In Andre Dubus’ The Fat Girl, Louise is a young adolescent with detrimental eating habits and broken self-esteem. Her lack of self-confidence stems from her atrocious emotional habitat. Louise receives constant criticism from her mother regarding her weight. Her mother states “If you are fat the boys won’t like you.” That kind of ridicule being said by a mother to her 9 year old daughter creates an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-loathing. It is not only her familial environment that contributes so greatly to Louise’s destructive behavior. She has few friends and the one’s she does have agree she needs to change. The society in which she lives also is a contributing factor; the society is laden with stigmas positioned on appearance. That manner of daily ridicule only introverts Louise even more, causing her secretive, binge eating to deteriorate. In research conducted by Ursula Polli-Potts PhD, Links between Psychological Symptoms and Disordered Eating behaviors in Obese Youths, she explains the correlation between psychological, emotional factors and eating disorders in overweight adolescents. Potts states, “The association between binge eating symptoms and eating in response to feelings of distress and sadness with depression/anxiety symptoms corresponds with the results of other studies.” Potts and her colleagues took overweight adolescents and placed them into control and variable groups to ensure correct data. The outcome of their research was that there is a direct correlation with emotional binge eating and psychological factors. Although more extensive research needs to be implemented, Potts and associates were pleased with the results of the case studies.
Louise shows classic signs of an emotional binge eater. She hi...
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...o embrace the differences and exude acceptance, love and encouragement. Every young girl and boy deserves the right to look in the mirror and like what they see. They deserve the right to not feel the need to binge eat, purge or starve themselves to strive toward impossible standards employed on them by an imperfect society
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O’Dea, Jennifer A. "Evidence for a Self-Esteem Approach in the Prevention of Body Image and Eating Problems among Children and Adolescents." Eating Disorders 12.3 (2004): 225-39. Web. Apr. 2014.
Polli-Potts, Ursula. "Links between Psychological Symptoms and Disordered Eating Behaviors in Obese Youths." International Journal of Eating Disorders 46.2 (2013): 156-63. Web. Apr. 2014.
However, these views don’t take social process into consideration. Therefore, they organized a self-help group for bulimics and anorexics known as BANISH in order to determine what societal aspects cause these disorders. The author’s group consisted mostly of college age females which is significant because this is group primarily affected by these disorders. Interestingly, the backgrounds of the women in the BANISH group are strikingly similar in that they are excellent students, good children who have very close parental relationships, from “functional” families - all having been brought up with an emphasis on thin physical appearance. The authors also allude to the fact that in today’s society, slimness is considered attractive and most worthy, while being overweight is viewed as both morally and physically wrong. Society labels heavy people as “lazy, obscene, and unhealthy”. (244) It is noted that when members of the group lost weight, they reported feeling more accepted and
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Andrist, Linda C. "Media Images, Body Dissatisfaction, and Disordered Eating in Adolescent Women." Adolescent Health Mar. 2003, 28th ed., sec. 2: 119-23. Print.
Today obesity is talked about as a major physical health problem. It can cause diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, immobilization, and many other problems. However many articles fail to mention what is one of the most important and most destructive problems. This is the effect of obesity on one’s mental health and wellbeing. Being excessively overweight usually instills in it’s victims a sense of self worthlessness and gives them a very negative self-image. This can lead to an array of problems that affect the person in a way that is much more direct and difficult to deal with than physical problems. While the problem is known to affect men, it strikes women much more often.
An eating disorder is characterized when eating, exercise and body image become an obsession that preoccupies someone’s life. There are a variety of eating disorders that can affect a person and are associated with different characteristics and causes. Most cases can be linked to low self esteem and an attempt to, “deal with underlying psychological issues through an unhealthy relationship with food” (“Eating Disorders and Adolescence,” 2013). Eating disorders typically develop during adolescence or early adulthood, with females being most vulner...
The Institute of Heartmath, (2012), childhood obesity and emotional eating, http://www.heartmath.org/free-services/articles-of-the-heart/childhood-obesity-and-emotional-eating.html [accessed 05 Nov 2013]
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Keywords: health, promotion, teenagers, obesity, eating, habits. Midterm Paper Developmental Efforts Related to Adolescent Obesity Qualitative Research “More than one third of our children and adolescents in our country are now overweight or obese” (Kids and Obesity). This epidemic is also skyrocketing the occurrence of disorders and other health issues such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, asthma, bone and joint problems, weight problems and obesity. But obesity can also affect adolescents on a deeper level, especially those of lower socioeconomic classes. Depression and low self esteem is also directly related to obesity and has high tendencies to lead to substance abuse in males and eating disorders in females (weight problems and obesity).
This story “The Fat Girl” by author Andre Dubus, is a heart wrenching story about the all too familiar subjects of obesity, eating disorders, self-consciousness, and the negative impact in which society and even family and friends can have on people suffering from these issues. It seems the young girl at the center of the story, Louise, was doomed to live a tortured existence from nine years old and forward. Her own mother fortified this fate by stating “In five years you’ll be in high school and if you’re fat the boys won’t like you; they won’t ask you out.”(pg. 158.) This is one of several times when her mother, while she thought she was trying to help, was actually slowly submerging Louise into a horrifying existence.
Many efforts to address emotional eating have emphasized the importance of effective mood regulations skills to enhance one’s ability to tolerate stress or negative mood without using food to cope (Telch, Agras, & Linehan, 2001). Only within the past 20 years has research focused on applying more traditional learning processes to the development and maintenance of emotional eating. The primary difference between these perspectives, as exemplified by the Davidson model, is the de-emphasis of cognitions and motivations for eating (e.g., to escape negative mood) in the learning models, such as the classical conditioning model.
Herbozo, Sylvia, Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, Jessica Gokee-Larose, and J.Kevin Thompson. “Beauty and Thinness Messages in Children’s Media: A Content Analysis.” Eating Disorders 12 (2004): 21-34. Print.
While there are suggestions being made to help decrease the issues raised from the mass media, ‘… these images certainly contribute to the body-hatred … and to some of the resulting eating problems, which range from bulimia to compulsive overeating, to simply being obsessed with controlling one’s appetite’ (Jean Kilbourne, 1999) it is obvious, that the senior school girls at The Wykeham Collegiate are negatively affected, whether it is mentally or physically and that this has been provoked by the mass media.
The more scientists study, the more they begin to realize just how young children can become affected by the things around them. The issue of a young girl’s body image is becoming more and more of an area of concern. A study performed at the Pennsylvania State University showed that children as young as 5 years old can have body dissatisfaction (Davison, Markey, & Birch, 2003). As people perform further research on why this problem may be occurring, a link has been