eating disorders

When considering things that affect people due to our surroundings, sociologists do not get from one place to the next with assumptions and of what they presume to be correct. For anyone to blankly state that eating disorders’ are not due to ones media, peers, culture, and environment do not use there sociological imagination to fully grasp the idea and theories that are displayed in sociology. Eating disorders are not a mental disorder. Eating disorders do not just affect certain people in certain groups, race, or ethnicity; it affects everyone and anyone trying to achieve the illusion of perfection that society has created.
In today’s society one can find media in every corner that is turned, so it is easy to see media having a strong influential effect on people. While everyone is exposed to the mass media, the majority do not develop eating disorders. What role does the media actually play in eating disorders? Jean Baudrillard talks about in a postmodern society, it is quite difficult to distinguish reality American children engage in increasing amounts of media use, a trend fueled largely by the growing availability of internet access through phones and laptops. Sexually objectified images of girls and women in advertisements are most likely to appear in men’s magazines. Yet the second most common source of such images is the advertisements in teen magazines directed at adolescent girls ( NEDA Feeding Hope). A sociological theory is symbolic interactionism, which states that meanings are not inherent but are created through interactions. Models, actresses and beauty pageant are symbols of beauty, who are expected to be thin and slender. When a female sees this and are not meeting the same standards that society has place upon them it is difficult for them to reflectively look in the mirror and not want to change themselves to fit that illusion that society has “screwed” into their mind. For example, when Not only do the media glorify a slender ideal, they