KILLPACK 1 Hayley Killpack Camille Pack English 2010 9 March 2014 Profile A friend of my familys name is Paula.

She has known my parents for a very long time, and has told everything about her life to them. Since my subject is about how women in the media are given an unattainable idea of beauty, I thought Paula would be a perfect example. There are millions of pictures of women circulating around the world that only look the way they do because of Photoshop. Most of these women are edited to look thinner than they actually are, and, in some cases, it is physically impossible for them to be that thin. Because beauty is connected with emaciation, eating disorders have become an epidemic for men and women everywhere. In a study on fifth graders, 10 year old girls and boys told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show Friends (depts.washington.edu). Paula was born in Hurricane, Utah. In elementary school, she started taking ballet lessons, and she showed great promise. Hurricane was a very small town back then, and all Paula hoped and dreamed of was to break out and make it big on Broadway. Working tirelessly especially in her teenage years, she would dance until her toes would bleed, and her nails would fall off. In her ballet studio, there was a poster of a beautiful ballerina, and Paula wanted to be just like her. She would do anything to look thin in a

KILLPACK 2 leotard. females in aesthetic sports are found to be at the highest risk for eating disorders (depts.washington.edu). Paula has struggled with an eating disorder her whole life starting in preadolescence. This seems to be the most common time seeing as 86% report onset of eating disorder by age 20 (anad.org). This time of life is usually when people are most impressionable. They havent grown into themselves yet, and they are still trying to figure out everything. The things that they see in the media affect them significantly. There is not one specific cause of eating disorders, but it is thought to be complex and influenced by psychological, cultural, and biological factors (eatingdisorders.ucsd.org). Seeing this poster everyday just reminded Paula that she would never be skinny enough. When she was 12 or 13, Paula developed the eating disorder of Anorexia Nervosa. She had a very restrictive diet for about two years, and then her body couldnt take it anymore. She turned her Anorexia Nervosa into Bulimia Nervosa at age 16, and she has never truly recovered. Anorexia Nervosa is not the same thing as Anorexia. Anorexia is simply the loss of appetite for food, whereas Anorexia Nervosa is a mental illness characterized by either a significantly reduced appetite or complete aversion to eating (medicalnewstoday.com). This disorder causes the patient to lose weight faster than is considered healthy for their particular height and age. People suffering from this

KILLPACK 3 disorder often have an intense fear of gaining weight even though that may be the best thing for their health. Anorexia Nervosa is the third most common chronic illness among teenagers (medicalnewstoday.com). Bulimia Nervosa on the other hand is different. Patients binge on food regularly. Binging involves eating large amounts of high-calorie foods over a short period of time (medicalnewstoday.com). may eat so fast that they may consume 3,000 session. After binging, the overwhelming feeling of is accompanied by such as self-induced exercising, not eating, and While binging, the person can hardly taste it, and calories or more in one person feels an guilt and shame, which compensatory actions, vomiting, over overusing diuretics,

enemas, or laxatives (medicalnewstoday.com). Both disorders are extremely dangerous and can have lasting effects on health, which was the case for Paula. Maybe our cultures actions and pictures arent the only reason that children under 12 years of age were hospitalized 119 percent more in 2006 than in 1999, but during this time, Photoshop became more prominent in magazines and on television (cnn.com). It may just be a coincidence that eating disorders became more common at the same time that flawless physique became a permanent fixture everywhere, but it is a pretty unlikely one if you ask me. It is interesting to try to understand exactly why she developed these eating disorders because she actually had an ideal childhood. She was the fourth of seven

KILLPACK 4 children- three sisters and three brothers. Her mother was a middle aged, plump woman, and her father was a doctor. Her parents didnt pressure her as a child to be thin or to be the best ballerina- those desires came from somewhere else, perhaps the media. She spent her summers running through fields and jumping in ponds. She was in no way an unhappy child. She must have been influence by outside factors. When Paula was in her 20s, her brother and his wife asked my parents to intervene. They invited her over to their house and asked her to get some professional help. Surprisingly, she was relatively compliant. She agreed to check into Cottonwood Hospitals Bulimic Ward, and my parents attended several classes with her. One of the nurses said that her Bulimia was so bad that her esophagus could rupture at any time. That does not sound fun in the least. My mom remembers eating dinner with her, and she would eat a relatively normal amount of food, and then promptly excuse herself to go to the bathroom. It got to the point where she didnt even have to stick her finger in her mouth; she could throw up at will. In some of the classes, the teachers explained that the gene that makes people more susceptible to eating disorders is the same gene that makes people more susceptible to alcoholism and anxiety disorders. If we knew that someone was susceptible to alcoholism, would we give him or her a drink? If we wouldnt do that, why would we expose the people more susceptible to eating disorders to images of unreasonably thin beautiful women?

KILLPACK 5 Paulas original dream was to become a dancer, but she also wanted to have a family. Her first husband was a hotshot producer whom she thought would help her break through to Hollywood. This man turned out to just be a perverted old man, and they divorced six months after the wedding. She then went to work for Norwegian Cruise Line teacher exercise classes, still hoping to become a famous dancer. She is still extremely thin to this day. Getting her Masters degree in Exercise Physiology, Paula has always been obsessed with exercising. We all know that exercising is good for the body, but we also learn from Hippocrates that everything in excess is opposed to nature (thinkexist.com). Paula was exercising so much that her dreams of settling down and having a family were destroyed. After divorcing her third husband at 52, she gave up her dreams of ever having her own child. The fact of the matter is that she doesnt have the body fat to carry a baby if the damage done to her body from her eating disorders was not severe enough that she could even conceive a child. Imagine how different Paulas life could have been had she not seen the pictures of women in the media strikingly underweight, and if she had never seen the poster of the thin, beautiful ballerina in her dance studio. Not that these things alone caused the eating disorders, but they sure didnt help a dancer already susceptible to self-image issues and this type of mental illness. It is shear bad luck maybe that her dream of being a dancer didnt come true, but her dream of being a wife and mother may have been plausible had she had a healthy self-image. I believe that she would be much happier today had she not had to deal with and still deal with the horrible tragedy of an eating disorder.

KILLPACK 6

Works Cited "ANAD." Eating Disorders Statistics National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2014. Eating Disorders Program." Brain Imaging Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. "Everything in Excess Is Opposed by Nature.." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. Harb, Cindy. "Child Eating Disorders on the Rise." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. "Teen Health and the Media." Teen Health and the Media. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2014.