Obssessed with your body

You’re standing in the magazine isle at your local CVS and as you look at various fashion magazines, you remember the three slices of deliciously cheesy pizza you had for lunch. Those three slices now seem to sit in your stomach like a bulge that will never go away. As you flip through the pages, you start to feel slightly panicked; no one in the magazines seems to look the way you do. All of the models are tall, flawless, and thin  to the point of looking emaciated.
If this comes close to anything you have ever felt or experienced before, you are not alone. Models nowadays are overly skinny, all angles and bones. All too often you hear about another model who had died. For example, Luisel Ramos died of a heart failure while she was participating in a fashion show during Fashion Week in Montevideo, Uruguay. She was reported to be surviving on a diet of lettuce leaves and Diet Coke for the three months leading to her death. Although her death prompted a set minimum body mass index of 18 for all models participating in the Madrid Fashion Week of 2006, and pushed Italian fashion designers to ban size zero models from the runway, ultra skinny models are still the norm in most parts of the world.
“It’s a big problem,” said Fashion Marketing teacher Jessica Raynor.  “But they are starting a change. Here at AHS, I haven’t run into that.”  
The problem with this situation is not just that hundreds of supermodels are starving themselves to fit into the popular image of beauty, but also that thousands of teenage girls  are doing the same.
The Center for the Advancement of Health did a recent study involving 8,000 adolescents that showed that 55 percent of girls were dieting to lose weight at any given time. Whether consciously or not, most of us do try to watch for what we eat .
Research shows that one out of every hundred young women between the ages of 10 and 20 have anorexia. Four percent of them have bulimia, and the use of diet pills by high school girls is at 14.2 percent.
Both anorexia and bulimia tend to affect girls more than guys, but 10% of the people with eating disorders are guys. “Girls are more self-conscious about their bodies than guys are,” said Bem Perel, a junior. Guys with eating disorders also tend to focus more on athletic appearance or success than on just looking thin.
“I think the only reason that some people are not considered anorexic or bulimic is because they’re afraid of people finding out,” said freshman Banna Gebremichael.
The defining symptoms of anorexia are intense and irrational fear of body fat and weight gain, a determination to become thinner and thinner, and a misperception of body weight and shape to the extent that the person feels fat even when underweight. Anorexics usually are noticed when they begin to lose massive amounts of body weight.
“Anorexia is a disease where the victim wants total control of their weight, exclusive control of their eating habits,” said Mrs. Wheeler.
Mrs. Wheeler is one of the counselors who has dealt with eating disorders before. Due to students keeping eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia a secret, it is usually hard to find out if a student has a problem. Ms Wheeler has run into 2 girls from Annandale High in the past 4 to 5 years who were suffering from anorexia. Both of the girls got better and continued on with their schooling.
Bulimia nervosa is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by overeating, often referred to as bingeing, and then purging, or making yourself throw up to get rid of the calories consumed. A person with bulimia fears gaining weight, yet has an uncontrollable compulsion to binge on foods.
“Bulimia is harder to notice, because in many cases, the student will not show any symptoms and will try very hard to keep it a secret. Unfortunately, they are usually successful,” said Mrs. Wheeler. She went on to add that only when a concerned friend or a parent called to report signs of bulimia did she get involved.
“You don’t often run into just one thing or another.,” said Mrs Wheeler, “It’s like a varied spectrum where there are sign and symptoms of both.”
According to mental health experts, one of the reasons that bulimia and anorexia are so common in teenagers is because the feelings during adolescence of being overwhelmed and powerless can bring about a desire to maintain control in some part of life, such as control of body weight. Being in total control of what you eat can give an adolescent a feeling of powerfulness. Therefore, the period of adolescence may be when anorexia or bulimia first arises.
The sad part is that these compulsive behaviors do not just go away as a teenagers grow older. An anorexic or bulimic cannot simply start eating or stop themselevs from throwing up. These eating disorders are medically defined because they are serious problems that usually require medical attention.
Although the cause of all eating disorders can’t be blamed on fashion models, there is no doubt that teenage girls tend to want to be like them. After all, the very definition of the word model is “a standard or example for imitation or comparison.” And when girls see models with the same body structure everywhere, they can’t help but want the same.
“It’s sad, but it isn’t like the media is helping it any. I guess there is initiative to counter anorexia in the media sometimes and the ban on underweight models during Milan’s fashion week, but it isn’t enough, and the media is what mainly drives the teenage society,” said junior Anita Obasi.
However, much of the media is still focused of wafer-thin images of beauty and are hesitant to change what has been for so long now the norm. Changes are starting to happen but slowly, and for many young people out there, it won’t be soon enough.