Essay Sample about Anorexia
Anorexia according to the Oxford dictionary is the lack or loss of appetite for food, as a medical condition and is an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat. But hey, at least you won’t be overweight right? Wrong, you’ll always find some source of fat on your body, however, this does not mean you are unhealthy, no matter how skinny you are, you’ll never be happy with how you look. In your head, you will always be fat. Everyone should be against Anorexia because it makes people believe they are fatter than usual and because it starts from comparison and stereotypes. It all begins with things such as sports, celebrities, and gender
Anybody can play a sport right? Only to play a sport you need to train. When you look at certain sports and the people that play them, we see how they look. You think they might look perfect. Their bodies fit the sport they play? You just believed a stereotype. Take a look at gymnasts, they look fit and they have a perfect body, right? For example, Simone Biles. Someone that most people forget is Alexa Moreno. She is an Olympic gymnast and was called “fat” by body shamers on Twitter. They called her “fat” because she didn’t fall under the skinny, perfect, fit, beautiful, flawless gymnast type. But in fact, she was body-shamed. One thing that most people don’t realize is that playing sports leads to athletes having eating disorders such as anorexia. According to National eating disorders association, most commonly known as NEDA sports emphasize appearance, certain weight requirements, or muscularity are required to be a good athlete, so athletes feel obligated to fall under this stereotype so that they won’t get judged or bullied.
Did you know that most well-known celebrities have over 30,000 followers on social media? We idolize celebrities, not only that, we want to look like them and be like them. Celebrities tend to have that “photoshopped body” where they look perfect, and now the toxicity of social media causes younger kids to want to be liked, so they’ll look at celebrities, and start to compare themselves and see what they can change about themselves. According to, EmotionMatters, Studies show that 88% of women compare themselves to images they observe on social media. That isn’t even including men. Some celebrities have a huge influence on their fans, if you take a look at most of Ariana Grande's fans in 2016, they all looked the same, just like her, they all saw how they looked, compared themselves and then changed it. If we take a look at an event that happened recently with Kim Kardashian, we all remember how she lost 16 pounds in 2 weeks, to fit in a stupid dress. 16 pounds in 14 days. She lost around 1 pound a day. Kim has over 30,000 followers. Kim has a “perfect” body, and according to Karol in New York Post, she said that after Kim Kardashian had her kids and looked great, but whilst Karol had her kids she looked very different. Karol began comparing herself and went on a crazy diet just to look like her. Olivia Rodrigo even realized a song called “Jealousy, Jealousy” talking about comparing herself to kids on the internet that she didn’t even know. That song had over 400 million streams, that’s to show that over 400 million people have been comparing themselves to others, and if they are like Karol, they will go to the extreme.
You might think that only females have eating disorders because women nowadays have to look perfect and not hair out of place. Well, yes, but one big stereotype that has been going on more recently is that men need to be fit, strong, and buff. When in reality no they don’t, there have been multiple stereotypes where if you’re not “buff” then you need to work out more, or you need to take special diets when in reality, according to the NEDA males make up 25% of people with anorexia. Because they are often diagnosed later than females, they are at higher risk of dying. They decided to put the males on hold because of one thing and one thing only, “oh they’re men, they’ll be fine.” They are not fine, men that are seeking help should be properly treated and they should not be put on hold when they are clearly in help. And a big contributor to why that is happening is because of the stereotype that “men are buff”. On Netflix, there is a show called To The Bone, and that show tells us a bit about a male who has anorexia, lots of the people that watched the film were shocked because they thought that men couldn’t have bad eating disorders when they can.
People don’t realize that in our society it’s the things of our “norm” that cause anorexia, It might sound extreme, but anorexia starts from comparison and stereotypes, which must be stopped. We don’t want anorexia to be like COVID where it becomes a virus that spreads out to make people feel bad, and then go severe and start doing crazy diets where they can only eat one food item per month. We need to stop that. Or do we want to be the people that let the stereotypes get stronger and make the comparisons more frequent with people, because if you think of it, would you want someone's 8-year-old to lose 16 pounds in 2 weeks to fit on a dress?
