: I want the perfect body episode, one of the interviewees, Rebecca, loves the way the women look in the fitness competition magazine. She goes to a competition and moves to become a contender. She failed to realize the rigorous training the women go through and the stress they put on their bodies. Eventually she injures her hamstring and has to sit out of a competition. To her, these women illustrate health. If other women were to ingest this idea of health it may yield many more injuries like Rebecca’s and her obsession with this performance of health. The Youtube video entitled “Fat Girl to Skinny Girl Photoshop” demonstrates how simply the media manipulates the bodies and minds of the public. In the video a picture is taken of a plus-size woman and put into editing software where the editor shapes the woman into the image suitable for public consumption—a skinny woman. This same project can be found thousands of times on Youtube. It’s obvious that people shape and manipulate the