Media Effects On Anorexia Nervosa

The Effects of the Media’s Photoshopping Disorder
Almost everywhere a person looks, they are bombarded with pictures and advertisements. Whether one is simply glancing at a magazine while waiting in line at a store, or just watching commercials on television, advertisements can be seen everywhere. It is quite evident, by looking at the thin waisted and skinny pictures of young women, what the media considers to be the ideal body figure. The perception of the ideal body type that society has produced, plays a huge role in our country’s obsession with thinness and appearance. The United States’ obsessions exhibiting slim, thin models as beautiful, gives a distorted impression leaving many young women the wrong idea about beauty and body image.

As a result, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, have become more common. So what exactly causes this detrimental behavior among people, especially women, and why has this behavior been so difficult to break or cure?

Ultimately, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, continue to grow as a result of the media’s use of airbrushing techniques that portrays young women as having unrealistic appearances. These unreasonable expectations of physical beauty in our culture need to become more real and include the many various forms of beauty that our world offers, if our society wants to help reduce harmful accounts of anorexic practices.
Anorexia nervosa, as described in modern society, is a disease that is “characterized by a relentless pursuit of thinness and an unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy weight, a distortion of body image and intense fear of weight… and [an] extremely disturbed eating behavior”, largely in part to dissatisfied body image (“Anad”). However, accounts of voluntary self-starvation, in the same sense of anorexia nervosa, have not been recorded or known to have occurred throughout ancient history. In an

in depth article called “Self-Starvation Through the Ages: Reflections on the Pre-History of Anorexia Nervosa”, writer Jules Bemporad describes forms of voluntary self-starvation that resulted from religious and cultural purposes. In ancient times, going as far back to ancient Egypt, there were accounts of numerous ritual fastings that served for specific purposes. Upon fasting, one would reach a trance-like state, which would then help one to receive sacred visions. This form of self-starvation was practiced as a means of self-purification and as a way to prove one’s devotion to the gods (Bemporad 218). Later, in the earlier years of Christianity, many Christians participated in self-starvation as a way to deter bodily needs and desires. Such needs and desires were seen as a source of evil, and in order to be righteous and preserve the purity of one’s soul, one needed to cleanse their bodies through self-starvation. Additionally, progressing up to the late middle ages and early renaissance period, a wave of women began to partake in self-starvation, also as a result of religious purposes. During this period, self-starvation was practiced as a means to reach a higher level of spirituality and closeness to God. Such instances of self-starvation, were known as “Holy Anorexia”, and represented a way to cleanse a woman’s spirit and make her out to be superior over her peers (Bemporad 222).
It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that forms of self-starvation detached from religious and cultural purposes began to arise.

The first attempts at classifying anorexia nervosa as a more formal disorder, were made by French physician Sir William Gull and psychiatrist Charles Lasegue in the late eighteen hundreds. Both men documented multiple instances of refusals to eat amongst many young women. Ultimately, their reports helped to initiate the modern concept of anorexia nervosa, which has helped lay out the foundation of what is known about the disorder today (Bemporad 229). Although medical facts of anorexia nervosa have been documented since the late eighteen hundreds, the more modern version of anorexia; the concept of body image being a motivating factor for excessive fasting or self-starvation, did not emerge until the mid-1960s. It was during this time that the media began to promote thinness amongst the population. With the advent of Photoshop and other photo manipulation technologies, the media progressively began its obsession with displaying thin models and actresses throughout every form of media: magazines, photographs, television, and more. This wave of bodily expression pressured many people to attempt to achieve the desired forms of body shape suggested by the media. As a result, many people, especially young women, began to participate in anorexic practices like recording food intake, self-vomiting, and more. All of this would later develop into

more accounts of the disease, anorexia nervosa (Wurtzburg).
Airbrushing, a technique that manipulates a photograph’s flaws to create a better image, has been a form of photo manipulation used by the media for a long time. For the most part, the media seems to use photo manipulation for one agenda: to enhance body parts so as to produce an ideal body image. Such enhancements include trimmings of waistlines, removals of wrinkles and blemishes, and enlargements of specific body parts such as eyes, lips, and more. Although most people are aware of the media’s use of airbrushing, there are still many people who want to aspire and imitate such images. The images that the media uses as a way to represent beauty in our society, have become unattainable to reach. Everyone has their own body types, all of which consists of varying shapes and sizes. The media’s focus on only one body type makes it nearly impossible for anyone to obtain the ideal figure. This unreasonable expectation of beauty leads experts to believe that airbrushing images can have negative and harmful effects on people, especially younger people. Such experts include Dr. Helga Dittmar of the University of Sussex, and Dr. Emma Halliwell of the University of England. The experts claim that “media images that depict ultra-thin, digitally altered women models are linked to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating in girls and women” (Kirkup). The experts continue by explaining that such media imagery can lead to many problems which include “unhealthy dieting regimes and problematic eating behaviors, and clinical eating disorders [such as anorexia]”, and more (Kirkup). Although the media is not solely responsible for the eating disorder of anorexia, it has definitely contributed significantly to the formation of the disease through its portrayals of ideal beauty.