Susan Bordo The Globalization Of Eating Disorders Summary

There is a stark contrast between the rural Jamaican and the American perception of the ideal body in society. Jamaicans highly favor fat bodies, while Americans prefer the lean, lithe look. The major extreme comes when comparing women in both cultures. Jamaicans encourage young girls to eat and become fat and portray that as the most desirable. On the hand, in America, young girls are the most at risk for developing eating disorders. In the Jamaican culture, skinniness is related to sickness and death. Therefore, many Jamaicans can’t understand that people would want to loose weight. American culture on the other hand is completely built around dieting. Just check out our grocery aisles, filled with a diet version of tons of top products.

I believe that American culture and media has had a negative impact on our perceptions of body image. In American society now, beautiful qualities are denoted by a skinny figure, large bust and hips, long hair, and a submissive personality. These attributes are unimaginable and have truly caused strife and complications to the other individual self esteem. Women today now stress over trying to obtain and maintain the specified attributes to stay what they believe is beautiful. Many girls become bulimic, anorexic, and or depressed in response to the verbal abuse or pressure that they may experience. It is also the same for men as well. The attractive men in our society are tall, tan, have straight hair, are muscular, and most importantly white.

For a long time social media has been a part of society 's influence for negative body image. The individuals who are more influence generally speaking, are teenagers through the age of young adult women and men. Their faced daily with the Internet, magazines, and television. Depending on how self-conscious the person may be, all of this disposer to the media could lead them down the road to having depression and disordered eating structures. Even though it is true some social media and television entertainment promotes self-love and acceptance, there is an equal to or more than amounts of promoters for body shame over certain body types, suggesting that we change ourselves to fit in if we don 't already look the part. That being said, I will address how social media, peers, magazines, and television can impact young individuals in a negative way. Through that I will stress my point that social media should promote self-acceptance and show more love to all body types.

They often have an intense fear of fat and gaining weight and often have distorted views of their own body image (Shapiro 2). Thus, they resort to severe food restriction, periods of fasting and even various purging methods for weight loss (Grilo 5). On the other hand, Bulimic patients often binge-eat and then looking for methods to get rid of the food due to guilt by various purging methods (i.e., self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics and excessive exercise) (Grilo 5). Although many say that the media causes eating disorders, studies have shown that the media is not the main cause of eating disorders. The media does have a part to play in causing the rise in eating disorders in today’s society. From an early age, we are exposed to the western culture of the “thin-ideal” and that looks matter (Shapiro 9). Images on modern television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful. Often, television portrays the thin women as successful and powerful whereas the overweight characters are portrayed as “lazy” and the one with no friends (“The Media”). Furthermore, most images we see on the media are heavily edited and airbrushed

In “The Globalization of Eating Disorders”, written by Susan Bordo in 2003, the author declares that eating and body disorders have increased rapidly throughout the entire globe. Susan Bordo, attended Carleton University as well as the State University of New York, is a modern feminist philosopher who is very well known for her contributions to the field of cultural studies, especially in ‘body studies’ which grants her the credibility to discuss this rising global issue (www.wikipedia.org, 2015). She was correspondingly a professor of English and Women Studies at the University of Kentucky which gives her the authority to write this article. “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” is written as a preface to her Pulitzer Price-nominated book “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body” which was similarly written in 2003. Through the use of many logical arguments and evidence, Bordo successfully manages to convince her audience that the media, body images and culture have severely influenced the ‘so-called’ trending standard of beauty and how it leads to eating disorders across the world. However, certain flaws such as hasty generalization appeared during the text. Even though, Bordo had certain errors in reasoning, she successfully manages to convey her opinions on how media has had a severe impact on people’s vision of beauty through her structure, presentation, main ideas, objectivity and her appealing tone.

Society demands a perfect image. In certain societies, people must have the perfect body image. Men and women will do anything to fit this certain body image. Individuals believe they can not have a trace of body fat on their body. In Judith Lorber’s article, “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology,” she explains the influence society has on individuals body images. In Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber’s article, “The Spread of the Cult of Thinness: Preteen Girls, Adolescents, Straight Men, Gays, Lesbians, and Ethnic Women,” she explains the extremes people go to achieve the high standards set by the society in Lorber’s article. With such high standards set by society, men and women will have the urge to join the Cult of Thinness. Society demands

High school is a common source in which inspires and spreads trends similar to the comparison described by Baird, “Toasting to high school and survival, complementing each other’s thigh gaps.” (3-4) Baird compares high school to survival to highlight the teenager’s motivation to take certain measures to achieve social expectations in order to survive in today’s society. Teenagers create trends that are inspired from celebrities such as “Beyonce-inspired thigh gaps” known as a gap between a person’s thighs that give the illusion that the individual has skinny thighs and therefore promote the ideal slim body shape. Society promotes these unnecessary trends by providing tips of how to get skinny and suggesting that losing weight is a solution to everything. This compels teenagers to practice ridiculous methods by starving themselves, using waist trainers or even wrapping their thighs. The idolization of slim figures are blinding teenagers to believe it is a necessity to practice these methods. As Blaid describes society’s perspective, “If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story,”(26-27) this is to point out how society has manipulated the point of view on health conditions to be viewed as a

