A Thin Figure Is Not the Key to Happiness

A Thin Figure Is Not The Key To Happiness

We live in an era where society judges us by our looks and how much we weigh. They do not care about our personality, they only care about what we look like on the outside. The magazines that are stacked on top of the coffee table all show certain types of women, but all of these women are the same; maybe, not the same in personality, skin color, or race, but the same in body type. Social media encourages women to perfect their bodies by looking like a doll. They must dress a specific way, look a specific way, and weigh a specific weight. All of a sudden there comes an article that states anorexic women, and society seems to not understand the importance of this disorder in women. Why do we let society control what we eat, how we act, and how we dress?

Women are “terrified to gain weight and are continually reminded by the media about various new diet products on the market, and the value in weight loss” ("Negative Body Image - Understanding and Overcoming | Center for Change”). Women face impossible images of beauty on a daily basis when they watch television, see a movie, or even view a magazine. Social media has done so many things in order to expose women to a criteria that society sets. Women feel insecure about their bodies and their physical appearances; they often believe that they must change their bodies to gain self-esteem. According to the Center for Change, a recent survey found that only 2% of women in the world would describe themselves as “beautiful”. The rest of the women consider themselves as “ugly” or “fat”, and because of this, they start trying to change their bodies, hoping that they will someday be the girl on the front page of Seventeen.

There are two types of anorexia nervosa: restricting type and binge-eating/purging type. The restricting type of anorexic patients are the patients that restrict their calorie intake. They take about a few hundred calories a day or just drink water. On the other hand, the binge-eating/purging type of anorexic patients are the patients that eats a certain type of food, and then regrets eating it and vomits it right out of their system. By far, the binge-eating/purging type of anorexia is the most dangerous type; it can be fatal.

Some people may not know that there are health consequences to anorexia. Due to self-starvation, the body is denied of the essential nutrients that it needs in order to function normally; the body is forced to slow down all of its processes to conserve energy. Some of the serious medical consequences that may occur due to anorexia: the abnormally slow heart rate and low blood pressure means that the heart muscle is changing, the risk for heart failure rises, osteoporosis occurs, muscle loss and weakness, severe dehydration resulting in kidney failure, fatigue and overall weakness, and dry hair and skin (“Anorexia Nervosa | National Eating Disorders Association”). These symptoms can hurt one’s body and can lead it to multi-organ failure.

Society’s judgements for the looks of our bodies contribute to the development of diseases. One would be anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa—also known as anorexia—is an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted perception of body weight. Some studies are conducted in order to figure out why many people (mostly women) tend to have anorexia nervosa; but, there are also some studies that look at anorexia in a different way.

“[Anorexic patients] are ruled by the heart, not the head…” (qtd. in Barton). A team of psychiatrists argued that anorexic people were not just psychologically impaired, rather, they were passionate about what they did. There were some recent studies that suggested that the brains of anorexic patients may “have [had] overactive self-control [centers], faulty reward circuitry and dulled responses in regions important for body awareness” (Barton). In other words, Barton was stating that anorexia sufferers might have “rewarded” themselves by starving, but in reality, they were hurting their bodies by not giving it sufficient nutrients. Barton talked more about the view that anorexia sufferers may have had. She stated that anorexia sufferers may not actually be suffering from anorexia because they wanted to look like the models on television, but because they experienced pleasure from it.

Furthermore, anxiety might also be a cause that contributed to the development of anorexia. According to the British Medical Journal, anxiety is one of the many common causes of anorexia. Anxiety caused many people to “fall off the wagon” and start losing their appetites. This then led to depression, which also caused many people to become anorexic. Although, some people might think otherwise when someone says that depression