Everywhere you look, the ideal of thinness, especially for women, is promoted as the ultimate goal. We’ve been brainwashed into accepting an artificial, impractical, even unhealthy image of the human form. Those who fail to achieve the ideal are mocked and scorned. People who are especially susceptible to social pressure-those who never developed a healthy sense of self-esteem-will go to extreme lengths to avoid ostracism and rejection. They will sabotage their own bodies for the sake of an artificial, unnatural concept.
But society’s ideals are at war with our bodies’ natural design. The war takes place on a vulnerable battleground: our minds. For some women, these conflicts may be temporary (a bout of crash dieting, perhaps) and will be followed by some kind of acceptable truce (“Okay, I’ll eat normal meals, but no more desserts”). Other people, however, need additional support to resist social pressure. Without such protection, people become victims of a strange syndrome, one whose symptoms are a distorted body image, bizarre eating patterns, illness, and much unnecessary suffering.
How does our culture develop and transmit this deadly message about thinness? Why should thinness be the social currency we value? Let’s look.
Envision the “ideal” female figure. What comes to mind? In this society, many people—men as well as women-probably conjure up an image of Miss America or a Playboy centerfold. Purely in the interest of science, a team of researchers carefully analyzed the body measurements of these icons of feminine beauty over the past few decades. They made a surprising discovery: As a general trend, each year the women chosen as these ideals have been thinner than their predecessors. This is odd when you realize that the average weight of the population has increased over the same time period. Thus there has been a widening gap between the “ideals” of female beauty and most women’s actual weights. These beauty queens’ relative body weights are actually lower than those of 95 percent of the female population!
My heart goes out to today’s woman, whose body may be perfectly normal but who believes that she must compete against this absurdly distorted vision of ideal beauty.
Our culture’s perception that the ideal female form should be abnormally slender is a fairly recent phenomenon. One of my bulimic patients, an eighteen-year-old college student, told me she had watched a Marilyn Monroe film on television. “Marilyn Monroe was such a pig!” she exclaimed. “She was so fat!” Strange to think that what was seen as sexy and attractive thirty years ago is now condemned as “fat.”
Although there are some historical precedents for similar distortions of the feminine ideal, such as the Victorian eighteen-inch waist, never before have they had such an impact on the vast majority of women. Media, such as women’s magazines, very often add to the confusion about body image. For example: The number of articles about dieting appearing in these publications has doubled every decade since World War II. Yet these same magazines present page after page of recipes for “luscious desserts” and “family-pleasing treats” illustrated with glistening, mouth-watering photographs. Mixed signals? You bet.
Since World War II, our food-buying and eating habits have also undergone a radical change. Food is plentiful, and its variety is enormous. Many of today’s foods are very palatable but rich in calories due to their high fat and sugar content. Fast food-from chain restaurants to microwave meals in our own homes-has revolutionized how and what we eat. And in our sedentary society, the only exercise some people get is pressing buttons on their television’s remote control. Given these facts, it actually does make some sense for people to be on their dietary guard.
For some people, however, an irresistible force (social pressure to be thin) meets an everyday temptation (tasty, abundant food) and produces an extreme reaction (an eating disorder). People at special risk include those who:
• have low self-esteem
• are overly sensitive to the opinions of others
• carry the concept of self-control to extremes
• have difficulty separating from their families
• Work in occupations that require a high level of body-awareness, such as modeling, dancing, or acting
When people with these characteristics suffer stress—for example, the death of a relative, a move to a new school or city, or a personal loss such as the breakup of a romance—an eating disorder is sometimes the result.
*4/35/5*
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