Anorexia Nervosa and other eating disorders are considered ‘fads’ or
extreme diets by people that don’t recognize these are real mental disorders.
Anorexia is the deadliest mental disorder because it can cause damage to organs
like the heart and kidneys. There is also a very high suicide rate. Popular
culture and mass media glorify skinny people and mortify overweight people. Has
this constant bombardment of the thin ideal contributed to the rate of anorexia
and other eating disorders? My research
question is does popular culture influence anorexia and other eating disorders?
There is a very large segment of young people that have characteristics for anorexia
and bulimia but do not meet the medical guidelines because they are not
severely underweight enough, people that fall into this group are categorized as
Eating Disorder Not Otherwise
Specified (EDNOS). The EDNOS group is the fastest growing group. The statistical
size for the anorexia and bulimia groups are relatively stable, but these
individuals are medically ill as well as suffering from a mental disorder. How
can one group grow significantly over the last 20 years and one group stay
relatively unchanged?
I think anorexia
and bulimia are both growing, they are under-reported. I also think research
needs to expand to include younger girls, and males. I may be wrong. I still
need to finish reading through my annotated bibliography sources.
I really like your topic and think it will be very strong. I totally agree and think that the media advertises that everyone needs to be really skinny to fit in and look good. You could also look at the past and mention how it is changed over time. It used to be that it was accepted to be think and have meat on your bones. That was considered beautiful. Why and when did this start to change? I think you have great start and you are staying in topic.
ReplyDeleteNow a days you can be diagnosed with dozens of mental conditions which don’t mean a thing however Anorexia Nervosa and other eating disorders are very serious matters. Something you can talk about is how as a result of the health problems eating disorders cause modeling companies have been moving towards having minimum weight requirements for their models. Over all I think you have it all down.
ReplyDeleteIn that first sentence, do you mean that some people are over diagnosed or misdiagnosed? The way you said it kinda made it sound like there is a hierarchy of which disorders are valid (anorexia nervosa) and which aren't (pretty much everything else).
DeleteThis has been a major problem for quite some time now. I think that you are on track for a good paper. It seems very focused and narrow. You could possibly look into what the intentions of pop culture (advertisements) are when it comes to the thin ideal and portraying that on the viewers.
ReplyDeleteWhen you start to discuss whether or not pop culture has effected the frequency of these disorders, it's important to discuss how exactly pop culture can do that. Is it through imagery? Written message? Implied through normalization? Maybe try using examples of other things pop culture effects to exhibit the ways in which people are changed by it.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like a great topic. Magazines and models/advertisements would probably be great things to look at. I did not know that they were considered diets, I always thought people recognized that they were problems.
ReplyDelete