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Originally posted by discodamage:
three stone is the diffence between fat and not-fat. size 18 to size a size 10.

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Originally posted by kovacs:

Isn't it a mental illness related to eating habits and attitudes to food, then?

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Anorexia is related to eating food - or, more precisely, to not eating food! - in as much as starving is the way to control your body size and, some say, your environment.

It is not a dietary quirk, and it's not about food. It's about perceived body shape. If you ask someone to show you the width of their hips by holding their hands apart, most people will get it right or slightly underestimate. Most anorexics will overestimate, often by several inches.

I read an interview, earlier today, with the girl who plays Moe in East Enders. She developed anorexia at the age of nine, having decided that "thin=successful". At 23, she weighed six stone. [Information: 6 stone is very very thin]. She bought kids' clothes, a size 6 being too large for her, and her periods stopped for two years.

Admittedly, actresses are subject to even more appearance-related pressure than most of us, but I feel her story makes the point fairly well. Quote: "thin=successful".

It's weird, all right I got down to six and a half stone (I'm 5'8"), no periods for a year - and people kept complimenting me on how slim I was!
Bonkers.

Heh, I don't have that problem now ....

AG
[edited for qualifiers & typos]

My sister can't buy the clothes that she likes at the Gap because they don't sell her size. Well, why not? Not everyone is a perfect size 8 (i've no idea what that is on your side of the pond).

When I was about 15, runway models were all a size 8, now models have to be a size 0-2. Why? Apparently one designer said it was so that the clothes looked like they were still on the hanger. That's sick. So, if you have these models who are all a size 1, then all the Hollywood actresses want to be that size as well, because otherwise they won't get the designers dresses for whatever gala they're going to. Then you have all the young girls watching tv or reading magazines who see these other women who are barely there and they want to emulate them. It drives me nuts.

People are all different sizes. Thats just the way the world is. But the problem with society is the fact that skinny = beautiful. And it doesn't always. Sure, being obese is bad for you, so you lose weight and eat healthier, but you don't have to be a toothpick. Super skinny (when it's unnatural) isn't healthy either. I think women look much more beautiful when they don't look like a stick figure, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

As for the stalking thing. No one stalks me either. I can stalk you guys if you want to stalk me?

Damo: don't you owe me a disc as well? or you can wait til you move to this side of the pond.

Speaking of which: froopy, now we can maybe have a 3 person meet

edit: and you know what else? even after losing 10lbs and keeping it off, i'd still like to lose about 20lbs.

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Originally posted by Amy:
I have to agree with CB, if you are a certain weight, you're definitely not going to fit into certain things, even if you're not nec. fat. I know that when i was at my heaviest, I couldn't wear certain stores clothes. Now I can. (Although, I still have problems with button down shirts. Why do they always open inbetween buttons? If you buy a larger shirt, it's too big everywhere else. Drives me mad)

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Hola Amy!

Button-down shirts do that to me too: It's a right bugger. I remember a very very early post of mine which commiserated with you about your mammary issues: I have similarly annoying boobs, which I detest and loathe, and which don't match up with the rest of me, and which I might have hacked off by a medically qualified person, if I can save up the several thousand pounds needed to make this so.

Mr A is trying to be supportive and open-minded about the idea, but he's obviously a bit alarmed by it. I don't blame him; I'm a bit alarmed myself. I mean, what sort of choice is that? Comedy breasts, or invasive 4 hour surgery and post-operative pain for three months, repositioned nipples (yes, actually removed and then stitched back on somewhere else) and potentially massive and life-long scars.

I know an element of justification and explanation is probably asked for when you go private: but I suspect there's more of a show-me-the-money mentality, whereby I can be wooshed in, deliver a 30 second precis of my predicament, and be in and out of the operating theatre before you can say string bikini.

Edit to avoid sounding foreign.

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Originally posted by Cherry:

...anorexia is a mental illness, not an eating habit or an attitude to food! People die of it. It is totally about body image. Anorexics look at their skinny ribs and see fat.

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I think this is a little general. You are right that anorexia is a mental illness, but I think to say that it is entirely about body image is wrong. Yes, some anorexia sufferers look at their bodies and see fat where there isn't, but this is a form of body dysmorphia, which is something slightly different, so far as I understand it. I think that something that is often not considered is that anorexia (and bulimia) are forms of control. For young (interestingly middle class) girls especially, who may feel that they have a fair amount of pressure and expectations laid upon them, eating becomes one thing that they are able to control, and while they may not start off with the intention of developing an eating disorder, the pleasure gained from the sense of self-control can often be a factor in these types of illnesses.

