On Being Thin
According to
Japan
Today “two percent of third-year female high school students suffer from
anorexia and 10% are at risk of developing the dangerous eating disorder”. In
the West I suspect results would be very similar. According to a survey by the
US magazine ‘Glamour’ Seventy-five per cent considered themselves to be too
fat and 96 per cent said their weight affected how they felt about themselves.
Some years ago a magazine, I think it was Cleo, did a survey. They showed a
number of readers photos of both men and women who varied in size from obese
(numbered 4) to normal (numbered 0) to anorexic (numbered –4) and to extremely
anorexic (numbered –6). The extremely anorexic photos had been created by digitally
altering the pictures, and in their report the magazine said it was possible
that in reality such people would not be able to survive. The readers were asked
their assessment of what pictures they considered to be of people who were the
correct weight for their height.
Men generally gave a true assessment in that the normal photos were assessed as being normal for both men and women. Women, however, assessed the photos of women numbered –2 as being normal with many assessing the anorexic (-4) and extremely anorexic (-6) as being normal. For men, they generally agreed with the men and gave a fairly true assessment.
There are a number of reasons why women have distorted ideas about size. One is that the media portrays thin or ultra-thin women as being the ideal, but this begs the question as to why women are so influenced by the media. After all, not all women think that way.
I've mentioned before (‘Truancy (and Journalists)’) that many women see themselves
only in terms of their sexuality. They have no other assets, or at least none
that they have worked on. Having power over their appetite is one of the few
areas of their life that they can control. Women with more self-esteem don't
usually have this problem.
Another problem that plagues women is obesity. Many women are not going to achieve
the ‘high’ ideal weight that they may desire so they give up. There's no point
in even attempting an impossible goal. Also, dieting causes the body's metabolism
to slow down and so when normal eating is resumed it results in weight gain.
When functioning naturally, people have an instinctual relationship with their diet. If the body needs a particular substance the person will crave certain foods that will satisfy that need. Pregnant women often re-discover this. Nowadays most people have lost this instinctual relationship with their body and eat what others tell them they should eat – even though these fads change from year. Dieting causes the mind to distance itself further from the instinctual messages that the body sends.
