Essay on Eating Disorder - Think About Thin

Think About Thin

"From now on you'll eat what I tell you to .... this is the last time you'll refuse to eat. From now on..."

...Be pretty, but beauty is only skin deep.

...Be sexy, but not sexually active.

...Be happy, but please others, first and foremost.

...Be thin, but stay healthy.

...Be thin.

...Be thin.

It sunk in. We received the message. Like everything else, it sunk in. It sunk in with magazine covers and standards and scales and diets. It sunk into the minds of seventy percent of the young women between the ages of 14 and 24 and how many can wiggle free from it? Maybe you were someone who thought the "Am I fat?" question and answer period was unique to you? Unless I have my facts wrong, if we don't eat, we die. Even with that common knowledge, there are still people who don't eat. Those people will die. It is the reality of an eating disorder. Blame the media or the culture or the "distorted society' in which we live. It's the models. It's the parents. It's the kid who called you obese when you were five.

We all wonder who is leading the revolution that is wasting people away. Let us worry more for the ones who follow. The question should not be why anorexia and bulimia start, but why they don't stop. Anorexia and bulimia are the biological diseases that mirror the "distortion of a natural human response to famine."

Psychologists, social scientists, historians, and physicians seek to explain the contemporary causes of eating disorders. We have statistics and case studies. We focus on the root of the problem. We examine whether the instinct to control has gone awry or the problem of low self-esteem has made a permanent mark.