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Government Should Ban Skinny Models To Curb Anorexia, Say Researchers
smoothjazz writes "Governments are justified to prevent very skinny models from walking the catwalk and ban photographs and advertisements suggesting that extreme thinness is attractive, according to a group of researchers who found that social and cultural environment influences on young women is largely responsible for the spread of chronic eating disorder."
My wife is anorexic. She's stable, and she's become a successful practicing MD. Understanding the problem doesn't cure it.
She grew up in a home with two half-sisters under a frequently single mother who went through many marriages. Her (now also anorexic) mother has career success, ridiculously low self esteem, and she married at least two physically abusive men. The worst of them was a churchgoing man who physically abused all his daughters/stepdaughters and repeatedly raped his own daughter (thankfully my wife did not endure that). He hid it from his wife/my mother-in-law and everyone else (except the girls) for several years. When my mother-in-law finally understood it was happening, she divorced him as soon as she felt she could without physical abuse as a repercussion. I don't think that was right away. And because of fear, he was never reported or punished. I don't think he even quit attending church.
My wife had no control of her life in her childhood. She could control her appearance. She became anorexic to give fulfill her need for a sense of control in her life.
Banning the ads would help reduce the draw of that manifestation of the need for control. But the root problem is very commonly associated with domestic abuse and/or unhealthy childhoods like the one my wife grew up in.