Essay Sample on Eating Disorders and Today's Culture
Print Essay 
Many describe it as a culture-bound syndrome, and disordered eating has an almost exclusive link to the western cultural ideas of skinniness in women and its glamour and priority in the society. The culture equates perfection in femininity to being skinny (Volk, 2013). Todays culture has a significant impact on women especially on their body image and the eating disorders they resort to as a means of fitting into this culture. There is no day that one cannot come across various advertisements of different types of diet regimens and a particular kind of woman with a given size as a representation of the diet plan. Todays society dictates and spells out the size a woman needs to be and when she is not that particular size she does not feel good about herself. A lot of social concepts lie in determining what size a woman is and all these ideas affect how the woman feels about herself and what she does to fit into what society wants from her especially how she looks physically.
It means therefore that many individuals fall victim of disordered eating including anorexia and bulimia nervosa. Both conditions occur among people who have a negative body image, and they feel like they are in someone elses body (Volk, 2013). Many of the women suffering from these disorders feel that they do not fit into societys description of a beautiful woman and thus will go to great heights just to achieve the body size they want and feel that they fit into the current culture. Numerous weight loss programs air on television now and then, and this is usually to show that individuals who are at a certain weight are not healthy. How these shows depict the women in them makes these women feel that they are not beautiful.
Most women featured on these shows go in when they are at a certain weight, and they get exposure to activities and diet plans that make them lose weight and obtain a certain weight when the program ends. However, the issue does not only concern the person physically she also faces psychological torture as she works towards becoming what the culture wants only this time she is doing it in the show with the guidance of an individual considered to be fit. Many girls and women get exposure to these shows and the description that culture already has about how a beautiful woman looks haunts them every day. When they see other women changing from one body size to another and how society appreciates what they do, these women also want to engage in the same only that they resort to eating disorders like starving themselves to obtain the culturally defined body size.
Diet trends are also not left out. The society is doing all it can to take advantage of desperate women who want to look and feel like todays beautiful woman. Countless companies and individuals deal with slimming products and diet plans. These people and organizations amass a significant number of followers especially women who want to look beautiful and they believe that they only way they will look beautiful is through using such products. In many instances, the products these individuals introduce to women in society usually, have a particular type of woman who represents their product. It also impacts on how women who purchase their goods or follow their diet plans want to look after using the product. In some cases, the products expose women to eating habits that are not healthy. Some may even stop eating and only use these products as they recommend for them to achieve the desired result.
Various restaurants have also adopted a culture that encourages different disordered eating, especially in women. In the western culture, one will probably come across a restaurant that serves one hundred percent gluten free foods. When looking at Hollywood celebrities especially women who many of them have the body image most the women want to have, it is clear that many of them do not take gluten. They subscribe to gluten-free diets because they view gluten as an aspect of ones diet that results in gaining weight. Therefore many women in society see what Hollywood women do to be what is culturally acceptable and will, therefore, go for gluten free foods not knowing how this type of eating affects them.
These aspects of society and much more have a significant impact on women. It may not be that eating disorders are culturally born but that todays culture exacts an immense amount of pressure on women who in turn develop psychological needs within them concerning their body image. To satisfy these requirements, women behave in a way culture dictates them to attain the type of body they desire and in this case being skinny. It is, therefore, safe to say that it is not that women have disorders or engage in disordered eating but that it is todays culture that is disordered.
References
Volk, A. (2013). The Cultural Manifestations of Anorexia Nervosa.
If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the SuperbGrade website, please click below to request its removal: