Text 8 beauty of the body

The concept of beauty is defined in Webster’s New World Dictionary as 1) the quality of being pleasing, as in form etc; 2) a thing with this quality; 3) good looks; 4) a very attractive person, feature etc.

The concept of beauty was first described by the Ancient Greeks. The classical values pushed order and serenity. The Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates also attempted to define beauty. They thought of objects of nature as being inherently beautiful: beauty is inside the object, “The beauty within an object is its pure and ideal beauty.”

In our present time beauty no longer resides inside. It is completely outlying. The road to become a beauty is a long, hard and most importantly thin road. Being thin is the biggest emphasis on people today. In earlier times fuller figured women were the ideal picture. Now you have to be a twig to be considered beautiful. Society keeps pushing the emphasis on being thin. Through magazines and ads urging to lose weight, hundreds of diets and phone numbers are given to aid in this fight against fat. They are being nothing but deleterious. Also in magazines the skinny models who are the picture of perfect health in their glamorous clothes and makeup are published. Long thin legs and high cheekbones. Television is also a major contributor to this obsession people have today with losing weight. Turn on the television and what is seen? Youthful bony models and actors running around. Giant billboards are a constant reminder of what’s beautiful and what’s not.

It’s a sick obsession which has become too serious, to the point of death even. People are feeling corpulent and are dying to be thin, literally. It all begins with youth. Adolescence is the most vulnerable point in anyone’s life. This is where it all starts. Being a teenager is not easy and there are many pressures that they face daily. The feeling of being anomalous can be a disaster. If teenagers feel that anything around them is out of control, they may feel distressed. It is important for families not to place any importance on their appearance. Fellow students at school are also part of the problem. One child has a faster metabolism than another. One is constantly reminded how much lower he or she is because they aren’t as thin as someone else. Teenagers should not be expected to be perfect. They need to be encouraged to be themselves and to be proud of who they are, so that they will not experience any pressures from their peers. If they are happy with themselves and loved for what they are, they will be less likely to try and attain society’s unattainable ‘ideal’ body image, because they will accept their bodies just the way they are. For men, they want to be the big muscled, winsome male that is pursued in just about every commercial.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of people will never be what the ideal image of beauty is. They are not a minority as they are led to believe. All the talk, advertisements and television repetition of this matter lead people to feel beneath others, it gives them a low self esteem and leaves them vulnerable. When this happens, eating disorders develop. People think that eating disorders are bizarre and out of the ordinary but in actuality they are quite common.

What by definition is an eating disorder? An eating disorder is defined as eating for the wrong reason. Not because of hunger and feeding a body. It’s eating out of anxiety, depression or just because. Patients are usually surreptitious about the disorder, not wanting a lot of attention. The most well-known eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Those affected are mostly young women and girls. People with these eating disorders often have a psychological profile of low self-esteem and feelings of helplessness. They tend to blame their problems оn their weight and consequently develop and overwhelming drive to lose weight. Eating disorders are devastating behavioral maladies brought on by a complex interplay of factors, which may include emotional and personality disorders, family pressures, and a culture in which there is an overabundance of food and an obsession with thinness. Although anorexia was first defined as a medical problem in 1873, descriptions of self-starvation have been found in medieval writings.

Anorexia nervosa is the disorder in which self-starvation takes place. With this disorder at least fifteen percent to as much as sixty percent of the normal body weight is lost. Anorexia nervosa is the third most common chronic illness in adolescent women, and is estimated to occur in 0,5 percent to three percent of all teenagers. Anorexia usually occurs in adolescence. However, over the past forty years, while the incidence has been stable in teenagers it has increased in young adult women. Anorexia nervosa often includes a feeling of being disconsolate, irritability, and withdrawal.

Bulimia nervosa is the diet-binge-purge disorder. Bulimia, which is more common than anorexia, is characterized by cycles of bingeing and purging. Bulimia nervosa usually begins early in adolescence when young women attempt restrictive diets, fail, and react by binge eating. Patients may revert to severe dieting, which cycles back to bingeing if the patient does not go on to become anorexic. The person feels out of control while eating. Even though bulimics put up a cheerful front, they are often depressed, lonely, ashamed and empty inside. Friends may describe them as competent and fun to be with, but underneath, where they hide their guilty secrets, they are hurting. Feeling unworthy, they have treat difficulty talking about their feelings, which almost always include anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and deeply buried anger.

Some of many disorders are malnutrition, which is caused by undereating or overeating. The word malnutrition indicates deficiency in energy, protein and micronutrients (e.g. vitamin A, iodine and iron) either singularly or in combination. It can cause severe health risks, including, but not limited to, respiratory infections, kidney failure, blindness, heart attack and death. Dehydration is caused by the depletion or lack of intake of fluids in the body. Symptoms include dizziness, blurred vision, passing out, heart pounding and headaches. One study indicated that women with eating disorders tended to be less optimistic, to worry more, and to deny negative issues when solving problems than were women without eating disorders. In general, women with eating disorders had a much more difficult time dealing with stress than other women. Such people tend to have unstable moods, thought patterns, behaviour, and self-images. They cannot stand to be alone, they demand constant attention, and they have difficulty controlling impulsive behaviour.

Society today has gone astray from the thinking of Soctates and Plato. Beauty is only skin deep, and steps are being taken to achieve it. The majority are youth. Teens and children are being taught that beauty is all and thin is beauty. They are developing ailments that are harmful and eventually fatal.

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