women and adolescent girls. An extreme manifestation of these pressures is anorexia nervosa, a disease which is strongly associated with demographic variables, family relationships and individual psychological vulnerability [3,13,14].
Socio-demographic Characteristics of Anorexia NervosaAnorexia nervosa is "a syndrome of self-imposed starvation and relentless pursuit of thinness to the point of emaciation" [3]. It is widely reported that the incidence of anorexia nervosa has risen in the last two or three decades throughout the Western world, even allowing for more accurate diagnosis of the condition [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].Anorexics have well-documented socio-demographic characteristics. The reported cases show that the disorder occurs predominantly in young females, usually during adolescence, but rarely in males. It is also a disease that is associated with the upper socio-economic groups, where there is greater emphasis on social presentation, competition, achievement and control [3,14,16,25]. The Princess of Wales is a very public example of the sociodemographic characteristics of anorexia. The greater prominence of the condition in the upper socio-economic groups occurs despite the lower incidence of overweight and obese persons than in the rest of the population [13,26].The physical and social changes that occur during puberty can be very challenging and confusing for the pre-anorexic adolescent. There may be feelings of inability to control the body, occurring at a time when peer pressures that encourage body-image awareness are increasing. When the adolescent is unable to adjust to these stressful changes, feelings of helplessness and ineffectiveness can result. The anorexic's "wilful 'pursuit of thinness' represents a desperate attempt for control, at least of one's own body… Once weight loss ensues, most patients feel relieved with their new sense of control" [16].
Studies of the Media -Eating Disorder LinkThe widespread incidence of dieting and dissatisfaction with body-shape among young women and adolescent girls has been linked to modelling of images of women by the media [3,27]. Women receive many more media messages to be slim and to stay slim than do men, and they also receive many more messages concerning food and eating than do men [2]. In magazines published in the ten years from 1968-78, there was an increase in the number of diet articles [18]. Similarly, Snow and Harris[6] reported increases in the number of diet advertisements, the number of pages of editorial relating to diet and weight loss cover headlines in magazines from 1950-83. A quarter of all advertisements in Spanish women's magazines invited or suggested slimming [28]. The parts of the body which these advertisements mentioned most often were the hips, thighs and abdomen, which are areas where size is most overestimated by anorexics and young women in general. While these studies provide no evidence of a causal link between the amount of slimming and dieting advertising and cases of anorexia, they do describe a...
