Negative Consequences of the Anorexia Fashion Research Argument Project

While Fashion Week is around the corner, the featured “”double zero sized models begin to prepare for the event by depriving themselves of all things indulgent to be as thin as possible. Fashion Week is an event where professionals from the fashion industry come together (usually in New York) twice a year to promote and display their latest creations of the season in a runway fashion show to buyers and the media. Models purge themselves in order to achieve this “”stick-thin figure which has become an ideal image of women’s bodies in the recent years of trending fashions.

The countless images spread across all social media platforms has seared an image into the minds of society, that a women should be 5 foot and 9 inches weighing 115 pounds. The detrimental effects of these outstanding standards includes negative body image , eating disorders , and malnourishment not just to the body, but to the mind. This essay will develop a claim, arguing that today’s anorexia fashion is leading society to an insecure and unhealthy lifestyle.

Female bodies exist in all types of combinations between shapes and sizes, but for the fashion industry, only one type is displayed: tall and thin. As for our society the same seems to be idealized in our culture. From the Medical News Today article “”What is the average height for women? author Lana Barhum , a freelance medical writer who has been published for over ten years discusses the average height and weight for woman today. Findings included that average heights fall at 5 foot and 4 inches, while correlated weight is 168 pounds. Compared to the average model who weighs 115 pounds, is 5 foot and 9 inches, models are 23% thinner than the average women in the United States. Evidently, the majority of models do not depict the average women of today. Elizabeth Bloomfield-Deal, a therapist at McCallum place eating disorders in St. Louis published the article “”The Fashion Industry & Body Image; Transcending the Acquisition of Thinness. In her article, Bloomfield-Deal discusses the shrinking cultural ideal, and maintaining an “”ideal body, she acknowledges that by depriving oneself of food, cravings begin to overcome a person’s subconscious making them binge eat, this leads to “”ultimately feelings of guilt and shame about not being good enough to become the image that is desired. (Bloomfield-Deal 1) . The cycle described remains unbroken by the thousands of people struggling with eating disorders across the globe.

The romanticised ideology of being sickly thin has spread like wildfire into the minds of youthful generations.

Scrolling through social media feeds on applications such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook has undeclarative motives. Every picture and video pushes to second guess ourselves, to ask “” Why don’t I look this this . By feeding into the concept of social norms, we fail to push back, and refute the statements that society holds to be standard. Mary Pipher, an American psychologist, and author of the novel Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls said “”I think anorexia is a metaphor. It’s the young woman’s statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. The quote abides to regulations of the fashion world, we are told what to do and how to be. As women, our voices are already suppressed, instead of individuals we are viewed as starving, and empty bodies.

It is not a matter of how “”impressional someone is, when billboards and magazines are covered corner to corner in tall beautiful women, the imagery begins to stick, and attach itself to our subconscious desires. When women go on crash diets (a weight-loss diet undertaken with the aim of achieving very rapid results), by starving themselves to reach this unrealistic ideal body, they are depriving themselves not just of physical attributes like food, but mental and internal characteristics such as pleasure, satisfaction and health. Eating disorders serve as a short term solution, it poses as a defense to insecure thoughts. A very fine line is presented in eating disorders, they can be manageable until they’re not. When it becomes addicting, intervention is needed before the host grows attached to the lifestyle leading to a state of malnourishment. Functioning on low “”fuel for extended periods of time causes our bodies to degrade. Symptoms include constant fatigue, depression, anxious and confused (Bloomfield-Deal 2017). Many people believe that being skinny always comes with good health, however malnourishment takes a toll on the greater population of the modeling industry (Bloomfield-Deal 2017). Indubitably, the fashion industry that encourages and glorifies unhealthy thinness is putting lives at risk. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa are prevalent in majority of women whom fashion like industries target to push the products on display, but only if the material hangs well on your body.

Works Cited

Zerbe, K. (1993). The Body Betrayed: Women, Eating Disorders, and Treatment. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Press. -scholarly [USE IN CONCLUSION]

Bloomfield-Deal, Elizabeth. “”The Fashion Industry & Body Image; Transcending the Acquisition of Thinness. Eating Disorder Hope, 14 May 2017 -popular

Barhum, Lana. “”Average Height for Women Worldwide. Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 6 Mar. 2108 scholarly

Pipher, M. (1994). Reviving Ophelia; Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. New York: Random House Press. -popular

Kristen Harrison, Joanne Cantor; The Relationship Between Media Consumption and Eating Disorders, Journal of Communication, Volume 47, Issue 1, 1 March 1997, Pages 4067, scholarly

Noah Scovronick, Zaid Chalabi; Four Issues in Undernutrition-Related Health Impacting Modeling, Emerging Themes in Epidemiology, 2013, Volume 10, Number 1, Page 1 -Scholarly

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