Brave Enough to Burn

This is National Eating Disorders Week, a time to raise awareness about the damage done by eating disorders, what causes them- and how prevalent they are, especially in children. Despite the cyclic attention such disorders as anorexia and bulimia have received over the years, there is never enough emphasis put on what drives children to adopt such attitudes. There seems to be this idea (and I base this on conversation and observation, not actual studies) that eating disorders are the weakness of teen girls and models, and attempt to correct poor self-esteem or achieve an industry standard through body manipulation. While not untrue, perhaps, this is merely the start of such attitudes, and eating disorders are certainly not the exclusive purview of those groups, nor limited to only those two diagnoses. More commonly, eating disorders fall somewhere in the middle.

( 40-60% of elementary girls (age 6-12) are concerned with becoming too fat )