ng disorders, therefore, have some common denominators but also remain complex. The causes range from everything from sexual abuse to the social forces that construct certain female ideals that most women can simply not live up to. Then, of course, there is a blending of causes. Overall, of course, while we must emphasize personal problems, it is necessary to keep an eye on social messages. Feminist-writer Naomi Wolf has discussed how cultural ideals for beauty emphasize a slender body shape typical of prepubertal development that is unattainable for most adolescents and women after puberty. Thus, adolescent girls may engage in excessive dieting in an attempt to meet these unattainable cultural ideals even though they are not over-weight. In a chapter entitled "Hunger" in The Beauty Myth, Wolf writes: ...female fat is the subject of public passion, and women feel guilt about female fat, because we implicitly recognize that under the myth, women's bodies are not our own but society's, and that thinness is not a private aesthetic, but hunger a social concession exacted by the community. A cultural fixation of female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. (Wolf, p.187) In light of all of these factors, it is possible to make some generalizations regarding a significant portion of eating disorders. We know that they can be, and are, compounded by the social messages that Wolf describes. But the causes obviously also run deeper into the personal realm. It appears that problem eating develops during early to middle adolescence, and that these early patterns influence later eating behaviour. Bod...
