Anorexia, Body Image & Conformity

According to April Fallon (1990), culturally bound and consensual definitions of attractiveness play an important role in the individuals' development of his or her body image. That body image reflects the way people view themselves and is generally not only a judgment on body, but a judgment on the self itself. In the following pages, the intention is to look at the interrelationship of anorexia, body image, and conformity to American culture, including definitions of attractiveness.

Anorexia has been defined as an eating disorder, although it has also been located on a continuum that includes women's normal concerns about weight. Anorexia is generally associated with bulimia, and in some instances, defined as one part of an anorexia/bulimia cycle (BoskindWhite and White, 1983).

Anorexia is essentially selfstarvation. The individual  most frequently a teenage girl or young woman  takes increasingly less food in order to sustain life, while at the same time contending that she (or he) is too fat. It is a disorder of both perception and action. Some of the symptoms of anorexia include the following:

1.Intense fear of becoming obese, which does not disappear with increased weight loss;

3.Weight loss of at least 15% of expected body weight;

4.Refusal to maintain normal weight;

6.Appearance of depression (Kinoy et al, 1992, p. 3).

. . .
s been an increasing trend in the 1980s and 1990s toward a more muscular body type for women. Whether this is considered an attractive body type, or simply a healthier body type, is a matter for reflection, however. There may be more than one ideal body type, serving different purposes. It still seems as though the prevailing image of female beauty is the slender woman (although with proportionally larger breasts). Women's Response to Cultural Image The typical response to the cultural image of the ideal body type is the attempt by women to conform to it. As Rodin et al. (1985) noted in their study of women and weight: This review will lead us to assert that weight concerns and dieting are normative for most women, at least in Western society and that eating disorders may be best understood as a likely consequence of this "normative" behavior when taken to extremes (p. 254). In other words, eating disorders are one of the predictable consequences of a cultural style that places a premium on managing one's weight in order to conform to ideal body types. According to Kinoy et al. (1992), there is often a trigger that represents the point at which the individual's dieting  although chronic, still within the realm of the
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Approximate Word count = 1264
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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