Maile's unspoken thoughts: Blog #6

An eating disorder is when someone has a problem with either eating to much or eating not enough. Examples of eating disorders include anorexia and binge eating. The media has definitely affected our notions of beauty negatively. In ads, they always use women who look like they are anorexic and there is a pressure to look like the models in the ads. All the fashion shows use models who are a size 0 and young girls look up to these models. We see thousands and thousands of advertisements in just one day and a lot of them include companies that use models who are beautiful and have the perfect body image. I believe that a closer look at the definitions of eating disorders and treatments of these issues would bring so much awareness to people. I've always heard about people having eating disorders and people having anorexia, but I still to this day don't know if I know anyone who has had an eating disorder. It's an extremely touchy subject and it's not something that people want to talk about. If we did take a look at documentaries like Thin, we can have a better understanding of what these eating disorders do to people and can help raise awareness of these issues. I believe that dieting and having a certain appearance has become a huge part of our culture. When I hang out with my friends, it seems like there is always food involved. I constantly see Weight Watcher commercials, Nutrisystem commericals, and Bally Fitness commercials. We are constantly surrounded with this image that we need to lose weight and I feel pressured be this image because I will be honest and say that I'm doing Weight Watchers, but it's also for personal reasons. I actually suffered from binge eating and I gained over 40 pounds in a time period of about 3 months. I know that some people will look at me and think how could I eat that much and how disgusting of me to allow myself to gain 40 pounds, but until you have actually had an eating disorder, it's truly hard to understand. I was going through a major break up and also dealing with failing my classes because I was in a very deep depression and I honestly was emotionless. I ended up having to withdraw from OU in Spring 2008 and food was the only thing that seemed to comfort me. I didn't want to deal with my emotions, so I stuffed food down me and it filled a void that I had. I struggle with it everyday and I'm now doing weight watchers to try and lose the weight that I gained from my eating disorder. I believe that society believes that you need to lose weight to be beautiful and it truly sucks. I think that we have become a society obsessed with weight gain and weight loss and body image. I only hope for a better future because the pressure of society to have the perfect body image can lead to an extremely dangerous eating disorder.