Causes of Eating Disorders

There are a number of causes of eating disorders, but the two main culprits are fashion and culture. For a number of years, fashion models have been as thin as they could get, and anyone who wasn’t underweight by health standards was rejected as “too fat” to be a model. Therefore, even narrowing the focus to women hoping to be models, there is insurmountable pressure to be stick-thin.

However, this has infiltrated culture as a whole. Models are not the only ones who feel compelled to be thin. The girls who see models and recognize them as ideals of beauty feel like they are supposed to look like that. Men who see fashion models and recognize them as ideals of beauty think that the girls they date should look like that. In this way, overall societal norms become skewed, and suddenly normal girls at a normal weight feel inadequate compared to girls who are starving themselves and getting more attention from men.

Of course, there are more cause of eating disorders than just societal pressure. While culture and society have changed the standards of beauty and lowered the weight that is considered socially acceptable and socially ideal, individuals are also responsible for their actions. In one sense, one of the biggest causes of eating disorders is a feeling of powerlessness in one’s life. For example, a desperate girl who has no control over her life’s circumstances might look inward for something to feel like she has a handle on: her weight.

In fact, this is one reason it is so difficult to help people who are consumed with being thin. Because this is the only aspect of their life they feel they can control, it goes beyond simply how they think they look. They care too much about controlling something to let it go when someone mentions that they are looking too thin. In addition to seeking control, it is possible that some people are also genetically predisposed to desire a slender frame. Even so, neither a desire for control or a genetic predisposition can be entirely blamed as causes of eating disorders, because society and culture constantly barrage people with unhealthy talk about weight and body shape.

Another one of the possible causes of eating disorders is the act of going through puberty. Again, none of the prior conditions are the sole cause of developing an eating disorder, but they can push someone over the edge. When a teen is growing and her hormones are changing, she is likely to be more susceptible to depression and peer pressure than at any other point in her life. The likelihood of becoming a victim of an eating disorder is much higher when one is going through physical changes (some of them not always positive), emotional changes, and spending time around others who will invariably try to put you down to make themselves feel better.

One of the other big causes of eating disorders is someone who doesn’t like herself. A woman who has low self-esteem might deliberately cause herself harm by developing an eating disorder.