Anorexia Essay

In Saints, sinners and standards of femininity: discursive constructions of anorexia nervosa and obesity in women’s magazines by Whitehead argued that within a patriarchal society, women have been traditionally disempowered due to the physical ‘ inferiority ‘ of the female body. This physical inferiority is conceptualized in terms of bodily strength, inferior to men ( Blood 2005). “The physical inferiority has rendered an image of female as being small, petite, frail, submissive, or otherwise non-threatening”( Orbach 1978, Mcnay 1992, Pandian 1999,Simpson 2002). “The ideal is being reflected in the popular media in particular women’s magazines in which body adapts to certain culturally expectations, the most ubiquitous of which being an absence of fat.”(Whitehead,et al. 2008).
Herper (1999) has suggested that when anorexia just comes to knowledge in medical texts, discourses of morality, gender and power already surrounded the medical conceptualization of anorexia.
Before the existence of mass media such episodes also occurred, in any case, what should be surprising to us is the speed with which such changes occurred. No wonder since the contemporary world is immersed in the era of acceleration, and means only facilitate the changes that a century earlier delayed whole years and even decades to occur, now occurring in months, weeks or days.
The slim body frees women from wearing a corset, a century ago, “American women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their adolescent daughters to do the same. Today’s teens shop for thong bikinis on their own.. (Brumberg 1997). These contrasting images might suggest a great deal of progress, but American girls at the end of the twentieth century actually suffer from body proble...

... middle of paper ...

... convince each of the consumers of the product under their ads that only he/her is responsible for their physical appearance and the ability to take shape for themselves a better external trace, which achieved as long as you follow the directions of the seller, which means you should buy it and continue to consume the product offered to get the desired result. Currently the supply is imminent, you are trying to live healthier, and therefore we see a boom diets.

There are all kinds, the miracle health food, Mediterranean, etc. We also see a variety of products "diet" or "Light" which abound in all supply points, and full of women advertising with perfect body. This business of eating disorders has two ends, one hand obesity, which is what you are trying to avoid with this shift to natural, healthy, etc. But in turn, there is the other extreme, bulimia and anorexia.