Sociocultural Influences On Eating, Weight, And Shape

What does it mean when studies show that 95 percent of American women report disgust or disappointment with their bodies? What is the cause and effect when our female fashion models weigh 23 percent less than the average American female? What is the implication when adolescent girls are snorting cocaine, not to get high, but to lose weight? What has become of our society when 80 percent of fourth-grade girls report they are dieting, with 10 percent of those reporting the use of self-induced vomiting? What have we done to females who claim they would rather be dead than fat?

Since body image disturbance and episodes of dieting and weight preoccupation are seen in the histories of those with eating disorders, our culture's obsession with thinness has been offered as a leading cause. In today's culture, thinness represents not only attractiveness but also self-sacrifice, virtue, success, and control. The pervasive attitude seems to be that the more fat one has on his or her body, the more unattractive, self-indulgent, lazy, and out of control one is. Culturally dictated definitions such as these are portrayed to us in various ways through the media.

In an advertisement featuring an extremely thin model and the slogan, "Just the Right Shape," one wonders what is being sold, the body or the outfit? Media advertisements like these both reflect and shape our perceptions and standards of beauty. Advertisements for taking off weight and keeping it off are found in every magazine and newspaper, on billboards, television commercials, and bumper stickers with messages such as "Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How," "Lose 20 pounds, in 20 days," "Get the body that gets the guys," "Flatten your stomach," "Reduce those thighs." At least twenty million people respond to the propaganda and are on a diet at any given moment. Weight loss programs, diet books, and media advertisements for diet products have been steadily increasing, resulting in a multibillion dollar industry.

As diet commercials have increased, the body size of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America contestants has decreased to the point where many of these individuals, according to recent studies, meet the weight criteria for anorexia nervosa! Is it any wonder that at the same time there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of eating disorders? As stated in Eating Disorders, The Journal of Treatment and Prevention in the spring of 1993, "It may be that the media pressure to diet is a major influence on the occurrence of eating disorders in otherwise vulnerable women and men."

Since the culturally prescribed body weight is so unrealistically low and since mountains of evidence show that diets don't work (approximately 98 percent of those who lose weight gain it back), it follows that some individuals will resort to extreme measures such as starving or purging in order to deal with their dissatisfaction over their figures or sizes, striving to obtain "Just the Right Shape."