Eating Disorders

Although eating disorders are clearly multifactorial in their origin—in other words, there are many different components to their development including genetic predisposition, biological vulnerability, entry into puberty, and stress (Lask and Bryant-Waugh 2000)—cultural influences do seem to be particularly important (Wolf 1991). The barrage of social and cultural messages about maintaining a low weight, and equating thinness with beauty, exerts enormous pressure on young women (Fallon, Katzman, and Wooley 1993). For those who have particularly low self-esteem, one means of feeling better about themselves is to conform to what society maintains as "looking good." This is exemplified by the fact that in the 1970s the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average U.S. woman. In the 1990s the difference rose to 23 percent. In the twenty-first century, images of models are computer modified to the point where the idealized body shape and size is virtually impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, the vulnerable strive to do so.