Eating Disorders
How the Perception of Beauty Influences Eating Disorders
With everything changing in this society, the aspect of beauty especially when it comes to women has kept changing, sometimes desperately to the extent of individuals adopting extreme behaviors in the pursuit of the ideal 'beauty'. Instances where different kinds of media communicate the significance of physical beauty in the contemporary world and the means of achieving such traits are widespread. The attachment of food and modes of consumption of these same foods and the positive effects they produce as regards an enhanced attraction, as the society propagates goes without saying. The problem of eating disorders has increased in the contemporary world thanks to the spread of notions like these, as this paper reports. The focus of this report is to explore the influence of the idea of beauty to eating disorders with specific reference to anorexia. The discussion opens with a brief introduction of eating disorders citing the problem factors relating to the conditions, the role of the idea of beauty and characteristic that the victims present just to mention but a few. The section that follows explores the how the society handles and views the idea of beauty and attractiveness today and how many have attached the issue of eating with close to all definitions of beauty. The paper narrows down to the specific condition among anorexics addressing factors like the triggers of anorexia, the definition of the condition and the aspect of treatment of the disorder. The paper then deals with anorexia as a worldwide endemic before exploring the factor of gender. Following these are the theories that explain eating disorders, anorexia included together with other psychological features that associate with the conditions. The process of recovery also emerges together with the current and future research in a paper, which concludes with a summary of the entire discussion.
How the Perception of Beauty Influences Eating Disorders
Introduction
Eating disorders are grave medical conditions, both in the physical and psychological sense. The conditions which emerge in the form of bulimia, anorexia and binge eating among others unfortunately, has increasingly become common with the shift time, the young adults and adolescents being the major victims (Bryant -- Waugh & Lask, 2013). The concept of beauty as governed by the way individuals eat if a fact which comes not as a surprise especially in the contemporary where media is exploding with all manner of information on how individuals can improve their levels of attraction. Eating disorders have different dynamics with the individuals affected presenting more or less the same class of traits. The call of beauty, especially among the female gender continues to increase and as such the availability of massive information on how to achieve beauty. The most frequently explored aspects of beauty lie in different ways of controlling eating besides the application of cosmetics. Eating disorders have a variety of triggers; say in the case of anorexia where the influence of the media of the desire for attention leads to the adoption of the abnormal eating behaviour (Cox, 2001). Moreover, these patients have characteristics, which help distinguish them from other ordinary individuals in the society. Like other conditions, this disorder is treatable if the patients follow the appropriate treatment regimes but is not included among the varieties of global pandemics. Eating disorders are a problem, which affects both genders though in different proportions. Moreover, it has a socioeconomic angle to it, which emerges in different explanations, psychological theories included. Patients suffering from the conditions have the capacity of recovery owing to the many available channels of recovery and with the ongoing research as regards the different aspects of the condition, much of such channels are, expected to emerge. However, the field of research still has a massive gap to fill when it exploring eating disorders likes anorexia. This explains the need for future studies on this subject.
The Concept of Beauty in the Contemporary Society
I recently saw a Dove commercial that so brilliantly summarizes the way that women often view themselves. Entitled "Real Beauty Sketches," an experiment is made in which a sketch artist asks multiple women to describe themselves. Without seeing them, he draws the images that they describe. The second half of the commercial involves these women describing the other women in this experiment and the sketch artist drawing those new images. Finally, each woman sees a side-by-side...
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