Every hour someone dies of an eating disorder. When it comes to deadly mental illnesses, eating disorders are the second deadliest. Women are most impacted. 20 million American women and approximately 140.000 Dutch women are struggling with this illness.

Types of eating disorders
According to the NHS, the 3 most diagnosed types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. Other specified feeding or eating disorder is the most common type of eating disorder. This is when a person’s symptoms do not specifically fit the first 3 types. Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder is when someone avoids certain foods, limits how much they eat, or does both.

Anorexia is trying to control one’s weight by not eating enough food, exercising too much, or doing both. Bulimia is losing control over how much one eats and then taking drastic action to not put on weight. Binge-eating disorder is eating large portions of food until you feel uncomfortably full.

Possible causes
While the exact cause of eating disorders is unknown, there is research to back up what could predispose a person to develop an eating disorder. Bullying, genetic predisposition, substance abuse, societal pressures, anxiety, low self-esteem, obsessive personality, perfectionism, and sexual abuse, as stated by the NHS, could all contribute to an individual’s onset of the illness.

‘The relationship between social media use and disordered eating has not been adequately explored in young adolescents,’ according to a 2019 study by the Australian New Zealand Trials Registry. In their study, they found a clear pattern of association between social media and disordered eating. In their sample of 534 girls, 51.7% of them reported disordered eating such as strict exercising and skipping meals. All of them had Tumblr, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts.

Plastic surgery has skyrocketed due to Snapchat. When requesting procedures, patients explain their wanted outcome using their Snapchat-filtered images. Clearly, social media can have a detrimentally damaging impact on people’s self-worth and self-esteem.

More Women than Men
Dr. Catherine Preston published a study in the journal Cerebral Cortex. Using Virtual Reality, both men and women saw obese and thin bodies projected onto themselves. Dr. Preston monitored their brain activity, finding that the parietal lobe was more prominently active in women than men. The study concluded that ‘women are more likely than men to experience brain activity relating to negative body perception’.

Economics
Another issue is advertising. Marketing strategies seem to target, even create, women’s insecurities. Ageing, acne, cellulite, and other natural aspects of the body are deemed to be unattractive and undesirable.

Most commercials aimed at women and girls focus on physical attractiveness. This is not the case for men. More than half of the magazines and television commercials for women use beauty as a product appeal, according to the fact sheet on ‘Media’s Effects on Girls: Body Image and Gender Identity’.

Alongside this comes the issue of the pink tax. This is a phenomenon where products marketed toward women tend to be more expensive than those marketed toward men, says the New York DCA. Financial anxiety and trauma also contribute to disordered eating.

The fashion industry regularly markets adult clothing using underage models. For example, a 13-year-old modelled for Prada’s women’s wear line in 2015. Moreover, Ralph Lauren fired a model for ‘being too fat’ whilst weighing 54 kilos. Abercrombie & Fitch does not sell XL yoga pants. And the list goes on. This advertises anorexia on a global scale—and this is without mentioning runway models.

Actress and activist Jameela Jamil speaks out about the Oscars. “Weight loss becomes an Olympic sport during awards season.” She states that many people took weight loss injections this year. She warns her audience not to shame themselves for looking different to the women they saw on screen.

Raising Awareness
To follow Jameela’s example, it is certain that using social media responsibly is a brilliant start. Sharing body-positive messaging and unfollowing harmful accounts is beneficial. All people are different. Self-awareness is crucial in filtering out good and bad messaging.

Shame researcher Brené Brown wisely says that “[Shame] needs 3 ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment.” Compassion is the key to overcoming shame. To help others and ourselves, we need to be aware of eating disorders. We need to battle the need to keep our pain in the dark. We need knowledge and understanding. Let us put our newfound information into action.

Readers, how would you go about making a change?