Gender and Performance
Megan Orcholski
November 15, 2012
Eating disorders “Approximately 7-10 million women across the country suffer from eating disorders. Most research into these serious disorders has been conducted on females. However, as many as a million men may also struggle with the diseases” stated EDAP in 2012.
Eating disorders are very serious conditions that cause people distress by obsessing over not gaining weight and intense anxiety about food. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Many people suffer from these disorders yet the majority of the focus falls on women. Most research and overall information is targeted towards woman. With the gender binary, the disconnected forms of masculine and feminine, woman are seen as a weaker gender and would be likely to have an eating disorder because of the mass media and wanting to be something they are not. The focus of this paper will fall upon men who suffer from eating disorders. Research has shown that genetics has be a cause for eating disorders; like Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia nervosa, and Binge eating. These genes can be passed on from generation to generation. Doctors have been looking for genetic causes of eating disorders. “The next step of will be to specifically identify the gene or genes that may cause vulnerability to anorexia,” Berrettini says. New research on genes is coming out every day.
Even though eating disorders can be in your genes, there are studies that show eating disorders could be socially learned. Socially learned eating disorders mostly come from the media. Everyone sees the stars with the “perfect” body type. Men and boys often see their favorite stars on the TV and want to be like them. Tara Carney and Johann Louw made a study that consisted of a survey and many interviews. They made an analysis of the data and put it in to a “paradigm model”. Showing that most men are not happy with there body.
With socially
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