Anorexiarole of the Media (Essay Sample)

Anorexia: The Role of Media
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Anorexia is a serious eating disorder that results in irreversible health issues that include death. People with this disorder tend to avoid food for fear of being overweight. When doctors treat victims of this disorder, they cannot help but feel hostile towards the media for causing or maintaining their patients’ eating behaviors. Noteworthy, however, is that not everyone that is exposed to the media develops eating disorders? The fundamental question, therefore, is what role do the media play in eating disorders. There exists enormous literature with research into which groups of people are most susceptible to the media’s message. This paper highlights the role of the media in offering a social context within which anorexia and other eating disorders thrive, the manner in which patients use the media to sustain their illness and finally the role the media can play in raising awareness in the treatment and prevention of the disorder.
Research shows that media facilitates anorexia by holding in high esteem the beauty pageant contestants, actresses, and models. The media heavily adores thin characters in events like Miss America, Playboy centerfolds. Magazine articles, advertisements, and television shows create a context that contributes to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in women and young girls (Gabe, Ward & Hyde, 2008). Research shows that as commercials for diet foods and products increase, the body sizes of female actresses and models decrease during the weight of the average American woman increase. Jade (2015) notes that the media emphasizes the importance of slender ideal and thus holding women prisoners to an unreasonable beauty ideal (Jade, 2015).
Studies show that the media is responsible for the maintenance of anorexia. Just as most women with weight and shape preoccupation internalization of the body ideal, skin dissatisfaction, and tendency for social comparison are greatly influenced, so are they also likely to use the media. Female victims of anorexia indulge in heavy media use and explain their consumption of trending fashion magazines as an "addiction" (Gordon, 1990). Many of these victims say that their addiction to media came after anorexia took over their lives. Researchers also point out that beauty magazines and shows become "how-to-be" manuals to help young women suffering from anorexia obtain an impossible standard of physical thinness. Noteworthy also is that fashion material support anorexic desire to counterbalance dissonance reacting sentiments from family and friends, who criticize their bodies, by promoting and endorsing messages that promote thinness and dieting (Gabe, Ward & Hyde, 2008).
Regardless of the role it has played to promote anorexia; the media helps in the prevention and treatment of anorexia. It does that through literacy, activism, and advocacy. Media literacy education involves training people to think critically about the various forms of media, analyzing the content and intentions of media producers and increasing awareness of media consumption. Through media literacy, college girls can resist negative influence from images of slender models (Stice & Shaw, 1994). Further, through media literacy, women get a whole new framework for interpreting various media images and messages. The media is also incorporated in rehabilitation programs to help in the improvement in knowledge, internalization of the body image and thin-ideal. Researchers, however, note that treatment programs for anorexia can be more effective if they incorporate media literacy into other strategies that help handl...