Photographs in magazines like Cosmopolitan or Vogue create images of a thin, elegant body in everyone's mind. The articles in magazines emphasize the supermodel figure through articles titled "Want the Perfect Body: Eat Less" or "Exercise Until Your Bones Shake." Extreme pictures and articles can affect the wrong people who take issues like diet and body image too seriously. Unfortunately, girls look up to Hollywood's gorgeous "models" and think the only way to get attention is by fitting into the smallest pair of pants. Another theory as to why girls are anorexic is that society makes too many value judgments of girls. Girls feel more pressure than boys to be blonde, slim, and beautiful. Society instills an image that the only way for women to succeed at a workplace is to be sociable, and work their way up to the top of the totem pole by means of sex appeal and charisma. Sex appeal stems from a seemingly immaculate body, which is often an outcome of an eating disorder.
Although mass media affects society's outlook on the importance of a person's weight and body image, science suggest a more technical theory, proving that genetics can be the root of all eating disorders. Doctors have examined children in rural schools in Africa who have never seen a supermodel in the media, let alone watched a television show, and they still found a number of girls who were anorexic. Cases similar to these recently have also now been found in Iran, Saudi Arabia and rural Japan. Although the condition was not described medically until the mid 19th century, some specialists now believe that a number of the early women saints were probably victims of the disease. Specialists point fingers to genetics as being the cause of eating disorders, which is also associated with depression and anxiety. The latest thinking is that a life event can trigger a genetic predisposition of depression. It cannot be explained easily, but people inherit personality just as they inherit curly hair or green eyes.
