Media And Anorexia Nervosa

How do the media contribute to the anorexia nervosa seen in young female adolescents?
People see beauty as something that has standards which are set by what society believes it to be. Based on this, there is no seemingly official definition for the word itself. It is because of this absence of definition that people look to societal perspectives in which to conform to due to the lack of their own personal perspectives. Beauty, in this sense, runs along the lines of what is seen of others and causing people’s mentality to be altered, believing that the best definition of beauty is being extremely skinny and not eating in order to maintain the ideal body image. This view of how beauty should be portrayed is parallel to that which is dispersed

When looking at magazines that contain advice on how women can perfect themselves and become more beautiful, pictures of women who are supposed to represent this flawless body image are constantly found to be exceptionally thin. Magazines specifically spreading this phenomenon include Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Victoria’s Secret, to name a few. Of course, giving in to societal pressures is expected from the female adolescents who are exposed to these forms of media, as they feel that often times, physical attractiveness above all allows for ultimate perfection. This causes these girls to do anything in their power to attain this picture-perfect look, most of the time leading to disorders that could become potentially fatal to these teens. In an attempt to follow the crowd, adolescents look at themselves and, with the discouragement of not being as thin as the women in the pictures seen in the magazines, television shows, or movies, result in having anorexia nervosa which becomes a crucial impediment in their lives. Kathiann M. Kowalski states in the book Anorexia that “instead of encouraging teens to accept healthy bodies of all sizes, the images young people

In an effort to make such drastic changes to their bodies, female adolescents place themselves in a hazardous position, where fatalities may occur, when observing the exposure of underweight women’s bodies through sources of media. For instance, America’s Next Top Model is a television show that portrays young adult females in a competition to be recognized as the perfect model through a series of challenges where the participants must strive to be as “beautiful” as they are pushed to be. Being that the show only accepts a certain number of women to partake in the competition, and the criteria they must fit in order to be accepted is basically how they are critiqued on the basis of what the judges believe to be the model-type look, many of the viewers who watch these women in their quest for being “America’s Next Top Model” will most likely take evasive maneuvers in the attempt to look like them. There have actually been cases where the contestants on the show exhibit signs of anorexia, alongside being particularly thin. Cycle 15 of the show contained many contestants, one of them being Anamaria Mirdita. She is a