One of the issues that most holds my interest at the moment is that of body image in teenagers, girls especially. The dramatic, and frankly dangerously unrealistic ideals of either ‘skinny’ or ‘curvy’ body types currently forced onto young girls have such strong impacts on how they view themselves and can have very damaging effects. 

A main source of these high expectations is the media, home to females such as Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid. Here we have two clear examples of strong women with flourishing careers known majorly for their appearance. While Kylie has the ‘hourglass figure’, that of wide curves and impossibly tiny waist, Gigi’s body shows a very different but equally difficult to achieve standard. 

Both extremes produce very bad outcomes in the younger generation of today. Two lifestyle choices the Kardashian’s have encouraged are ‘waist trainers’ and ‘Fit tea’, and though both may help achieve their bodies they have been deemed unnecessary for a healthy lifestyle. Despite the fact girls aiming for their perfect body type could do better than waist trainers and Fit tea, they could also do a lot worse. 

This leads me onto the main topic of my article: eating disorders. How they are too common; too often disregarded or silenced by society; and have no logical reason to hold so much power over so many minds. One concept that seems to be very difficult to grasp about eating disorders is that they are not just ‘diets’. Although more often than not they stem from wanting to lose or control weight, they link back to much more than that and that is why they are so strong and so so harmful.

First, here are some statistics for eating disorders in the UK:

more than 725000 people are affected in the UK alone

6.4% adults show signs of an ED, and almost 25% of these are male

overall about 90% of people with an ED are girls

ED admissions have increased by about 34% since 2005

On top of this, there are a lot of things people don’t know about eating disorders, or facts that would fall outside of what people assume is true about them. For example, despite the stereotypical age of those suffering being adolescence, cases have been reported of children as young as six to people in their 70s. Another fact that is contrary to popular belief is that anorexia and bulimia are not the most common; the majority of people fall into the ‘EDNOS’ category, otherwise known as Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. This included anyone who did not fit all the symptoms of either anorexia or bulimia. However, it was pointed out by several studies that a large amount of people in this categories could be said to have binge eating disorder, or BED. 

Binge eating can consist of eating much extremely fat; eating until feeling uncomfortably full; eating when not hungry and feeling guilt about overeating. It is often linked to other mental illnesses and has been known to stem during recovery of anorexia or bulimia. People who have suffered from BED described it as ‘uncontrollable’ and ‘embarrassing’, saying it is ‘all they think about’. 

Research shows that of those suffering from either bulimia or anorexia, almost half make a full recovery. However, for both around a fifth remain chronically ill. Anorexia had the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder at 20%, and studies show that bulimia is linked to many other medical conditions. Despite the fact that this proves the possibility of recovery, it also highlights the very real and very devastating truths about the severity and dangers of eating disorders. Even though media is not the only cause and, as I mentioned before, very often these disorders have less to do with weight and body image than you would think, it is still a huge point of pressure placed on teens today. Moreover, it is a cause that we can control; so rather than advocating unachievable goals it’s time to spread acceptance and normalise all variety of body types.