Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous Generation Thinner and Thinner and Thinner8230 Generation Thinner and Thinner and Thinner8230 Seven million females in the United States have eating disorders, and the number keeps rising. Even harsher is the fact that girls as young as six, are now being admitted to clinics for these disorders. Yet it hardly seems surprising, given that we live in a society where the norm is the bombardment of our population with cultural icons of emaciated female bodies. The sad truth is that eating disorders affect us all, whether or not we, as individuals, have a disorder ourselves. The inescapable reality is that each of us knows someone with an eating disorder. As a teenager, these disorders are a part of my life and something I must contend with on a daily basis. At least twenty of my friends are anorexic and/or bulimic. I constantly wonder how many more of my friends will be that way tomorrow? Or the day after that? I am scared of what the impending future will bring. The incidence of eating disorders is rising not only in American preadolescents, but across the globe. What does this mean for the future of my generation and that of future generations as we grow up with lives that consist of self-starvation and self-induced vomiting? Is society’s intense pressure to conform to the unrealistic standards of feminine beauty too great for us to contend with? At the rate the number of eating disorders is increasing, the answer appears to be yes. Despite our knowledge of what eating disorders do to the body, we continue the self-destructive behavior. Like smoking, we know the consequences of what we are doing, but we do it anyway. There is not a pin-pointable cause for eating disorders, but the disorders appear to be a result of an interaction of social, psychological, and biological factors. Of these factors, I believe the social and psychological factors are the most prominent because of the media industry. The female population has fallen victim to the unfortunate set of physical appearance standards that the media has created. Being thin has become a media fed preoccupation for the female, dwelling on the concept that thin is better. The message she is given is that beauty, success, happiness, and self-worth are acquired by being thin. From the fashion industry, magazines, television, and movies, to other visual media sources, something is going to have to change for progress to be made to reduce the number of eating disorders. With the image of “thinness” staring us in the eyes, I believe that progress towards a healthy physical image will be hard to reach. Our eyes are trained to view being thin as being fit. Yet, our vision is so skewed that we can not see the difference between being fit, and being at an unhealthy weight. I mostly blame the media for our skewed vision because they feed us the images our eyes absorb. If only the unhealthy images could be replaced with strong healthy ones, someday we might be able to accept our bodies. I fear that if we cannot find a way to decrease the occurrence of eating disorders, one day the majority of females will suffer from one. It is said that the children are our future. What kind of future will there be if eating disorders rule our female populous? But, for the present I worry about my friends and wonder if they will ever win the battle. Bibliography: Word Count: 565
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