Eating disorders linked to media's 'ideal' body image

By Lexie Kite

December 22, 2005 | There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do. In the meantime, there are 5 million to 10 million Americans currently battling eating disorders to try to attain that so-called perfection -- more than 1,000 of whom lose the fight and die each year.

According to a 2002 report on the relationship between eating disorders and the media by Deanne Jade of the National Center for Eating Disorders, the gap between actual body sizes and the cultural ideal is getting wider and giving rise to anxiety among almost all women. That cultural ideal, she claimed, is shaped by exposure to the media, which seeks to inform us, persuade us, entertain us and, most importantly, change us. The report stated about 95 percent of people own a television set and watch for an average of three-to-four hours per day and nearly half of all girls over age seven read a girls or women's magazine each week.

"The media presents us with an idealized shape which is invested with attributes of being attractive, desirable, successful and loveable," Jade said. "But that ideal is unattainable without resorting to sinister or dangerous eating habits."

The National Eating Disorders Association Web site states that while the cause of eating disorders is unknown, one of the major issues that contribute to the disease is a series of social factors brought on by the media. Cultural pressures that glorify thinness and place value on obtaining the perfect body, narrow definitions of beauty that include only women of specific body weights and cultural norms that value people on the basis of physical appearance and not inner strengths are all listed by NEDA as general causal factors for eating disorders.

A voice behind the startling statistics of those struggling with eating disorders, 15-year-old Leah Lund of Nibley is currently recovering from anorexia nervosa. She said her classmates at Mountain Crest High School found out about her struggle long before she was ready to let the world know.

"Everyone changed when they found out I had an eating disorder," she said. "They spread rumors behind my back and made jokes about it. I wasn't ready for everyone to know -- it's personal."

Though she has always been smaller than most girls her own age, she said she started starving herself because she felt she had to do so to fit in.

"The other girls at school put pressure on you and stuff because you have to look a certain way," she said. "None of my friends even eat lunch anymore.

Her mother, Debra Lund, said the heartbreaking, destructive effects of eating disorders are becoming far too commonplace. "These days it's hard with the pressure society puts on young girls and women," she said. "It bothers me so much to see these little girls comparing themselves with what they see on TV and in magazines."

Leah said she didn't know it any other way. "But that's just how it is," she replied. "We judge ourselves and we judge each other."

Debra said that is where the problem lies. "It's normal for girls and women to put themselves down and it shouldn't be," she said. "It is so much easier to believe the negative things we feel about ourselves and push away the positives."

But with the media's images of beauty, opulence and lasting happiness incessantly equated with an increasingly smaller waist measurement, women of all ages are only being further exposed to the unrealistic nature of perfection. Take two of America's most popular actresses, who are also believed to be two of the most attractive women in Hollywood: Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. While both are often described as "real women," or "women who break the mold of stereotypical beauty," both also meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for anorexia.

Barely one generation ago, Marilyn Monroe set the beauty standard for women worldwide at 5'5" and 135 pounds. Today, she is still smaller than the average woman who measures in at 5'4" and 140 pounds.

Whether or not model and actress Elizabeth Hurley is aware of the average woman's statistics or that same average woman's declining self esteem, a recent statement she made to Allure magazine is telling of society's rising standards of perfection: "I've always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I'd kill myself if I was that fat."

According to a 1997 study published in the Journal of Communication, Kristen Harrison, an assistant professor of communication studies, said that magazine reading and television viewing, especially exposure to thinness-depicting and thinness-promoting media, significantly predict symptoms of women's eating disorders. Adding to the research, studies sponsored by the Rader program, a national clinic specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, state that one of every four television commercials sends out some sort of message about the need for attractiveness and the happiness associated with the goal.

"With the increasing bombardment of these advertisements, it is no surprise that girls have resorted to eating disorders to conform to the hidden message sent by the fashion industry: thin is in," said Janine Van Nostrand, a George Washington University student studying the media's influence on the development of adolescent girls.

Outside America's borders, these startling insights have been proved true in the Pacific Islands of Fiji. In a country where big was beautiful and the most prized compliment a woman could receive was one of her growing measurements, the recent introduction of television turned the culture upside-down. Dr. Anne Becker and her colleagues from Harvard Medical School found that poor body image and the onset of eating disorders among girls have increased tremendously since they were first exposed to television. The doctors tested Fijian schoolgirls once in 1995 when western television was introduced to the island and again in 1998. In 1998, 69 percent of those studied said they had gone on diets to lose weight and 74 percent said they thought they were "too big or fat". The study showed that girls living in houses with a television set were three times more likely to show symptoms of eating disorders.

Jane Wedekind, parent support director at the Avalon Hills residential eating disorder program in Paradise, Utah, said girls and women struggling with eating disorders are fighting an uphill battle -- a battle that can't be won without support.

"Most high schoolers think if a girl has an eating disorder it is simply a way for her to get attention, but that's just not the case," she said. "The best thing you can do is accept the fact that the disorder is bigger than you can figure out right now and support her as a person."

Whether the cause of such an illness is socially constructed or biologically determined, exposure to unrealistic and often daunting images of attractiveness, beauty and all-together perfection only act as a stumbling block on the path to recovery and self-satisfaction. Until the media's portrayal of women more closely matches reality, self esteem and personal value will inevitably plummet in a sea of hopeless despair.

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