Science of Eating Disorders
thin-ideal
The Genetics of Thin-Ideal Internalization
The Tripartite Model of body image dissatisfaction postulates that three factors (peers, parents, and media) affect body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating through thin-ideal internalization and appearance comparison.
Thin-ideal internalization is the extent to which one accepts or “buys into” socioculturally defined beauty standards of thinness. The idea is that the more someone internalizes these standards, the more likely they are to engage in behaviours to achieve their “ideal”, and the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder.
A growing number of of studies have been done evaluating the validity of this model. Although I’m not well-read on the subject, it does seem like there is a growing number of studies showing an association between thin-ideal internalization and disordered eating practices.
But is the picture complete? Are peers, parents, and media the only or even the main factors that influence the extent of thin-ideal internalization?
One factor that’s curiously missing from the research is genetics. Can genetics play a role in explaining why some individuals are more prone to internalizing the thin-ideal than others?
To investigate whether genetic factors …
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 …
Does Too Much Exposure to Thin Models Cause Eating Disorders? Anorexia, Bulimia in Blind Women
As many of you already know, Vogue has recently banned models that are “too-thin” (and “too young”). It is a big step in the right direction, no, a huge step, and one deserving an applause, that’s according to an article on allvoices.com. Cue a drop in the prevalence of eating disorders, right? The logic in most articles, whether implicit or explicit, seems to be: no more skinny models = no more girls aspiring to be like skinny models = no more eating disorders.
Sounds more like a PR move to me, but OK. I do have some questions and thoughts:
What does “appear[ing] to have an eating disorder” mean? Bulimics, by definition, are of normal weight or overweight. Conversely, being thin doesn’t mean having an eating disorder.
BMI above or below a certain number is not a marker of “good health”. BMI demarcations are not scientifically derived and were never meant to be applied on an individual basis.
Finally, this perpetuates the idea that looking at skinny models for too long leads to an eating disorder. It …
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 …