Eating disorders- anorexia and its relationship to female images in Term Paper

Eating disorders- anorexia and its relationship to female images in the media - Term Paper Example They also try to lose weight by exercising excessively (Griffin, 2012). Anorexia is not about food. It refers to an unhealthy way to keep up with emotional problems of an individual; people with this disorder always equate their body size with their self-worth (Saukko, 2008). It’s always a hard situation to ignore but with proper treatment, one can gain sense of who he or she is, get back to healthy eating habits and reverse some serious effects of the disorder. Most of the patients with Anorexia usually turn and feel hostile towards the media due to their images because the media helps in keeping and maintaining the disorders in one way or the other. The relationship between anorexia and female images in media can best be summarized in several sections; media’s role in the provision of social context with which eating disorders grow, media’s role in the etiology of anorexia symptoms, different ways that the media help the patients in maintaining and fighting the condition and the role that the media can play in helping in the prevention and the treatment of the condition (Robert-McComb, Norman & Zumwalt, n.d.). Earlier investigations on the role played by the media in the disorders associated with eating mostly focused on the losing of body weight over time of the models, media actresses and beauty contestants who were concerned about the ideals of beauty. Several studies have put to records the trend of adding body thinness in Miss America contestants, fashion models between 1950s and the 1990s and Playboy centerfolds. The same period was characterized by a significant weight increase by the Canadian and the American women that led to the ever-increasing discrepancy between the media ideal and the body size of the North American women. Both print and electronic media have played a big role in contributing to the satisfaction of the body and also disordered the eating