LETTER: Media doesn’t cause disorders

To the editor:

For the last time, the media does not cause eating disorders. Those who have eating disorders are typically motivated by a desire to be perfect or to regain control of their bodies. These desires are most likely rooted in life experiences such as sexual abuse or an overdemanding family life and not in negative media portrayals of women, which are so ubiquitous that if they were the principle cause of eating disorders, considerably more than fifteen percent of the campus’ female population (the highest figure cited in the article) would acquire them. If intrapersonal and familial factors provide the motive, the media serves a limited purpose in providing the means.

The ideal of skinniness is simply a tool used by anorexic/bulimics to meet their pre-existing needs for control and perfection. Saying that the media causes eating disorders is as absurd as saying that nails and lumber cause houses; or perhaps more appropriately that straight razors cause self-mutilation. Granted, if tomorrow the media began showing “realistic” depictions of women there may very well be far fewer cases of anorexia or bulimia; but those predisposed to these behaviors will just find another maladaptive way to meet their needs or even worse, they won’t and their failure to satisfy these needs will lead to a mental breakdown.

This blaming of the media concerns me not only because it offers a band-aid solution to a problem that ultimately lies with the individual, but because said solution is inevitably one of censorship; the cornerstone of anti-intellectualism and a signpost to the downfall of human civilization. What I keep hearing is that the media presents an idealized form of women that is impossible for real women to meet, but a society without ideal forms is unable to progress; without an ideal form we have nothing to work toward. Ban Kate Moss because nobody is able to be that thin and you must ban the New Testament because nobody could possibly live up to Christ’s example. It’s a dangerous slippery slope down.

Alex Jackson