Two Main Causes of Eating Disorders

The two main causes of eating disorders are fashion and culture. In other words, without fashion or culture, the pressure to be thin would not be so pervasive in modern society. For many years, fashion models have been as thin as possible, and people who weren’t underweight (by health standards) were considered to be “too fat” to be models. If you just focused on the world of modeling, you would see the intense pressure to be thin taking its toll.

However, this has affected more than just models. Modern culture as a whole is constantly barraged with images of very thin women, and girls who see those models and view them as ideals of beauty are conditioned to think they are supposed to look like that. Then, once men are conditioned to see fashion models as ideals of beauty, they start to think that girls they date should look that thin too. Because of this, society’s views on weight have gotten skewed, and even normal girls at a normal weight feel inadequate when they have to compare themselves to girls who are starving themselves and actually being noticed more by men.

However, there are other causes of eating disorders beyond societal pressures. Even though culture and fashion might have altered our modern perception of beauty and lowered the weight that is recognized as socially acceptable or socially ideal, in the end, we as individuals are responsible for our actions and how we interpret the input from the fashion industry. Another reason why girls often resort to eating disorders is because they need to feel like they have control over some part of their lives, and they can get a false sense of power when they are hurting their bodies.

This is a big reason why it is so challenging to help people who are desperate to be thin. If this is the only aspect of their life they feel they can control, then trying to help them doesn’t involve just helping them get back to a normal weight. These victims are too intent on controlling something in their lives to let it go when someone mentions that they are looking too thin. Plus, by this point, they are often addicted to the actions they’ve took and it’s no longer easy to reverse their habits.

One of the other major causes of eating disorders is a little thing called puberty. When a teen is getting older and her hormones begin to change, she is hit with the double whammy of being more emotional (i.e. more susceptible to depression) and simultaneously more influenced by peer pressure. The likelihood of developing an eating disorder is much greater when you are experiencing physical changes and emotional changes––plus, you’re spending time around other teens who will often try to put you down to make themselves feel better. These factors all make an eating disorder more likely.

Finally, one of the other big causes of eating disorders is that someone simply doesn’t like herself. Anyone who has low self-esteem sometimes deliberately harms herself by developing an eating disorder.