Question

How might the proliferation of various media and the Internet affect the development of eating disorders in cultures not previously impacted by them?

Answer 1

• The media is an important aspect of life in our culture. About 95% of people own a TV set and watch for an average of 3-4 hours per day.In addition,people interact with others through social media websites like Facebook,Snapchat and Instagram wherein so many food bloggers have flooded our time lines which we are exposed to everyday.
• Each form of medium has a different purpose and content. The media seek to inform us, persuade us, entertain us, and change us. The media also seeks to engage large groups of people so that advertisers can sell them products or services by making them desirable.
• Society is constructed of many different subcultures, classified by factors such as race, social class, political outlook, adhesion to value systems such as ”vegetarianism” or lifestyles.These differing social groups select and filter information and reject messages that are not consistent with the values of that group. On the other hand, irrespective of social clusters, research has shown that it is those with low confidence and self esteem within each group who are most influenced by media communications.
• We accuse the media, by glorifying the culture of thinness, of causing an epidemic of eating distress, especially among young women. The media denies culpability, or at least responsibility for doing anything about it.
• At the same time the environment provides an increasing array of foods high in fat and calories, with compelling pressures to consume these products. As a result we are getting heavier, and the gap between the ideal and normal body weight is giving rise to anxiety. We seek to reduce this anxiety by reducing our body weight, the preferred method being to go on a diet, since we believe that weight is under our control and, in addition we believe that once weight is lost it should not be regained. But dieting causes rebound binge eating and attempts to deal with this, by going on further diets, will lead many people into a disturbed relationships with food.
• There are other dangers arising from this cultural paradox. The models and actors who promote consumption of these calorie laden foods are usually slim and attractive, which would not be possible in a real world if they actually ate these foods. This will add to the cultural confusion, which is said to nurture the onset of eating distress.
• There is no doubt that the ideal body size, as reflected in the style icons promoted in the media, is getting thinner.  Due to the proliferation of food in our culture, people are getting bigger, fatter, and maturing younger and younger as the years pass by. The gap between actual body sizes and the cultural ideal is getting wider, and giving rise to anxiety among almost all women, although it is the most vulnerable who are most affected by this.
• There is no doubt that the media provides significant content on body related issues to young women, over 50% of whom, (between the ages of 11 –15 years) read fashion and beauty related magazines. The exposure to ideal images coincides with a period in their lives where self regard and self efficacy is in decline, where body image is at its most fragile due to physical changes of puberty and where the tendency for social comparison is at its peak. Girls thus find themselves in a subculture of dieting, reflecting messages not only from the media but also from parents, peers, members of the opposite sex as well as the media.
• Drive for thinness, a different construct, is related significantly to watching pop or music videos among adolescent girls. Women in a variety of studies consistently report that magazines influence their idea of what a good body shape is, and lead to determination to lose weight with subsequent dieting behaviours.
• In other words, the media doesn’t make women feel a need to be thinner per se, but the media may assist them in feeling bigger than they already feel themselves to be. The starting position for many females is thus a built-in vulnerability, which is reinforced by the culture of the media.
• The media can persuade us that wrong eating habits are right and natural. I cite the case of a McDonald’s advertisement in which a young boy persuades both his parents to take him for a burger and chips rather than a healthy outing at the zoo.
• The media can create anxieties about being deprived if we don’t have what “everyone else” is having.”
• The media presents us with an idealised shape which is invested with attributes of being attractive, desirable, successful and loveable but which is unattainable without resorting to sinister or dangerous eating habits.The media perpetuates the feeling in people who do not have the ideal shape that their life would be fine if they were slim.
• Self-esteem is a dynamic construct, like body image, which is influenced by a whole variety of factors such as parenting, childhood experiences, core personality and body image especially in girls. It follows thus by logical reduction that influences on body image will affect self esteem and promote the risk of developing an eating disorder as a person turns to the control of their body in order to feel acceptable.
• In this respect the media may contribute to low self-esteem by promoting slenderness as the pathway to gaining love, acceptance and respect while at the same time reflecting a trend in society to demonise fat.
• Although social media itself is not the sole cause of an eating disorder, it has fueled individuals to engage in disordered patterns of eating. According to research, “media is a causal risk factor for the development of eating disorders” and has a strong influence on a person’s body dissatisfaction, eating patterns, and poor self-concept.”
• Individuals begin to constantly compare themselves to thin models, their peers, as well as famous social media users and begin to feel inadequate about their own self-image.
• With the increased use of social media among peers, it has been increasingly difficult to avoid the constant peer pressure surrounding the ‘ideal body type’.
• Social media’s presence in everyday life is so large that individuals now care about the opinions of people that they have never met before. Body shamers use social media as a platform to talk negatively about someone’s image and it strongly affects the emotional well-being of individuals who already struggle with their relationship with food.