I did say that - er, somewhere shortly after the bit you quoted. Can't say I'd choose "pleasure" as the appropriate word, but, while I was diligently sticking to 400 calories a day max and fucking up my reproductive system for ever, I felt strangely clean. Well, I suppose a really sick person could say I was on a year-long fast

I felt it necessary to generalise. Eating/body-dysmorphic disorders are poorly understood - in general - and I was trying my damnedest to explain things in reasonably appropriate terms.

Maybe I laboured the point somewhat(!), having been very successfully goaded. I'm inexpressibly grateful to Amy for having posted a normal & unhysterical version of what I've been trying to say!

Phew.
I'll stalk you, if you like. I'll send you chips & milky Starbucks! And all those new-fangled Galaxy bars

Cx

PS: I have that button problem, too, but it's not caused by huge tits Bloody swimmer's back, grr!

[edited: got my stalking the wrong way round! No natural talent for it, clearly.]

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Originally posted by ben:
especially when compared to the one garment you're going to be wearing 24/7 for the rest of your life and which I'd urge you to think twice about getting altered in the way you're planning.

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Originally posted by Boy Racer:
It seems quite sad to me that you find any part of your body, especially something as part of you as your breasts Astro, as wrong. It's not like they're a beer gut/love handles.

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It’s a respectable theory that socialising is one of our species strategies for survival, and the urge to conform is one of the impulses that the species is hard-wired for. That isn’t to say we can’t then apply our intellect to any such impulses and make alternative decisions; assuming we recognise when we are being influenced. It is to say that that the two forces are there in human nature and asserting such influence happens does not mean that either one holds a simplistic and reductive view of human nature, or that people who are wittingly or otherwise influenced by social pressures, are weak-minded.

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Originally posted by ziggy:
As people have said here, though, not every decision about looking good or feeling good with your body is made under undue influence, and influenced or not, surely its a bit 'thought-police' to question the right of a compis mentis adult to do with their body what they wish.

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Originally posted by ziggy:
It is a well accepted fact that peoples’ body image is affected by media representations, surely? What is the advertising industry about if not about that?

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"Accepted facts" should perhaps be questioned. Certainly, the idea that body image is "affected" by "media representations" is too broad to be very meaningful. It's like saying that viewers are "affected" by "media violence". How are they affected, what do you mean by the category "media representations" or "violence" -- this contains any number of variations, all of which will be received and responded to differently by people in different social categories and different contexts, usw.

Of course, this is opening up issues that take media scholars books to debate, and we do have to have simpler, shorter formulae for purposes such as this: it would be ridiculous to demand that everyone who talked about media and audience was well-read in the history of such debates.

Still, I don't think "people are affected by media representations" is specific enough to be useful. As for advertising, arguably its purpose is to encourage the consumer to choose between brands, not to create a need that was absolutely not there before. Although I'm sure such a need has been encouraged and prompted by advertising at certain points, eg. perhaps Lifebuoy soap and "B.O." I'm not sure if B.O. was a widely-used term before that, or if it was something people worried unduly about.

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Originally posted by ziggy:
It is a well accepted fact that peoples’ body image is affected by media representations, surely? What is the advertising industry about if not about that?

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1) I think it's a common myth perpetuated by people looking for someone else to blame for problems. The fact that a number of people here have dismissed that idea rather undoes the possibility that it's a commonly accepted fact.

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Originally posted by Thorn Davis:
In answer to your question advertising is about raising awareness of a product or a brand.

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I'm glad you said that.

Thought-police wasn’t the best expression to use, but I couldn’t think of another term. I hope I suggested it tentatively as I meant is as a comment, not a personal accusation against anyone in particular. I was trying to take the point beyond the personal to a more general point.

What crossed my mind is that any comments that suggest the person doesn’t need a cosmetic operation automatically suggests some sort of value judgement. I was thinking of the general ideas behind how we see our bodies and what we do to them. People often make a distinction between need and want in discussing decisions about changes to our bodies. That distinction surely implies a form of value judgement?

