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In most western societies, the ideal female form is tall and thin, sometimes extremely thin. When young women mature, they begin menstruation, but they also begin to form their curves. They gain fat in their hips and breasts, and sometimes in other areas, too. Many see these curves as feminine, but others see them only as fat, and the goal is to not be fat at any cost. They become obsessed with gaining weight, and will do anything to remain thin and ideal to society. They want to conform and to fit in, and so they turn to anorexia in an attempt to maintain a body image that is really far from ideal. In many cases, they cannot see their own image at all. Even when they lost startling amounts of weight, they still think they are "fat," and will not eat. It is very difficult to treat anorexia, because the girls simply equate eating with being fat, so it is difficult to get them to eat normal, healthy, and balanced meals. Most of the sufferers are women, most begin in adolescence, and most are perfectionists.
Anorexia can develop a lifelong struggle...
Often, if anorexia suffers do gain weight and return to a healthy body weight, they go overboard the other way, and develop binging and purging disorder, where they eat a lot of food, and then force themselves to throw it up. They develop unhealthy attitudes about food, cooking, and eating, and often do not follow balanced diets. However, for most girls who suffer from the disease, they do recover, and a majority go on to lead productive, meaningful lives without so much worry over their body image. There is professional treatment available, for young women who are more difficult to treat.
In conclusion, anorexia nervosa is a dangerous disease that affects millions of young women. At the center of it is a woman's body image and society's idea of the ideal female form. Dying to conform, young girls stop eating to become society's thin ideal, and that ideal is deadly for at least some of those young women. If society were more realistic about body image and the ideal form, perhaps anorexia would be a thing of the past.
As noted above, during the hunter-gatherer phase of mankind, the desirable physical appearance of the male of the species would have been one that contributed to their ability to hunt and kill the large mega-fauna that roamed the land. By contrast, modern males may not be expected to be able to take down a wooly mammoth, but a healthy physique equates to good genes for reproduction and even modern
Anorexia Nervosa is defined in the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine as "an eating disorder characterized by unrealistic fear of weight gain, self-starvation, and conspicuous distortion of body image. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV (1994), defines two subtypes of anorexia nervosa -- a restricting type, characterized by strict dieting and exercise without binge eating -- and a binge-eating/purging type, marked by
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