Standards of beauty have become increasingly difficult to attain, where the current media ideal of thinness for women is achievable by less than five percent of the female population (Crane & Hannibal). Society is under pressure that the ideal body image that appears in the media produces strong demand to mirror the ideal. The desire to be thin is often powerfully influenced by media images and messages, where media helps to shape a strong cultural pressure towards thinness as an ideal body image. The thinness has become a national obsession where body dissatisfaction and a desire to be thin are common. According to the body-image distortion hypothesis, people suffer from the delusion that they are fat where they are uncertain about the size and shape of their own body, and that they are overestimating their body size (Crane & Hannibal). People are afraid of gaining weight, and their self-esteems will depend on if they will be able to maintain a certain weight or not. The combination of low self-esteem and guilt from eating foods leads people to suffer from depression, puts them in a habit that they need to be on diet and lose weight in order become …show more content…
Fear of weight gain can lead to eating disorders like anorexia nervosa. An anorexia nervosa is one of the common eating disorders which is marked by the pursuit of extreme thinness and by extreme weight loss. People who have symptoms of anorexia nervosa purposely maintain a significantly low body weight, intensely fear becoming overweight, have a disjointed view of their weight and shape, and their self-evaluation heavily influenced by their perceived weight. They try to reduce their weight by restricting their intake of food, and some lose weight by forcing themselves to vomit after meals or by abusing laxatives or diuretics (Comer). One of the patters of anorexia nervosa is called restricting-type anorexia nervosa, where people reduce their weight by restricting their intake of food. Others lose weight by forcing themselves to vomit after meals or by abusing laxative or diuretics, which is a patter called binge-eating / purging-type anorexia nervosa (Comer). The second patter, binge-eating / purging anorexia nervosa is more commonly known as a bulimia