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Sociology Essay Example: “How Far Would Sociologists Agree That the Media Causes Eating Disorders in Women?

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Sociology Essay Example: “How Far Would Sociologists Agree That the Media Causes Eating Disorders in Women?
“How far would sociologists agree that the media causes eating disorders in women?

In this essay I will discuss how far sociologists would agree that the media causes eating disorders in women. Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions characterized by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the damage of an individual's physical and emotional health. Eating disorders include: bulimia, anorexia and obesity. First Marxists would argue all young females in the west are exposed to the media and the stereotypical view of women is that they are “slim and beautiful”. This means that young females are influenced into trying to be the “perfect” image of a beautiful woman and in order to be able to become skinny start to diet which eventually leads to serious eating disorders. An example of this is a model that died due to the severity of her eating disorder, anorexia. Isabelle Caro, a 28 year old French model died due to suffering from a respiratory disease which was initially caused by anorexia. This suggests that the media causes eating disorders in women as Isabelle was a catwalk model and in order to be popular on the catwalk she stopped eating which shows that if the media didn’t portray women as being a size zero then they wouldn’t want to be so skinny. This also suggests that female are subjected to the hypodermic syringe theory and are injected with powerful images hence their behavior is affected. This means that the media injects images of size zero models into the minds of young females and somewhat brainwashes them into trying to become a “skinny”, “beautiful” person. The media tends to portray female role models as being successful, skinny and beautiful which may influence females into believing success and beauty is due to a person being slim. This means that due to role models being slim females may believe that in order to be a fan of that celebrity/ famous person they will have to

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