Media Not Totally to Blame - women's magazines' role in eating disorders - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2000

Mary (not her real name) turned to bulimia and anorexia while feeling tremendous pressure to be thin as a high school cheerleader. She looked to beauty and fashion magazines, not for entertainment, but for "helpful hints" on binging and purging. "If a magazine said, `Bulimia has ruined my life, a true story,' I would read it just to find ideas. I wanted to get people's secrets, and I wanted to figure out what [singer] Karen Carpenter did because I needed to do the same thing."

Mary was interviewed as part of a study at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, on how women with eating disorders use the media. From survey results and in-depth interviews, the researchers concluded that pointing a finger at the media for causing eating disorders is overly simplistic.

"There is a fine line of responsibility on the part of the media," indicates Steven Thomsen, associate professor of communications. "The media do not act as an initiating, but, rather, as a perpetuating force to those who suffer from an eating disorder. To these young women who are at risk, some of these beauty and fashion magazines can be as dangerous as giving a beer to an alcoholic. The very factors that have made them vulnerable to an eating disorder also heighten their vulnerability to images of thinness and false promises of happiness."

Thomsen teamed with Kelly McCoy, assistant professor of family science, and Marleen Williams, associate clinical professor of counseling psychology. Unlike previous eating disorder studies, their research examined the motivations behind women's use of beauty and fashion magazines, not just the frequency with which the magazines are read. The findings show that anorexics use the media in a distorted manner. "Understand that it's not necessarily the media's fault, but that young women may choose to use the media to support and reinforce their eating disorder," Thomsen points out.

Several factors emerged from the study that can help parents, therapists, and researchers determine whether a young woman is at risk for developing an eating disorder. Why a woman reads particular magazines is far more important than how often she reads them, Thomsen maintains. "Reading motivations most associated with anorexic risk include a desire to learn popular diets, a desire to become skinny like magazine models, and a belief that reading the magazines will lead to greater popularity, happiness, and acceptance by family and friends. When these motivations are combined with an excessive anxiety about body appearance, the risk becomes even greater. Reading motivations that should cause less concern include reading for entertainment purposes or out of boredom and reading to learn new trends or how to improve relations with the opposite sex."

Knowing that anorexics have a mortality rate of nearly 20%--the highest of any mental illness--many magazines and television programs have addressed the disorder. Yet, even a well-intended message can backfire. "In many cases, messages intended to scare women away from anorexia actually pushed them closer to it," Thomsen notes, referring to Mary's interview and others. "They twisted and distorted articles to serve their purpose."

For these women, television programs' and magazines' messages both serve as support for the mental illness, but do so in different ways. "Magazine articles and advertisements become instruction manuals on what to look like, how to look that way, and why one should look like that." Television shows, however, function as an escape from what the patients perceive as a threatening and disappointing world. These shows--from prime-time dramas to daytime soap operas--become an alternate way of building and living in a world the patients desire, but cannot obtain.

Looking at the issue from a family and social angle, McCoy indicates that it is difficult to pinpoint the cause for eating disorders. "There is not one single characteristic that predicts the onset for an anorexic. All seem to come to their eating disorder from different experiences. Factors that occur in a young woman's immediate surroundings--her family, friends, and coaches--are what seem to establish the initial flames of anorexia. But the media contribute much to it becoming a full-blown fire."