Eating Disorders and the Problems of Appearance - Article Example

Eating Disorders and the Problems of Appearance Literature and history tell us that women have often faced tremendous barriers to their welfare and restrictions on their activities not only based upon their gender, but also in terms of how well they matched up to a social ideal. A ‘pretty’ peasant girl might find a means of attracting an advantageous marriage or a better domestic position while a girl who does not measure up would have fewer opportunities. Although we have come a long way as a society, women continue to be judged more on the basis of her appearance instead of personality, intelligence, talents or compassion. Role models portrayed in the media are revealed to be all appearance and too often, no substance. Girls are very slim and tall with flawless complexions. The idea of the ‘Barbie complex’ is not new, but the importance placed on being blonde, slim and young has created a culture that is inordinately focused upon appearance to the great detriment of most of its members. This focus has led many young girls to develop severe eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia that can be fatal, but these conditions go well beyond the mere concern of appearance. There is a clear link between several aspects of the appearance culture and increased rates of negative self-image, peer acceptance and eating disorders among adolescents. Dr. Sylvia Rimm (2004) explores the experience of even slightly overweight children upon entering school which contribute to future eating issues. Girls entering school without an already trim figure begin to associate themselves with overweight which becomes increased as their peers also begin to make these associations. In this cycle, the child continues to gain weight as a result of the emotional turmoil they experience because they can’t keep up with other children on the sports field or they don’t measure up to the social ideals. Going much deeper than simple appearance, these children start to think of themselves as less than average weight children in every way, including those attributes they may possess that are outstanding in other ways. Sadly, adults often reinforce these beliefs consciously or unconsciously as they begin to expect the overweight child to be lazy and less intelligent than other children, again judging the child by appearance (Rimm, 2004). The focus on beauty as a means of gaining social acceptance is also reinforced by adults, mostly women, who consider plastic surgery an acceptable means of attaining it. Attempting to escape the persecution of their childhood, many adolescents frequent these centers as well. In a Scotland study questioning 2,000 girls with an average age of 14, “four out of ten said they would consider plastic surgery to make themselves slimmer” regardless of their current weight status (Gustafson, 2005). For those who can’t afford plastic surgery, the only option they see available to them frequently emerges as a form of eating disorder, most commonly bulimia, a pattern of binge eating followed by forced purging, or anorexia, a pattern of willful starvation. Often believed to be rooted in issues of appearance and ‘not fitting in’, these conditions become issues in and of themselves. As is revealed through Rimm’s research, a number of factors contribute to why a child might become overweight, but the perception they form of themselves is based largely upon how they and others feel they conform to a social standard. The media plays an active role in defining this social standard and thus the perception of self for many people. Children glancing in the mirror quickly understand how well or poorly they measure up with the ideal images they see on TV. This is a natural and automatic process. There are numerous arguments that indicate the focus on outward appearance is an unavoidable and even necessary aspect of life. From our earliest history, it has been through our outward appearances that we project who and what we are to other people. This was and still is done as a means of instantly identifying everything from tribal membership to comparative rank in social hierarchy (Gilman, 1999). Studies conducted by Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Dacher Keltner have revealed that people most often make snap judgments about the people they meet without even thinking about it that frequently prove to be quite accurate (Walker, 2006). People watching just three minutes of videotaped conversation between a newly married couple were able to accurately predict which couples would still be married in 15 years’ time in a majority of cases. A similar study revealed that a smile could reveal a person’s place of origin within 30 seconds. If rating others through outward appearance is unavoidable, these arguments postulate, it becomes necessary then to focus on presenting the best possible outward appearance one can attain. However, even in the studies presented by the scientists listed above, the danger of flawed concepts or bad rapid cognition is discussed. “A psychological test called the Implicit Association Test which examines the connection between pairs of ideas reveals more than 80 percent of the people who have ever taken it have pro-white associations: they take measurably longer to complete answers when they have to match positive words into a category labeled ‘black’. These people no doubt would strongly deny they are racially biased” (Walker, 2006). Individuals perceiving themselves to fall short of the social ideals presented through the media would therefore be unable to avoid developing a negative self-image. This conclusion is reached by extrapolating the fundamental psychological implications of this study. Instant associations with positive attributes would become more difficult to reach when couched in terms of ‘self’. Thus, when advertisements air promising instant weight loss or easier approaches to attaining the body beautiful, many fall into the trap of believing such solutions are possible and are severely disappointed when they don’t work. Rather than placing the blame where it properly belongs, on the product, many women, particularly adolescent girls, tend to blame themselves, contributing to an ever decreasing sense of self-esteem. To illustrate the potentially dangerous effects the media might have on adolescent girls, one study investigated how girls responded to ads for weight loss products or ‘magic pills’ for fitness and the body beautiful. In the study, 42 participants were shown print and television ads for weight loss products and were asked to interpret their response. “Common factors in girls’ interpretation of weight-loss advertising included responding to texts emotionally by identifying with characters; comparing and contrasting persuasive messages with real-life experiences with family members; using prior knowledge about nutrition management and recognizing obvious deceptive claims like ‘rapid’ or ‘permanent’ weight loss” (Hobbs et al, 2006). However, these same subjects were not as capable of understanding the deeper persuasive elements of the advertising and economic subtext. Thus, they still managed to fall into the trap of self as a physical ideal or failure. Reinforced by the ideas and activities of their parents, surrounded by role models that have little more than looks in their favor and having these concepts reinforced by the skillful