ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA

I believe in schools dress codes are better for children. They learn that clothe does not make the person it is what their personality is like. I mean look at our society today, it is all about image and how we dress.

For girl's it's even worse. It is about nails, makeup, hair, and of course lets not forget the over flaunted fact of size that our society seems to love to harp on. God forbid that a young women is over the size of 6, (and how many of us after having children can say we have that without working out butt's off, literally) she is shunted out of the public eye as being overweight, not pretty enough. I mean come on give me a break what are we teaching out children that being unhealthy skinny (as bulimia, anorexia sets in) is ok. As a society should we accept the fact that eating a good meal and throwing up afterwards is ok. I DON'T THINK SO!

Yes I know I am getting into a serious topic here but this has to be talked about as our society is based on this. I wanted to go over first the difference of anorexia and bulimia.

First anorexia nervosa is chatergorized by excessive dieting. This is motivated on the strong desire to be thin and a fear of becoming obese. Anorexics consider themselves fat no matter what their actual weight is. Even when becoming close to death anorexics will show you where on their body they are still fat and need to loose weight. In order to avoid gaining weight they will go to any attempts to avoid food or calories in order not to gain weight. An estimate 10 to 20% will result in death because of this.

Bulimia nervosa is a cycle of binge eating and then purging their food in order to rid their bodies of the calories. A binge can range from 1000 to 10000 calories and for some binging is simply a cookie. Purging methods usually involve vomiting or laxactive abuse. Other forms of purging can involve excessive exercising, fasting, use of diuretics, diet pills, enemas.

Let us not forget our friendly neighbor of both of these (notice the sarcasm) Compulsive Overeating. This is chatergorized by uncontrollable eating and consequently weight gain. Compulsive eaters use food in order to cope with stress, emotional conflict, and daily problems. Compulsive overeaters usually recognize that their eating habits are not normal and they do have a problem.

This has been going on for years now but it seems to be getting much worse as it is hitting our younger and younger generations. Teens are feeling the stress of wanting to be thin and believe boys will like them better if they are thinner. Therefore doing whatever is necessary to get this way. Here is what one teens had said regarding anorexia.

"When you're anorexic you think you're pretty cool 'cos you think you've got lots of self-control and willpower. And everyone else is weak.....you think you're a cut above the rest...because you're skinnier then everyone else." -Kyle

This blows my mind. How can this be cool and something you want to do. The more we see these movies and videos with skinny girls on their prancing around and the guys all over them this is the message we are sending to our children. This is only gonna get worse in our society today as there is no stopping the music company's and fashion shows to show us skinnier and skinnier women trying to tell us that this is how we are supposed to look.

Just think for a minute out of all your female friends (and it's starting with the men too) had "loose weight in the new year" on their resolution list?