Media has a great influence on anorexia worldwide. As far as dieting and size discrimination is concerned, media plays a great role. From childhood, children know that their looks matters a lot. Very small children receive comments of how they look cute from the elders if they are slim.
This influence, children get it from televisions, as they spend most of their time watching, and a sense of who they are, develops with time. Severally, adverts on television spend much time convincing people on the best ways to loose weight and become more beautiful. Through television, people receive advice on what to use, and become more attractive through slimming.
On the tube programs, the characters used are the average and the slim men and women implying that these people have the best lives. Incase there is a big bodied character used, he or she is used to portray laziness and a person without a lifestyle. For the successful and the most powerful people, media portrays them as the slim women and the pumped up men.
In most societies, people try to show their children that inside them matters a lot, but on the other hand, media insists on the physical fitness of an individual. This becomes as a contradictory message to the young children, but the power of the media group has proved to overtake the minds of these young children leading to them to eating disorders, as they also want to become powerful people.
In all popular magazines, the photos of slim models are all over. The modeling agencies have been encouraging the anorexic women such discouraging some eating habits. For a woman to be among the contesting models, she should weigh 25% less than what a healthy woman of her age and height should weigh.
The idea of being slim to contest in the modeling, always assures people that the most beautiful woman should be slim. As the children grow, they disregard big-bodied people, and try as much as possible to maintain a slim figure, as they see from the magazines and televisions.
Some youngsters say that they do not want too much food, because they want to become models in future. Children with such notion try as much as possible and vomit after eating, as they believe that food will make them big and unattractive.
Moreover, on televisions, magazines and newspapers one would always find a diet plan for people to use so that they can lead a happier life. People are encouraged on using even the slimming pills in magazines to keep them on the right weight.
This has been proving to people that there is no place for average and big-bodied people in the society. According to some of the media messages, average and big people are bad group who lead an unhappy life. Big-bodied people are treated as unequal compared to the slim ones. Beauty, success, and power are the aspects of the slim people in most of the media channels.
Out of all those misconceptions of slimming and gaining weight, some people especially the young generation has acquired a low esteem, depression, and bad emotions such that leading to eating disorders. Although other people may be seeing them as slim, they believe they are big and unattractive hence leaving a stressful life. Some have been unable to deal with their status making things worse in their lives.