America's Media Contribution to Anorexia and bulimia - Research Paper Example

Although mass media is said to be the underlying source for increased incidence of eating disorders, from unhealthy weight loss and perception to obesity, the innate cultural influence of ideal weight and body shape are already well-embedded in the social system of American nations, especially in United States. The prevalence of “smoke-screened body type” incidence seemed to impact regions in the western culture. Admittedly, Jones et al. revealed the realistic situations plaguing most citizens in Western countries, where weight and shape dissatisfaction concerns had actually yielded to a number of remedy measures to correct the supposed “inappropriate” body that the media devised (247).

As earlier discussed, media coverage had precluded how people should project themselves in society, to the point where their physiological and psychological well-being are affected in the process. Two main groups are said to be affected most by the challenge of attaining an ideal model-like look, the adolescents and the female groups. Adolescents are in a stage where they are in two opposing sides, the innocence of a child and the near maturity of a young adult. In the brink of such confusing state, adolescents are easily influenced for a number of factors.

They are vulnerable to nonconstructive events, as this group experience more pressure from their peers (Dines and Humez 260). As their social circle tend to consume large amounts of media information, it may also shape their ideas on what a great social circle must be--one in which teenagers are ideal in both looks and style. Moreover, women of varying age are also prone to implicit media attacks, as the society they live in had long ago constructed and deeply embedded idea on what women should look like--as skinny individuals who are good to look at.

It is where they base their attraction to the opposite sex, by striving to attain physical attributes that media wants them to project--a well-made person using beauty products and weight-loss services (Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers 126). The revelations show that physical beauty must be worked on, and not a natural thing, where those who fail to do so have little chance of getting a life time partners, or be accepted in a society that highly values the concept of beauty. In the Western regions, the rampant cases of bodily dissatisfaction had threaded towards pathological conditions as result of mass media obsession to what is considered the standard look of attractiveness.

In failing to do so, individuals develop cases of conscious behavioral patterns in the hopes of gaining the ideal weight in the future. The rising rate of anorexia nervosa, a condition of inability to be content with extreme weight loss, and bulimia nervosa, the state of normal weight but with further attempts at weight loss methods, is pointed to be caused by the burgeoning mass media influence. Such intensive restrictions in dietary consumption may lead to “repetitive pattern self-deprivation (which) result in bingeing.

and worsening self-image” (Derenne and Beresin 257). The high value placed on attaining the too-ideal to be true body projected by media may result in further damage to the health of deprived individuals. In a study to prove the