Anorexia

A detailed Summary of Anorexia

Living in a society in which many young girls strive to resemble the waif models

that are plastered on the cover of magazines, many have suffered an on going

battle with eating disorders. Anorexia means lack of appetite for food, although this is not

the case with many anorexics, they are hungry, however, they learn to control their

hunger pangs (Landau). Anorexia, a life-threatening eating disorder, is centered on self-starvation and has many detrimental side effects on the sufferer.

Anorexia nervosa is considered the woman's disease mostly affecting girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Only about six percent of boys are affected. It is estimated that one-half to one percent of females in the U.S. develop anorexia and ninety percent of these cases are adolescent young women, although children as young as seven and women up into their eighties have been diagnosed (The Nation's Voice). Anorexia is not solely about self-starvation, it is about filling a need and feeling in control. It is the only way that people with anorexia can feel in control of their own lives.

Anorexia begins as a simple diet to lose a few pounds and often losing five to ten

Often times an anorexic has a close-nit family who is extremely involved in one

ideas" (Landau 24-25). She is a compliant friend, daughter and student. In general anorexics are not content with who they are and in order to live up to the vast expectations that are put on them they feel as though they need to satisfy the people in their lives.

Anorexics are well-liked individuals striving to be successful any way possible.

orexic becomes obsessed with food. She lives vicariously through the people who are close to her by cooking exquisite meals and encourage that they overeat. She is a perfectionist and wants the kitchen to be kept neat and organized at all times. Shannon, a twenty-eight-year-old anorexic, bakes cookies and cakes for her husband on a weekly basis, yet she never takes a bite. These young girls design their own eating rituals to stretch the mental effect of the small amount of food they allow themselves to consume. Patti, a young woman who suffered from anorexia for two years, ate nothing but two cream filled cookies a day for a seven week time period. She considered the first cookie of the day to be breakfast and lunch, and the second cookie was dinner. She would cut the first cookie into small pieces and savor each morsel throughout the day; she continued the same ritual with the second cookie, and called it dinner (Landau).

Despite their disgust of food, ninety percent of these young women binge to cover their feelings of loneliness, which develop after they have pushed away their support system (Landau). After binging she feels psychological discomfort, hates herself and is frightened that she is now out of control. To relieve the guilt that she feels she throws up every last morsel that was taken in. Laurie, a seventeen-year old girl, tells how she felt when she got away with purging: "But after my mother left the room, I felt a

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Approximate Word count = 1267
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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