The amount of young people that have developed detrimental eating disorders has increased exponentially from the amount of people afflicted in the 1980's in the United States of America, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).  There are as many theories of the cause of such a drastic increase in a relatively limited time as there are of eating disorders, and some of these theories are very well founded and argued while others do not have enough factual evidence to clearly substantiate them.  One argument that falls into the latter category is that the explanation is as simple as food does not taste as good as it did in 1980's, easily rebuttable by the fact that the audience members targeted in this case were not born in the 1980's, therefore they do not know what food from that time tasted like and would then be unable to say that food tastes better or worse now than it did back then.  One of the most popular theories however, and very a well-supported theory, revolves around the media's depiction of gender roles and statuses in our society.  This theory has the backing of many scientists and doctors that have gathered field evidence to at a minimum conclude there is a strong correlation between the media stereotypes and the growth of eating disorders among teenagers and young adults, and at the maximum they show our society that the media is the root of this problem beyond a reasonable doubt.  The media's depiction of gender roles and of the so called "ideal body" of both males and females have led to a significate rise of eating disorders and mental illness among teenagers and young adults in the past 30 years.  

Doctors Natalia Kazmierczak, Rafal Patryn, and Anton Niedzielski all understood that the rate of anorexia among young people had been on the rise for quite some time now, and so they conducted a field survey with young people to determine the cause in their article, "Influence of Mass Media of Eating Disorders Amongst Young People,".  Their survey consisted of 1000 individuals aged between 13 and 19, and there were 216, or 21.6% of this population, that admitted to having or to have had at some point an eating disorder.  They realized that the biggest flaw with a field test such as this would be whether or not the teenagers were telling the truth, for instance what if many were just too embarrassed to admit it, or what if they wanted some form of attention?  They addressed this issue head on with the incorporation of a lie detector test, which was consented by every participant and their guardians.  There tests ran through two phases. Phase one was an information pool that the doctors collected of every participant including age, sex, body weight, height personal values, and their family income.  Phase two was to ask questions regarding the participants' view and overall satisfaction with their physical appearance.  Of the 21.6% nearly 90% were teenage girls, and most of the eating disorders were classified as anorexia.  Those that suffered from the disorders were asked why they felt the way that they did, and the overwhelming and most common answer was because they felt bombarded with the same physiques over and over again until they arrived at their own conclusions that they were not attractive because they were not skinny enough, or curvy enough, or as muscular as society wants them to be.  They spoke of articles in magazines of how celebrities at a size 0 were being called fat, and if the girls were larger than that "fat" celebrity, then it obviously meant that they were a whale.  Or that every time they walk into a department store there are girls in just their bras hanging on the walls, showing their flat stomachs while maintaining sizable breasts, or of males that were so tall and so muscular and tan, and they always concluded that they weren't good enough and as a result they began to starve themselves in order to try to reach an unobtainable goal of the "ideal" body.  This is seen as unobtainable because in truth these are computer altered images that make the already skinny models even skinnier, while making it appear that they are more curvy at the breasts and hips, or exaggerating the muscles of the males.

S. Almond, a journalist for Journal of Human Nutrition & Dietetics arrived at a similar conclusion which was that the media was the primary reason for the eating disorders, but also made a point to note that they are not the only influence and that the power of family and an individual's peers are also important categories.  He does however believe that the media is the most powerful factor of the three when applied to eating disorders.  In Almond's article he traces how the "ideal" body has shifted over time, as whatever was popularly depicted by the media at the time.  A major shift being from the Marilyn Monroe body type of the 1950's, to the very skinny body of Kate Moss by the 1980's, and that they have only gotten thinner since then.  He attempts to sway us to his logic that the media has an unbelievable amount of power and young people by nature are easily influence, so the result is that teenagers will try to achieve what they see in their favorite magazines or television shows and movies.  What he did not note is that the result of this trend was young people starving themselves to be as skinny as possibly, or to force themselves to throw up after they eat in order to feel full, but in doing so depriving themselves of nutrients which is a less direct way to starve themselves.  A simple truth is that models as we see them are structured a very specific way.  They are all about the same height and weight, the size of the breasts or pecs are very similar, and that these individuals most of the time have this genetic makeup, it is their specific body type.  It is very challenging to go outside of what your genes will naturally allow you to do, once you are a certain size your body will not want to get larger or smaller because it is at its most efficient size, so the teenagers try to force it and in doing so hurt their bodies so badly that they have to live with the effects for years.  They are told all of this by loved ones of course, but to them they are never good enough because they are not the model or celebrity.  

An article published in Russia by Dr. Yu Durneva revealed that the rise of eating disorders is not an isolated incident in the United States, and from this we can be made painfully aware that the desire to be seen as beautiful is a fundamental human behavior as the trend is worldwide.  The neuroscientist argued that the media takes the Russian culture and twists it around and manipulates it until it reflects only what the editors of fashion magazines deem as beautiful.  They take the size 00 models, then enhances the structure of their face with copius amounts of makeup and computer editing, then they make they're breasts and butts larger, and then shrinks their waste even further until the final picture no longer even looks like the model in the picture.  They make this a standard and because it is the only body type they show it leaves your average Joe and Jane trying to look like a false picture.  This bombardment harms teenage girls and even children, by engraining the idea in their head that it will never matter how skinny they get, because they will never be ready for the catwalk.  Dr. Durneva voiced particular frustration with the media when she had found that the amount of girls under the age of ten with eating disorders had increased by more than 600% in the past 20 years, girls who wanted the body of a model before they even hit puberty, so imagine how hard life will be for them as they grow up.

Many times there are severe psychological effects that accompany these disorders, and it can be argued that the eating disorders themselves are some form of psychological trauma on those afflicted.  However sometimes it is far more serious than simply not eating their greens before going to bed.  Often times the individuals may also be plagued with a mental illness such as depression, which seems to be more common among teenagers that isolate themselves or has a weaker relationship with their family and with their peers.  Their symptoms can result in some of them self-mutilating, attempting to commit suicide, and sometimes even succeeding.  They develop a self-loathing to the point of making it hard to look at themselves in the mirror, because whenever the look all they see is something from a horror film, because their face is never what you would see on television, in advertisements and commercials, in magazines or anything of the sort.  They will never believe they are beautiful and will never be good enough, because the media has fed them their beliefs of what the "ideal body" is from the moment they exited the safety of their mothers' womb.

