the cost of perfection
The breeding grounds are all around us, from Calvin Klein ads to the decorated bodies of emaciated pop stars strolling down the red carpet. Society is constantly bombarding us with it's perception of what we all should look like and how we all should act. Some of us can shake our heads and laugh at the idea of a societally concocted notion of the perfect male or female body, but others cannot. For some people this intense mainstream media pressure to be perfect, combined with additional family dysfunctions, often manifests itself as an eating disorder. Over ten million people currently suffer from at least one form of an eating disorder and this number is increasing each year. This disease usually starts in childhood and often lasts well into adulthood; too many years to suffer at the hands of an illness that is thought to be preventable. With early detection of children in harmful family environments and promoting ideas of acceptance within society, we can hopefully turn these numbers around and start to make way for change. Starting in junior high and continuing throughout high school, I personally knew of many people who had eating disorders. I watched as close friends, who started out with
Celebrating the diversity of body types within our culture would eliminate the pain associated with being different, or standing out, because it would be seen as an example of individuality rather than diverging from the norm. A little hurt pride or an uncomfortable phone call to the authorities is well worth the years of abuse that can be prevented by these simple tasks. just a few apprehensions about their weight or appearance, became obsessively fixated on the smallest of their perceived flaws. We have seen evidence of them in the media and in the faces of the people that we know personally. They claim that losing the weight made them happier, their jobs tolerable, and their relationships more fulfilling. I believe that the increased occurrence of eating disorders in our society is due to a combination of two primary factors. Weighing only 90 pounds I would look in the mirror and see fat, hoping that maybe one more day of not eating would yield different results the next time I looked. Another primary cause of eating disorders is pressure from society. Teachers should be trained to look for signs of abuse in children so that they can detect it among their students. This however reaches further than the social workers, because they can only do what is within their budget. Communities must handle this large task as a whole in order to be fully effective. It involves the government and the need to allocate more money to social service jobs. Victims of abuse often turn to eating disorders as a way of coping with their unstable family life. In nearly every diet ad, from Metabolife to Xenadrine, the people in the testimonials emphasize how unhappy and unfulfilled their lives were until the found the "magic pill" that changed their lives forever. However, because victims of abuse usually have extremely low self-esteem, it has also been suggested that they limit their food intake, or purge, because they do not feel that they deserve to be happy or receive any type of pleasure.
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Karen Carpenter,
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Princess Wales,
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Carnie Wilson,
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Acceptance Essays
