Eating Disorders Essay -- Anorexia Bulimia Health Diet Essays Papers

Eating Disorders A vast amount of research has been done on the subject of alimentationdisorders and their causes. Many eating disorders have been proven to emergeduring adolescence and often serve as the foundations to more seriousproblems like anorexia and bulimia. This essay will explore the development ofeating disorders in adolescent girls. It will show that these disorders atomic number 18 closelyconnected to the biological and psychosocial changes that occur during theadolescent period. Many teen girls fill with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder in whichgirls use starvation diets to try to lose weight. They starve themselves down toskeletal thinness yet still think that they are overweight. Bulimia, meanwhile, is adisorder in which young women binge on food and then force themselves tovomit. They also often use laxatives to get food out of their system. All of theseyoung women who suffer from this problem are considered to suffer from apsychiatric disorder. While the caus es are debatable, one thing that is clear isthat these young women have a distorted luggage compartment image. (Wolf, pp.214-216)What is extremely alarming is that the current thin ideal for women inWestern society, which is unattainable for entirely scarce a very small percentage of thepopulation, is combine this problem. It is a very serious issue when manyones body shape is determined by genetic disposition and yet they try toalter it to fit some kind of imaginary ideal of how a person should look. Thus, one of the most serious problems is that female nature is not whatsociety says it should be. Some researchers theorize that anorexia is a youngwomans way of canceling puberty. Since they lack body fat, anorexics dont gettheir periods and often lose their sexual characteristics such as public hair. Theyremain, in other words, little girls. there is also the complex issue of womenfeeling that by having an eating disorder they are finally in control of somethingin their life. T his may sound strange, but much research has shown that womenwho have been abused or neglected in their childhoods develop these problemsof control. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, pp.70-71). Studies suggest that eating disorders often begin in early tomid-adolescence. They are directly connected to pubertal maturation and theincreases in body fat that... ...hing else, we need to find compassion and understandingfor the victims of eating disorders. While we work on helping these individuals,we must also fight the social forces that objectify and exploit female body imageto the disadvantage of not only women, but of all humanity. No one profits if onehalf of the human race is being held under attack by socially constructed bodyimages that are root in morbid intent and infantile fantasy.BibliographyAttie, Ilana and Brooks-Gunn, J. Development of Eating Problems in AdolescentGirls A Longitudinal Study, Developmental Psychology, 1989, vol. 25, no.1,7O-79.Burns, David. Feeling Good. The New Mood Therapy (New York Avon Books,1980)Cauffman, Elizabeth, and Steinberg, Laurence. interactive Effects ofMenarcheal Status and Dating on Dieting and Disordered Eating AmongAdolescent Girls, Developmental Psychology, 1996, vol. 32, no.4, 631-635.Graber, Julia, Brooks-Gunn, J., Paikoff, Roberta, and Warren, Michelle.Prediction of Eating Problems An 8-Year Study of Adolescent Girls,Developmental Psychology, 1994, vol.3O, No.6, 823-834.Wolf, Naomi. The bang Myth (Toronto Random House, 1991)