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Originally posted by ziggy:
Thought-police wasn’t the best expression to use, but I couldn’t think of another term. I hope I suggested it tentatively as I meant is as a comment, not a personal accusation against anyone in particular. I was trying to take the point beyond the personal to a more general point.

What crossed my mind is that any comments that suggest the person doesn’t need a cosmetic operation automatically suggests some sort of value judgement.

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Originally posted by kovacs:
"Accepted facts" should perhaps be questioned. Certainly, the idea that body image is "affected" by "media representations" is too broad to be very meaningful. It's like saying that viewers are "affected" by "media violence". How are they affected, what do you mean by the category "media representations" or "violence" -- this contains any number of variations, all of which will be received and responded to differently by people in different social categories and different contexts, usw.

Of course, this is opening up issues that take media scholars books to debate, and we do have to have simpler, shorter formulae for purposes such as this: it would be ridiculous to demand that everyone who talked about media and audience was well-read in the history of such debates.

Still, I don't think "people are affected by media representations" is specific enough to be useful. As for advertising, arguably its purpose is to encourage the consumer to choose between brands, not to create a need that was absolutely not there before. Although I'm sure such a need has been encouraged and prompted by advertising at certain points, eg. perhaps Lifebuoy soap and "B.O." I'm not sure if B.O. was a widely-used term before that, or if it was something people worried unduly about.

Anyway, to summarise, I don't think we can generalise about the extent to which different people are affected by the multitude of very different "media representations" in a diverse range of different social contexts.

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I didn’t express myself overly clearly. If I edited the post I would rewrite it to make it more general and not ‘body image’ specifically. But having said that, I personally do believe that body image is affected by media images, along with other sources, too, of course (though media is now almost a blanket term for everything we read and here as we move about’). I do not believe that the media, as if it is some sort of autonomous entity, is responsible for the sins of the world, by any means. I cannot quote you my sources, but I have read a fair bit about it over the years; albeit in popular science magazines and popular physiology books, which I know are flawed and can gloss data to their own needs.

However, the general tenor of what I have read is that advertising does influence people; that it is a bit more than helping people make informed choices between brands. As to the ‘create a need’, again I cannot remember exactly what I read on that, but product placement and that business of repeating and using new names until they become so familiar that punters think they have always known that brand, is a practice of advertisers, which would imply they expect it to work since they are spending millions on doing it.

I also know that studies over the last few decades have shown that advertising is not as powerful as it was once thought to be, and as the population becomes ever more sophisticated and knowledgeable, its influence is diminishing. But I used just that one area of the media as an example that suggested people are influenced by what they see around them to some extent and that it can’t be dismissed out of hand.

I think violence is a different issue. Whilst I recall reading studies which suggested real evidence of the influence of advertising; I have to say that I what I have read about the media and violence has always pointed out that there is no evidence that stands up either for or against its influence.

I have probably reached the limit of my knowledge about this now, as gleaned from popular science. I also know that your understanding of the media, at least in some facets, is going to be very much more informed and developed than mine. I am happy to learn more about it; especially as a lot of my reading is outdated.

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Originally posted by ben:
Ziggy you have won - I am so angry now that it is impossible for me to post anything coherent. Well done.

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Originally posted by Thorn Davis:
1) I think it's a common myth perpetuated by people looking for someone else to blame for problems. The fact that a number of people here have dismissed that idea rather undoes the possibility that it's a commonly accepted fact.

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I agree that it is very easy to find an ‘excuse’ for poor behaviour and bad decisions and so avoid responsibility for one’s own actions, and that it does seem a very modern trend to do so. It is not helped by the growth in popular psychology which gives people the vocabulary and apparent justification to carry on making excuses for themselves.

Having said that, there are some clear cases, such as teenage anorexia, where it would be unjust to accuse someone that young of deliberately and consciously looking to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

I wonder, though, whether admitting someone has been influenced by something into unwise/poor behaviour means we are accepting that they don’t have to do anything about it, or grow out of it? The two are not exclusive. When I say I agree that poor body image can be influenced by continued representations of slim as beautiful; that does not mean I am also saying the people concerned don’t have to take responsibility at some point for themselves and the way they feel.

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Originally posted by ziggy:
there are some clear cases, such as teenage anorexia, where it would be unjust to accuse someone that young of deliberately and consciously looking to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

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I don't think anyone's saying that about anoroxics - teenage or adult.