Peeling Back the Onion: When Do People Get Eating Disorders and Who Gets Them?

      Most people start their eating disorders during their teenage years. More stress is put upon them, and they need a way to cope with it. They feel out of control. Eating disorders give them the control that they need in order to handle their lives. The teenage years are also a time when kids get interested in magazines that show off bodies in almost every advertisement. Teenagers will think, "Oh, she's so beautiful!" or "He's so muscular. I must work out in order to be like him. He's so popular and he gets all the ladies."
       Magazines have influenced how I see myself, particularly in respect to my weight and self-confidence. When a woman reads a magazine geared to her own gender, she is immediately drawn to the Diet section. While it kills her confidence levels, she still can’t put the magazine down. From my perspective, it seems like the Diet section is like female pornography. The Diet section advertises “Tips and Tricks” and “Do It Yourself” and “Look as Beautiful as the Super-Models”. It is the Diet section that dictates what is beautiful and how to achieve it if we aren’t quite as skinny as the airbrushed and photo-shopped models who only eat cubes of cheese and carrot sticks when they’re about to pass out from hunger. I used to subscribe to those kinds of magazines, but I don’t anymore because I realized that it’s harmful to my body image. Beautiful comes in all shapes and sizes. I’m perfect just the way I am, and I don’t need to listen to anything that tells me otherwise.
       Let me get one thing straight for you, right away when my blog is new: Guys get eating disorders, too. I know that the common belief is that only girls get it, but that's not true. Many guys hide it too well. They're ashamed of what people would say or think. Girls have those concerns, too, don't get me wrong, but guys  believe that it is a girls' disorder. Guys will more often exercise as a means to keep their body slim. It's an easy excuse because guys are expected to work out anyway. Girls will more likely restrict calories because as a stereotype, guys are expected to eat large amounts of food. As a fact, guys don't always eat large amounts of food. Especially guys with eating disorders. And if they do have an eating disorder yet still eat large amounts of food, they'll still find a way to stay slim, whether it be the previously mentioned exercising, or purging.