Media's Influence On Eating Disorders

In the United States, ten million men and twenty million women suffer from an eating disorder at some point in their life. Examples of some eating disorders are anorexia, a desire to lose weight, and bulimia, purging whatever is eaten. Society needs to regulate advertising, images and videos that feature people with unique physiques edited to perfection in order to decrease the amount of eating disorders. The impact the media has on body image is huge. The media bombards society with images of men and women with perfect bodies, which affect people both mentally and physically. These photos of supermodels and actors are now accessible more than ever due to technology becoming a huge part of people’s everyday life. Society spends most of it’s …show more content…
Dovey states in her article: “A recent poll given by the dating app Meetville revealed that fifty-nine percent of respondents believed that the media influence on anorexia is largely exaggerated.” Doctors, who are experts in the anorexia field, also feel as though media takes too much blame and society should be conscious about what role the media plays in eating disorders. Close to sixty percent of voters deemed the media not being as big of a factor in eating disorders as they are claimed to be. Dr. KJ Fleming, a specialist in dealing with anorexic patients, claims the media is related to one’s development of an eating disorders, only to a certain extent, but if one’s thinking is level headed, they’re more resistant in dealing with eating disorders. Fleming claims that majority of his patient’s eating disorders start with internal problems and not external, outside one’s home. Problems with eating disorders usually begin in one’s home, yet the media doesn’t help one with dealing with the disorder, but rather worsens the situation. Fleming states “You can crucify the media, but like a predisposition to some dysfunction was likely there a prior.” Skinny models may not solely be the problem of one …show more content…
These disorders can be life threatening and affect one physically and mentally. Society needs to regulate the mass media puts out, including images, videos and advertisements. The influence the mass media has on eating disorders cannot be ignored. Disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa are developed at an alarming young age because the media spews images and videos with a message that in order to have a joyous and successful life, one must be lean. The message “thinness is beauty”, is is all over magazines, television programs, the radio and in advertisements. The message that being overweight is unattractive is reaching young adolescents as well. These adolescents don’t feel attractive when their body doesn’t match up with the models and celebrities they see in magazines and ads. Even at a young age children are conscious about their own weight. Jeane Kilbourne, an author and speaker on the body of women in advertisements, explains in her lecture, “What Are Advertisers Really Selling Us?, how most of society believes that advertisements don’t affect them, when they actually do. Kilbourne discusses how advertisements not only sell products, “they sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy.” Advertisements tell individuals, within society, who they really are and who they should