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 just a few apprehensions about their weight or appearance, became obsessively fixated on the smallest of their perceived flaws. They deemed their round bodies of youth unacceptable when compared to the lithe goddesses portrayed on the pages of the latest Vogue magazine. Scrutinizing the bodies of the supermodels and then looking down at the reality of their own fleshy thighs, they would become disgusted at the difference between the two. On the other hand, there were the girls like myself who lived in abusive and unstable households. Feeling as though my life was spinning out of control I subconsciously turned to the one thing no one had power over but me, my body. I was driven to attain this sense of perfection. Weighing on...