Science of Eating Disorders
Are All Anorexia Nervosa Patients Just Afraid of Being Fat? – Part 2
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (or literature on this topic) you know the answer is no. I’ve blogged about this before, but I think it is a topic that needs a lot more coverage because the myths that all anorexia nervosa patients are just afraid of being fat, that they lose weight just to be thin, and that thin models are to blame for AN are still very common.
As you’ll see, I am not claiming that this isn’t true for some patients. Instead, what I am claiming is that it is not true for all patients.
And a big personal goal of mine with this blog is to broad the conversation about eating disorders. Let’s get away from stereotypes and painting all anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa patients in the same light. Let’s instead have meaningful discussions about research on eating disorders, about our experiences, and let’s develop a more comprehensive understanding of eating disorders that’s enriched by the research and the science, and our personal experiences as patients, friends, family members, partners, …
Does the Media Cause Eating Disorders? Disordered Eating in Iranian Women: From Tehran to Los Angeles
What is the impact of Western culture on eating disorders? Do images of thin cause eating disorders? I mean, it seems like such a nice and simple hypothesis. It makes intuitive sense: glamorize thin and make thin cool and BAM, everyone wants to be thin. It would be so much easier. Cause? Found. Solution? Easy: ban thin models. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me, since it gives me a lot to blog about) the answer is not that simple.
Just in the last couple of hours, some people who’ve ended up on the SEDs blog have searched:
- does the media cause eating disorders
- thin models on tv cause eating disorders to young girls
- do models influence anorexia
- ultra thin models causing eating disorders
- magazine article eating disorders caused by the media
- and the rare: media doesn’t cause eating disorders
I’m sure most of these search terms lead people to the blog post titled, Does Too Much Exposure to Thin Models Cause Eating Disorders? Anorexia, Bulimia in Blind Women? Since variants on this theme are common search queries, I thought I’d …
- Transitioning from Adolescent to Adult Eating Disorder Treatment Programs: What Are The Challenges?
- Bingeing and Purging: Keeping the “Positives” and Eliminating The Negatives?
- Dancing Your Way to Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- Pills for Bites: The Alarming Link between Drug Abuse and Eating Disorders
- Factors Associated with Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa
- Patient Perspectives on Anorexia, Treatment, and Therapeutic Alliance
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- Nonpurging Bulimia Nervosa: Where Does It Fit?
- What’s The Point of Bingeing and Purging? And Why Can’t You Just Stop?
- Should Insurance Companies Cover Residential Treatment for Eating Disorders?
- Does Too Much Exposure to Thin Models Cause Eating Disorders? Anorexia, Bulimia in Blind Women
- Are All Anorexics Just Afraid Of Being Fat and Can We Blame The Western Media?
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 2
- When Clinicians Do More Harm Than Good (Attitudes Toward Patients with Eating Disorders)
- Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa: Hype or Hope?
- International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) 2013: Personal Reflections
- The “Double Life” of Bulimia Nervosa: Patients’ Perspectives
- How Can We Treat Chronic and Severe Anorexia Nervosa? (On the Need for New Approaches)
- What’s Wrong with How We Talk About Eating Disorders in the Media and in ED Communities – Part 1
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ES I'm not sure that it's just an 'ano
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Liz Agreed! It sounds like they are missing out on a L
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Andrea Hi Liz, Sorry if I was unclear in the post; in th
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Charlotte I can't articulate how much I can relate to e
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peridot
This article really resonates with me because I ha
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Pre-morbid BMI, weight restoration, and amenorrhoe
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ko I read your comment and can relate to everything y
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Liz
"Could it not be a more parsimonious explanat
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A:)
Also, this post made me wonder. . . what about jus
Science of Eating Disorders by Tetyana Pekar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Are All Anorexics Just Afraid Of Being Fat and Can We Blame The Western Media?
A really fun aspect of blogging is seeing what search terms lead people to my blog; a frustrating side-effect is not being able to interact with those people directly. This entry is, in part, an attempt to answer a common question that leads individuals to my blog. Common question or search queries are variants of the following (these are actual search terms that led to this blog, I corrected spelling mistakes): “do models cause eating disorders in women?”, “pictures of skinny models linked to eating disorders”, “do the images of models in magazines cause eating disorders?”, “eating disorders relating to thin models”, “psychiatrists thought on how skinny models are causing eating disorders”, “thin models are to blame for eating disorder.”
Well, you get the point.
I briefly started tackling the notions that the ”thin ideal” promoted by Western media is to blame for the prevalence of eating disorders and a related idea that all anorexics are afraid of becoming fat, in a previous post where I examined case studies of eating disorders in (mostly congenitally) blind women.
These assumptions, along with …