The Globalization Of Eating Disorders By Susan Bordo

There are all too many people that look in the mirror and are dissatisfied with the person gazing back at them. Society begins pushing unrealistic standards onto people starting at a very young age. An individual that was once happy with their appearance may now pick themselves apart, frowning at each imperfection their eyes see. In the essay, The Globalization of Eating Disorders, author Susan Bordo shows her audience the effect that social media can have on self-esteem. For example, eating disorders were scarce in the Fiji islands until 1995, when the first television station aired, exposing the people to popular Western aesthetic. Bordo uses ethos, logos, and pathos to depict various body image issues, alongside eating disorders.

Topic: What is causing young adults and teens to develop eating disorders and how can we help them?

In the essay “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo speaks about eating disorders. In society today appearance is a huge factor. Even though appearance has always been a major thing but now day’s people take it to the extreme when trying to have a certain body image. Now day’s people think beauty is whatever is on the outside, instead of the inside and the outside. Most people go on crazy strict diets, surgery and some go through starvation in order to become a certain body size. Eating disorders are becoming more in effect now and not just in the United States , but happens to be going worldwide and not only with just the women, but now with men as well. Within the essay Bordo’s explains about how the body image, media, and culture influence the standard of the beauty leads to eating disorder. Another factor is family that causes someone to form an eating disorder. Those four factors are the main key roles that play apart on how eating disorders are being used.

It has been found that eating disorders are most common in the western and industrialized culture where food is abundant. This is because these individuals attach a lot of importance to their physical appearance and are willing to do anything to get the dream figure. An eating disorder is not just watching what one eats and exercising on a daily basis but is rather an illness that causes serious disturbances in eating behaviour, such as great and harmful cutback of the consumption of food as well as feelings of serious anxiety about their body shape or mass. They would start to stop themselves to go out anywhere just so that they could work out and burn all of the calories of a meal or snack that they had scoffed earlier. Two of the most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The regular description of a patient with either disease would be a youthful white female, with an upper social standing in a predictably socially competitive environment.

Food. It is essential for survival. Without it, people die. However, oddly enough, many struggle to live without it to accomplish the standards that our culture has created for us. We are taught that being thin is perfection and will lead to a happier life. However, lurking are the health risks that one pays for obtaining the “perfect body”. Still, along with a distorted body image, others struggle with keeping weight down and fall into the diet fads that the world parades. From movies, magazines, and television, the media also sends us messages that being fat is bad and unhealthy while being thin and beautiful is acceptable. The impact of such influences has increased eating disorders in America. These disorders do not

In the writing “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” the author, Susan Bordo strongly uses the pathos appeal to influence the emotions of her audience. This writing speaks in detail about the growing issue of eating disorders, that is not only becoming an international issue; but as well I an issue that now affects young men and women alike. The way that this author uses this specific appeal is in a large part with very personal and relatable dialogue, about the sufferings of young adults that are affected by these issues. The author goes as far as to begin the writing, telling the story of a young girl “never fat to begin with, she’s been on a diet for a couple of weeks and has finally reached her goal weight of 115 at 5 to 4 inches… but in her eyes she still looks dumpy” (639). The author goes on to make a point to this narrative, but just the thought of this girl’s unhappy nature with herself, is enough to captivate the audiences’ emotions. The author uses this type of the pathos appeal throughout the rest of the writing to continue influencing the emotions of her audience, as to make her argument stronger.

This article describes how unrealistic standards of attractiveness set by Western society are internalized by women from a variety of cultural backgrounds and translated into fat-phobia and body dissatisfaction and then discusses alternative cultural influences for food refusal such as issues of control, acculturation, and religious asceticism. The author claims that there is a need for culturally sensitive questionnaires and diagnostic criteria and suggests that the notion of anorexia as a culture bound syndrome is no longer valid as the illness as been identified in a number of non-western societies. A valid point is made

