Eating Disorders Documentary Analysis

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When I first read that this reflection paper was on eating disorders, I thought it would be easy. I am currently doing my internship at an eating disorder treatment center. I work with mostly young women between the ages of fourteen and thirty. This opportunity has given me a completely different perspective on this population and I have truly learned a lot of what is talked about in this documentary. A major issue that is raised in the documentary is why girls feel the need to be so thin and why this mentality escalates to the point of starvation. One woman said that “repeated exposure of a particular image, teaches you to like that particular image.” The example that went along with this statement was a billboard of the girls in the TV show Friends. The billboard was captioned “Cute Anorexic Chicks.” This billboard was most likely seen by thousands of people a day, even the same people multiple times in a week. This topic made me wonder if people are being forced …show more content…

Katherine of Sienna into the picture. The documentary said that St. Katherine died at the age of 33 from starvation. I am not sure how this is relevant to the documentary at all because of how Katherine was lead into the life of starvation. Her reason for food refusal was because of her faith and religion. The food that she did not consume was given away to people who truly needed it, people who Katherine believed were in more need than herself. The documentary mentioned that women of Katherine’s time didn 't want to be thin because it was attractive, they wanted to be thin because being thin meant that they were spiritual. I thought this was an interesting way to look at the topic of eating disorders. A common theme, mentioned in the video, between the two eras is that girls have been using their lack of eating as their voice. A voice that is calling for attention and needs to be heard. This voice is usually saying, “I need