Eating disorders and social media

Image credit: Freepik by yanalya

History of eating disorders:

Eating disorders are a huge issue in the U.S. especially for women. The ideal female body image is dictated to a large extent by movies and television celebrities, fashion models, and beauty pageant contestants. Society considers thin to be healthy. In fact, most recent winners of the Miss American pageant have body mass indices at the lower end of the normal range. Many of the pageant winners during the 1970’s and 1980’s were considered undernourished, having body mass indices between 16.9 and 18.5 kg/m2 [1,2]. A female’s body size too often affects her self-worth and self-esteem. Body image distress is a result of people becoming dissatisfied with their weight, especially if they believe that their weight and shape are central to their self-worth as a person. An eating disorder often ensues [3]. Moreover, eating disorders usually start out as dieting or weight loss, and become an obsession to lose weight over time.