My cousin was really fat and she always wanted to lose weight. Whenever asked her why, she always replied to me, "everyone in my family is slim". The real reason she wanted to lose weight, however, was everyone in her family used to tease her. She starved herself to lose weight. No one in her family noticed anything until one day she was completely faint and dehydrated. She was hospitalized for almost a week. But she got all the help and support that she needed from her family and doctors and got better. Doctors said that she was going through anorexia, which is a type of eating disorder. Because my cousin had poor image of her body, she developed an eating disorder.
             Eating disorders have become a serious issue in the past 25 years. Teens, more that any other age groups are suffering from it. The real cause is unclear but there are some reasons that experts have come up with. One of the reasons is low self-esteem. A person might feel low self-esteem when people around her start to tease her about being fat. Another reason is body image. A person with an eating disorder suffers from a body image disturbance that can impact many areas in her life. Most women are given the message at a very young age that in order to be happy and successful they have to be slim. For example, every time you turn on the TV, you see models, which the fashion industry considers ideal figure. Thousands of teenage girls are starving themselves this very minute to have that figure. The average model weighs less than the average woman. Teenagers need to realize that achieving model's body is not possible. Peer pressure also plays a major role in teen eating disorders. Today people say that women should be really skinny and men should be fit and strong. Teens are influenced by society.
             There are two types of eating disorder, anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is when people starve themselves to lose weight. It is usually unnoticeable at first because it u...