Although a great deal of early research on body image and eating disorders focused on upper/middle class Caucasians living in America or under the influence of Western ideals, many researchers are realizing that eating disorders are not isolated to this particular group. They are also realizing the differences in body image between occur in different races and genders (Pate, Pumariega, Hester 1992). Recently, several studies have shown that eating disorders transcend these specific guidelines, and increasingly, researchers are looking at male/female differences, cross-cultural variation and variation within cultures as well. It is impossible to broach the concept of body image without

Bordo establishes herself as an authority figure through her extensive education in English and women’s studies. In her prolific writing career, Bordo often places emphasis on Western culture and its lasting viewpoints toward gender and the body, and in view of this, Bordo’s argument paves way to influence her audience through her credibility as an expert on women and the body images that plague them. As this authority figure, Bordo claims that the media and cultural influence have created a negative influence on humanity’s conceived standard of beauty, and as a result, have caused the spread of eating disorders.

Brewerton, Timothy D. "Eating disorders, trauma, and comorbidity: Focus on PTSD." Eating disorders 15.4 (2007): 285-304.

Self-esteem plays a big part of body image. People have to feel good about themselves and be comfortable in their own skin to be happy. In today's world, it feels almost impossible to be happy, this generation is all about the media which makes having self-esteem 10x harder. Millions of pictures are posted of expectations of how women should look. In an article written by Pavica Sheldon, she states that ”The average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds, whereas the average female model portrayed in the media is 5’11 and 120 pounds”. Women are placed into a box telling them they have to look a certain way and if they don't they're simply not good enough. Besides being put into a category women numerously get called nasty names like slut or whore if they show too much. Piggy and fatty if they're overweight. Or “stick” if she's too skinny. Nothing is ever good enough is what it feels like. For example, Kylie Jenner, if you grew up watching “Keeping up with the Kardashians” you know how she looked before all the plastic surgery she got done, she now looks completely different. An account wrote, “What are they giving Kylie?” and someone quoted the tweet and said plastic. So even if women try to fix their imperfections they still get shamed down for it by calling them fake.

A female should not feel insecure with her body when she is comfortable in her own skin, whether or not she weights 130 pounds or 150 pounds at 5’5”. According to Rehab’s study of the evolution of the female figure over one hundred years, “the body shapes of the most admired models have remained consistently slimmer than that of the average American woman.” Due to the significant increase in mass media throughout the twentieth century of the United States, there has been a noteworthy impact on the popular image of women. A woman being dissatisfied with their body is a everyday trend around the world where as

Society creates a standard of beauty for women that often changes along with society due to a new perspective on what it means to be beautiful in our culture. These standards for beauty create what our society believes makes a woman desirable, attractive, perfect, and overall beautiful.  Which then enforces unhealthy and unrealistic beauty ideals that negatively affect women's self-image and their body image because society has attributed beauty to self worth. The result is with the ever changing standards of beauty means women use various ways to alter their bodies and appearance by clothing, makeup, hair, dieting, exercising, and even taking extreme measures to perfect their looks through surgery.

“The attention-grabbing pictures of various high-flying supermodels and actors on different magazine covers and advertisements go a long way in influencing our choices” (Bagley). The media is highly affective to everyone, although they promote an improper image of living. Research proved says those with low self-esteem are most influenced by media. Media is not the only culprit behind eating disorders. However, that does not mean that they have no part in eating disorders. Media is omnipresent and challenging it can halt the constant pressure on people to be perfect (Bagley). Socio-cultural influences, like the false images of thin women have been researched to distort eating and cause un-satisfaction of an individual’s body. However, it

Women have let the idea of looking beautiful take over their self-confidence and life. Healthy Place, an online magazine teaching women about living a healthy life, says that, “today's fashion models weigh twenty-three percent less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a seven percent chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a one percent chance of being as thin as a supermodel.” So why do women push themselves to be excessively thin when these models are anomalies? They do it because the media tells them that this look is the only look that can attract men. Even if a woman is “beautiful” according to the media’s standards, she will always find something about her body that she hates, whether it is her hair or her belly button, no women is completely satisfied. Our society is very accepting of different religions and lifestyles, so why can we not accept different types of beauty as well?