I was thinking about the idea of eating disorders being a way to control one's life after class today...
I then remembered about one of my high school friend's stories about her past in dealing eating disorders. A lot about her situation was kept on the down low so I never knew the true reason why she had to leave school and attend rehab. But after our discussion in lecture and discussion, I can see why her psyche may have lead her to not have an interest in eating. At the time, my friend's high school life was quite crazy: she landed a major role in the upcoming all school play, she was my captain in Pep Squad, a member of the top choir singers group on campus, enrolled in 4 AP classes, a member of National Charity League, attempting to obtain her Gold Award, and, to top it all off, trying to juggle her social life consisting of friends and her boyfriend. After listing all her activities, it is pretty apparent why her life may have spiraled out of control.
However, the one aspect in her life that she could control was her food intake. This situation is very similar towards the situation in which prisoners try to control their lives in a strict prison life (seen in the Stanford Prison Experiment as well). The thought of an individual believing that they must resort towards anorexia in order to obtain a little aspect of their life is quite scary. Why should one risk their health in this way? Culture has shifted too much pressure on individuals to be perfect in multi-tasking their lives. Moreover, culture has now pressured younger and younger generations to be exposed to this sort of multi-tasking. We must reexamine what is deemed important, socially, in order to prevent other happenings like this from occurring to bigger populations.
I think it is really interesting that you brought up the standford prison experiment. It is crazy to think how pressure can drive individuals to do things even in an experimental setting, it just goes to show how easily humans are driven over the edge and will do anything to gain and maintain power in their own lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree! Society has increased its expectations but many people don't know how to properly deal with all the stress that accompany them. This is partly because sometimes society just asks for too much, and sometimes we just don't know how to deal with all this information about what we should look like, how we should act, what activities we should do, what we should eat, what we should wear, etc. Eating disorders are just one form of an attempt to gain back some control over a life that seems to be dictated more by society that ourselves.
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