Magazines, TV, music, books, and movies help one make decisions and take action whether consciously or subconsciously. This large sphere of influence, however, is not always beneficial for those who suffer victim to these forms of public entertainment. The medias version of beauty, shames those who are considered overweight and scares almost everyone into thinking that being thin is the only way to be pretty. Jolene Hart emphasis how important beauty is in the American culture in her book Eat Pretty: Nutrition for Beauty, Inside and Out: “There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry built on helping us achieve greater physical beauty” (Hart 33). By creating this manipulated and untrue image of beauty, the American culture encourages eating disorders like anorexia (undereating) and sustains obesity (overeating). When interviewing Shannon Herman, a licensed professional counselor and certified eating disorder specialist, she revealed that adolescents in 2015 are exposed to media about body types and sizes more than any person in history. It goes without saying that mixed messages are bounding and truth is always relative. There are no absolutes. Media does not have mercy on anything but perfection. The perfection that surrounds today’s media causes eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. In order to achieve the body culture claims to offer, one resorts to dieting and exercise; dieting and exercise,

Dissatisfaction amongst today’s youth regarding their personal body image is increasingly common, warranting a necessary change in the norms and behaviours that are portrayed to Canadian youth. The necessary change that must be implemented moving forward is the portrayal of healthy and attainable body images through media. A 2012 ABC News article stated the average model weighs 23% less than the average woman (Lovett, 2012). Such an appalling statistic is something that must be tackled as we progress toward the future seeing as it showcases to the youth of today that anorexia and unhealthy body weight is seen as desirable or attractive. The relation between such a statistic and anorexia is clear. Such unrealistic body images featured prominently in media platforms (i.e. television, internet) and with media becoming more accessible to Canadian youth, it is unsurprising that anorexia and bulimia are being diagnosed at younger ages (Derene & Beresin, 2006). The link to such media representations and overweight is less evident however through further research it is clear that media can promote both extreme weight loss or lead to extreme weight gain. With media moving away from the promotion of healthy lifestyles, and rather working toward feeding the current media addiction plaguing Canadian children and teens, today’s media companies are feeding into the slippery slope that is weight

In “Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia: The Development of Deviant Identities” By Penelope A. McLorg and Diane E. Taub, the many issues in today’s generation, as well as many before regarding societal norms state that we envision the idea of masculinity for men and thinness in women. As with many other norms, deviance, or not conforming to masculinity and thinness, results in negative sanctions. To avoid these sanctions, some turn to Anorexia Nervosa, intended starvation and excessive exercising and Bulimia, intended cycles of binging and purging/laxative abuse. Both showing forms of behavioral deviance and Anorexia embodying visual deviance. Within the past two centuries, Anorexia and Bulimia have become not just major health issues, but also social

Bordo’s defines “body-image distortion syndrome” describing and stereotyping a North American white girl with money to buy fashion magazines, clothing, and parents that don't worry about putting food on the family table. Despite this description Bordo questions the reader if you have picture the syndrome to another person as Black, Latina, or Asian. Then, Bordo talks about Fiji and Central Africa and how fashion trends through media affected them differently, but at the same time with the same problem of weight loss. In Fiji island with the introduction of the television in1995, after three years in 1998, 11% of girls reported vomiting and 62% surveyed reported dieting during previous months. I think that the fashion industry is the one that

Western society has been seized by twisted and unusual opinions about attractiveness, wellness, respectability, and hunger. Author Roberta Seid wrote the essay “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness” in 1994, while she was a lecturer in the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. In the essay, Seid covers the complex issue of the society's unhealthy obsessions with food, which can cause physical and emotional destruction. Although American culture bears distorted beliefs about weight, Seid deems that health should be held as the utmost importance.

“How to Address Obesity in a Fat-Phobic Society”, written by Courtney E. Martin, is a short article about the widespread thoughts that fat and obese people are a problem from being lazy, instead of being looked at in a deeper and more scientifically way. Martin sets out to show that there is a lot that more to it than just the individual being at fault. Economic, culture, class, education and genetics are all factors that can contribute to why one is overweight. In the beginning, Martin tells us a story of her friend, Ellen. She uses Ellen’s doctor visit as a crutch to open up the main point behind her narrative. Economic equality and cultural diversity, wellness and happiness, are more important than fat or skinny. It’s about changing one’s

Sage, George H. "High School and College Sports in the United States." Journal of Physical

In the article “Fat Acceptance : A Basic Primer” by Cynara Geissler published in Gee Magazine 2010, she takes on the popular culture around fatness negativity into which she had herself become immersed and eventually emancipated from it. She advocates for a perspective which is centred on the Fat Acceptance Movement ideology: that ones self images and locus of attention and motivation ought not to be ones body size but rather other aspirational ideas. Geissler in building her argument reviews elements of popular culture which she finds contrary, and she does to through a review of the critics of the Fat Acceptance movement and relating her personal struggle with fat. In particular she questions the nexus between ‘shame and motivation’ and