The pressure to be thin, beautiful and attain perfection has become a heated discussion in American society today. The way that the media, social factors and other outside influences affect young men and women in the development of their self-image has developed into a major concern. Body dismorphic disorders are some of the hardest illnesses to diagnose but at the same time are some of the easiest to treat. Anorexia is when an individual has a distorted image of their body. Every individual may face a traumatic event or period in his or her life that can cause him or her to lose his or her appetite. However, anorexia is more than that; it is an unrealistic fear of being overweight. It involves restricting the caloric intake to an unhealthy …show more content…
This distorted body image can aid to the development of medical complications that may lead to death all the while believing they are fat. The question of what causes this fear of fat and distorted body image despite the severe consequences remains unanswered. However, there are certain personality issues that may cause a person to be more prone to develop an eating disorder. “In the leading journals attempts to link eating disorders to one or another specific pathogenic situation (biological, .psychological, familial) proliferate, along with studies purporting to demonstrate that eating disorders are members of some established category of disorder (depressive, affective, perceptua1, hypothalamic . . . ).” (Bordo, 1993, p. 49) Girls are more likely than boys to develop anorexia but that is not saying much. Those that tend to develop this disorder are generally perfectionists. They may feel that there is not a lot in their life that they can control. For example, they may be having stressful problems with their relationships, grades or, parental issues and so they focus on areas of