Anorexia Nervosa is a severe eating disorder that afflicts primarily young women, although men are also known to suffer from it.
Anorexia (from the
Greek a- without; and orexis- appetite) is merely a symptom of Anorexia Nervosa in which the victim feels, largely from
poor role-models, that they must become
bone-thin in order to be considered attractive or to be accepted. From there, they abolutely refuse to eat, for
fear of gaining too much weight and then being unable to lose it; they excercise constantly, trying to flush the
fat (or lack, thereof, in most cases) from their bodies.
In some extreme cases, a layer of fur
will grow on the sufferer's body to keep him/her warm; because they have lost so much body
fat, they can no longer insulate themselves.
Many sufferers even hear a voice in their heads telling them how
fat they look (despite the obvious fact that they are sickly and wasted away to almost nothing), thus further discouraging them.
Like depression, anorexia nervosa and bulimia are not things that one can "get over". They are illnesses that require help. And poor role-models from the media, from peers, and from
parents make the problem worse.
Barbie would be anorexic if she were a human... she wouldn't even have the 17 to 22% of body fat required to menstruate. If she were human, she'd have to be 7'2'', 130 pounds, and 40-
18-33. Hell, she'd have to crawl on all fours just to support her unnatural proportions.
Misinformation: Anorexia was the ancient Greek goddess of withering and starvation.
