The Skinny Thing

A week ago in mental health we were talking about anorexia. It's a sad disease, plain and simple. Celebraties such as Karen Carpenter have suffered with this disease. What makes me wonder is how we as a society can prevent it, and how we as people who feed into the media's sterotypical image of what we think things should be like.

The case study that we read about was sad because the person mentioned in it died in the end. However, this is uncommon. When someone starves themselves, they obviously lose wieght which is something that in their eyes is the best thing ever. But not eating can lead to greater probelms such as hair thinning, development stopping, and of course menustration stopping altogether. However, they have a tunnel vision, because their primary concern is to lose the most amount of wieght humanly possible. And even when they do, it's not thin enough. 

How does this begin? It can begin in a bunch of different ways. For starters, someone can be ridiculed as being fat so they decide to go on a diet, and the diet goes too far. Another way this can be is through vicarious learning or modeling. Meaning, that if someone close to them, such as their mother, sister, or other close contact is concerned about their wieght, then they would start to mimic that behavior. In my opinion, I think it's because of the media's standards of waht makes someone beautiful. On the show Girl Code, there was a segment of how society's standards of beauty differed than it did when our mothers were our age. One thing I also noticed was that women looked realistic, not like Photoshop prototypes. We live in a society that basically is focused on the exterior-who can look better thinner, and beautiful?

It's a sad thing that a woman falls in the trap. Once she does, she can't fall out. I believe that with the obession of being perfect comes the obession of being happy. Having anxiety about your size, and the way that you look? That's not making you very happy. 

I've dealt with some blow of this when I was in high school. I was obessed with having the perfect body. I lost over twenty pounds and excerised to the point where it become OCD type of ritual.  I binged, and I purged. Having mostly overcome it, I still have days where I feel like I'm not thin enough or I'm not good enough. It's gone away mostly, but some parts of it still remains. However, I realize that I'm pretty and I'm healthy. I sometimes don't eat healthy, but I try. After recently becoming a half vegetarian, that mens I don't get much iron. But I am trying. 

I know that saying that I've been there before is the most cliche thing on the planet. However, that doesn't mean that I couldn't relate to others that were suffering through the same symptoms as I was. Eating disorders are the hardest things to get over, no matter what age, race, or gender you are. However, although you may not believe it, those who are suffering from this can get over this, because like me, they are strong.