The Social Injustice of Eating Disorders

           

The Social Injustice of Eating Disorders

            In a world that is plagued with media, companies and civilians tend to forget how powerful advertisements and the culture of society can be.  One of the most recurring and influential examples of this is spreading the untrue belief that the thinner the person is, the more desirable s/he is as well.  The truth is that being too thin is extremely unhealthy and can lead to many health risks, including death.  Television shows, billboards, and magazines all show beautiful, thin women.  What many people do not know is that most of the women they are showing are underweight or photoshopped to make them look that way.  Radio commercials are bragging about how their weight-loss program will definitely work for the buyers, implying that they must lose weight, even if they are a perfectly healthy size.  With all of the distraction of the weight-loss advertisements, many people forget the fact that there are many citizens struggling with some type of eating disorder.  There is never an advertisement for eating disorder prevention or therapy; there is hardly any awareness at all.  Ignorance toward eating disorders is a huge injustice to society today, and it has a very large impact on many civilians.

            More often than not, the advertisements for weight-loss commercials are more harmful than helpful to the viewers and listeners.  One of the most recent commercials of the past year even starts its ad by saying, "Think you're fat?" (NuBiotix).  Even if the listener previously believed that they were perfectly healthy and did not feel fat at all, s/he is most likely doubting his/herself due to that commercial.  Commercials tend to bring up "soft spots" that affect the listener's self-esteem.  Being exposed to all of these self-esteem-killing commercials for a long period of time can lead to an overall lower self-confidence.  Radio and television commercials alike injected the false belief into listeners that if they were not thin, they were not good enough.  Lori Gottlieb, author of Stick Figure, which is a memoir about being affected by society's views, explains why changed her eating habits when she was younger: 

I saw a commercial...on TV... [the lady on the commercial]...asks, "Can you pinch an inch?"  She means on your stomach.  She's still smiling, of course, because when she pinches her own stomach there's no fat at all..."If you can pinch an inch,' she says, 'then you need Special K cereal"....I can almost pinch an inch.  So now I eat Special K instead of Product 19 (96). 

Companies and businesses do not dare speak of eating disorders in fear of losing profit.  Weight-loss commercials on the radio and television do not mention that the buyer may not actually be overweight at all; instead the company assumes that everyone listening to the commercial is obese, and it wants the consumers to believe that as well so they will buy its product.  As Steinbeck explains in his famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath, "Those creatures [banks and companies] don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat.  They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money.  If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat" (32).  The companies do not think about the well-being of its customers, because, in the end, the companies do not survive on the customer's happiness; it survives solely on the money it makes from its fearful and insecure servants, the customers.  All of the employers that work for the companies have no choice but to follow through with the dirty work that the company orders them to accomplish.  It does not matter if the employees agree with the business's morals--or lack thereof--it only matters that they get the job done.  They do this so they can keep their job, forgetting about who they are affecting with their words and persuasion.  This can be shown in a metaphor from The Grapes of Wrath, using the company as the tractor, and the driver as the company's workers:  "...[the driver] was part of the monster, a robot in the seat....[The tractor] somehow got into the driver's hands, into his brain and muscle...goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest" (35).   The people that create the commercials for the companies are just as guilty because in actuality, they are the ones that persuade the listeners that they are fat.  These views plague the society, and affect everyone that lives in it, creating a spread of desire to lose weight across the nation.