Reply #33: Actually the media changing would help sufferers

[Nikia]

Do you think it helps me recover when I see a magazine in the grocery store telling me that I should want to lose 10 pounds and gives me a meal plan for 1200 calories? Do you think it helps me recover when I am reading the newspaper and see an article for a weight loss product along with pictures and testimonials where previously mildly overweight women lose weight and are now borderline underweight and are now so much happier with themselves? Do you think it helps me recover when the checkout clerk looks at the size of the clothes that I am buying and says that she wishes that she were that size (After all, many attractive stars are that size as are models, who are probably smaller.)? Do you think that it helps me recover when stars who are portrayed as very attractive are the same size or smaller than me in some ways (even if they are heavier in other areas)? Do you think that it helps me recover when stars who are at a healthy weight, a weight that I used to be, are called fat and unattractive in magazines? Do you think that it helps me recover when all our young female heros seem to fit an ideal body type?
As I understand it, eating disorders have increased from almost no cases to significant in third world countries once American television became popular.
My eating disorder support group recommends avoiding television and many magazines to help in recovery.
Yes, myself and other sufferers have a genetic tendency to develop this disease. People also have a genetic tendency to develop alcoholism, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Despite this, for example, the media tells us that being obese is the cause of type II diabetes and that is why children are now getting it. We need to continue to look at what environmental factors trigger anorexia and look at preventing it in the ways that we can. It is possible that some people would get it anyway, just like some people get type II diabetes without being even overweight, but if it can be prevented in a significant number of individuals we need to look at that. Writing it off as genticallly inevitable doesn't do anyone any good either.