manipulations of television and film, it is unsurprising to find that teenagers believe the ideal form is the only way to acceptance and happiness in today’s world. However, this belief often leads them to take part in activities that are physically harmful and sadly sometimes fatal. Even when they do overcome, conditions such as anorexia and bulimia will prove psychologically limiting for much of their lives. It is important to gain a deeper understanding of these conditions if one is to treat sufferers with any degree of success. Marya Hornbacher’s book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia brings out several aspects of the various familial, social and personal aspects of eating disorders that are not always considered in the face of strong media influence. When studying about these illnesses, it is easy to overlook the personal aspects of the disorder, the addicting nature of it or the gradual way in which it becomes a necessary part of the individual’s life. In many ways, the illness becomes a girl’s way of defining herself and exerting a measure of control over her own life. On the cover of the book, the author wrote, “I wrote this book because … I disagree with much of what is generally believed about eating disorders. I wrote it because people often dismiss an eating disorder as a manifestation of vanity, immaturity, madness. It is, in some ways, all of these things. But it is also an addiction. It is a response, albeit a rather twisted one, to a culture, a family, a self.” Through this novel, she traces her disease from the beginning stages of bulimia at age 9 through what she describes as suicide on a slow scale to her eventual slow but painful and not wholly satisfying recovery. It is surprising to learn of the various ways in which the illness affected her life. Despite the fact that she had ample evidence that she was killing herself and the realization that her resulting appearance was not necessarily the attractive hourglass glamour figure she’d associated with on TV, time and again she continued to participate in the behavior that was killing her. “The year I moved home, some switch flipped in me, cutting off the lights in the rational part of my mind … leaving me with a blind, desperate desire, more virulent than ever, to get rid of the self that I hated and make me new” (231). Through this description, it can be seen that the disease had transcended any concerns about appearance and desirability and became instead somehow a manifestation of or means of controlling the self. Rather than starving or purging out of spite or to achieve a particular appearance, Hornbacher makes it clear that she starved and purged out of necessity, as the only way to retain her own individuality and her own control over her life. Rather than noticing the things she was experiencing were indications of death, she saw them as indications of her impending freedom from the shackles and heavy aspects of the body she’d been lugging around with her all her life. “I did not yet understand that the gasp and wheeze of my heart was death. The wild skittish flitting of my eyes and my hands working themselves together, trying to get warm, was death. The absence of any understanding that my body was falling away from me like a pair of old pants was death. I did not understand” (181). Perhaps the most chilling part of the book is toward the end, after she’d returned home again from college, literally at death’s door. “The night I got home, my mother sat at the kitchen table with me while I ate several bowls of cereal in a row and then cried because I’d eaten too much, and she just said, Honey, oh, honey, don’t say that. Lifting my head from the place mat, I looked at her, searching her eyes for an answer, and I asked: Mom, do you think I’m crazy? … She said, looking out the window, ‘I think you’re very sick.’ It took me a minute to realize that she’d just said Yes.” (272). Although everyone around her had been telling her for years that she was killing herself and that her thinking wasn’t quite straight, it wasn’t until this point that Marya was ready to hear what they were saying. There was no magic formula that brought her around, no magic words that broke the spell she’d been in, not even any real concern over appearance, just the final realization that she had reached a point of no return. Having started as a failure to fit in with the crowd because of her failure to meet with the social physical ideal, Hornbacher’s illness became something much larger, deeper and deadly than is commonly realized. It becomes obvious that the only way to adequately combat the flawed associations that have developed in our modern culture is by altering the approach taken by the media. It is the media that has exaggerated social conceptions of the ideal physical form and brought it to prominence above all other attributes, particularly of the female gender. To some extent, this change has been implemented in films such as the Lords of the Rings trilogy in which none of the women wear makeup and concentration on achieving the ideal form is neglected or incidental. Women are valuable because of attributes other than how they appear physically and are able to achieve a greater happiness because of it. Another example can be found in the film Bridget Jones’ Diary in which the actress playing the heroine purposefully gained weight as a means of presenting her character as a type of anti-glamour figure. However, many more films that focus on the inner worth of an individual are necessary as is a general shift in other media attention from one that focuses upon Hollywood scandals and glamour girls to one that focuses on inner strengths, humanitarian involvement or other more worthy subject than simple outward appearance. The actress Angelina Jolie is an example of an image coming out of Hollywood that attempts to defy the norm. Although commonly considered the epitome of the social feminine ideal physically, the value of her characters lies elsewhere and her private life is filled with humanitarian concerns. As women continue to expend all their efforts in pursuit of a physical image they will never achieve and even the most beautiful women admit to being miserable in their personal lives when it is focused only upon physical attributes, it becomes clear that the true path to happiness must lie in the development of the inner self. In the end, it is society as a whole that determines what the ideal human form should look like, and therefore it is the responsibility of the adults in that society to determine whether physical measurements should define the quality of the individual or if attention should be redirected to more realistic and less superficial attributes. Works Cited Gustafson, Rod. “In America and Overseas, Girls Yearn for a ‘Nip/Tuck’.” Parenting and the Media. Los Angeles, CA: Parents Television Council Publications, January 18, 2005. Gilman, Sander L. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton University Press, 1999. Hobbs, Renee; Broder, Sharon; Pope, Holly; Rowe, Jonelle. “How Adolescent Girls Interpret Weight-Loss Advertising.” Health Education Research. Vol. 21, N. 5, (2006): 719-730. Hornbacher, Marya. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia. New York: Harper Collins, 1998. Rimm, Sylvia. Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004. Walker, Suzanne. “The Power of the Glance.” (2006). Auspac Media. September 8, 2008 Read More