le psychiatric patients or the general population.
One may ask, why would a person choose to starve to death? It is clear from the technical studies that persons suffering from this illness do not believe that they are starving. Instead, part of the psychological condition is a distorted body image. Anorexics typically believe that they are fat and therefore ugly, even when an objective eye can see that they are dangerously emaciated. This faulty self-concept is evidence that the condition involves some sort of cognitive dysfunction.
What about social expectations? Do they contribute to the mindset that leads to anorexia? It is obvious that a great many of the women celebrated by the media as role models and ôideal womenö are very thin, sometimes dangerously thin. The famous model Twiggy of several decades ago comes to mind as an example, but so do many current ôsupermodels.ö Many of the latter have revealed in interviews that they regularly resort to bulimiaùconsidered another eating disorderùin order to maintain the weight demanded by their profession.
There has clearly been a change in male taste during this century compared to
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