Long back, I happened to watch a Hollywood movie on college life. It showed some girls, very popular - the 'in' set, who everyone wanted to be like. It was a classic movie about peer pressure and acceptance, based on how your worth was measured by your good looks. A lot of movies are based on these issues but somehow the message gets lost in the visual extravaganza of beautiful bodies and faces, the revelry of teen life, and the burning need of the teenagers watching these movies to be like one of those on celluloid, despite the 'bad' consequences these characters end up facing! One thing that really stayed with me was that the most popular girl was secretly 'bulimic'. That was the first I ever heard of this condition. I also remember watching something else on 'anorexia'. These issues really haunted me for a long time and I wanted to know more on the subject. Soon I understood that these were serious mental diseases and a bane of our modern society.
'Bulimia Nervosa' and 'Anorexia Nervosa', as the names suggest, are disorders of the brain and nervous system. According to medical research, dieting, over-exercising and binge-eating satisfy all the clinical and biological criteria for addictions like smoking, drinking or drug abuse! In Anorexia, the person displays a tendency to starve oneself and has a decreasing interest in food, while in Bulimia, the person has increasing difficulty in resisting food and becomes a compulsive eater, who binges on food, and then uses laxatives, diuretics, enemas, self-induced vomitting, or excessive exercises to stay slim. Anorexia, apparently, has the most severe consequence with a mortality rate higher than that of almost all other mental disorders! It usually begins with a perfectly normal weight-reducing diet, the person loses weight, eats less and less until she is almost skin and bones. It affects young people of both sexes, although ninety percent are females from well-off homes.
Think about a Barbie doll. What is the mental image you get? The first thing you think of is an almost non-existent waist and bottom, and a thin and curvaceous figure! And this is what our children, especially girls, grow up with. Then all they watch on TV and celluloid are extremely thin people with beautiful faces. They are not obviously aware of all the contributions of the medical scalpel behind these beautiful bodies and faces! And even if they are, they get the message that anything is justified to get that kind of body or face, even surgery, excessive dieting or exercise. Everywhere they look around them, they are faced with unrealistic expectations of beauty or handsomeness, so it's inevitable that most of them find themselves falling short! God has not created everyone to look the same, but everyone wants to fit into a certain image of beauty. Apparels, cosmetics, automobiles, food, beverages, appliances, you name it, and you will find beautiful bodies selling these things! The impact of these visuals, day and night on the minds of children, even adults, is mind-boggling! If that is not enough, there is more available in the gossip magazines, cinema and sports celebrities to emulate. They spend hours every day in front of the mirror, preening themselves, checking their clothes, hairstyles, bodily attributes, their complexion, everything is under a microscope! And I've personally experienced the trend that most parents tend to pass it off as a 'passing phase'. But the reality is that many adolescents fall prey to this, and the worst is, the parents are the last to know about it. In my own experience, I have seen many a young child refuse even a normal amount of food, for fear of “putting on weight”! Parents have no time these days to watch out for these harmful tendencies in their children, as they are too busy. Staying fit and eating healthy should never be equated to over-exercising or eating less.
All this is leading to a huge identity crisis. Children suffer from low self-image. Children in the West spend a lot of time and money on skin darkening, whereas their 'darker' counterparts in Eastern countries spend the same on getting a 'fair' complexion! Boys want to look taller and muscular, girls want to look thin and petite. This altering and adjusting of their bodies is done to gain recognition and acceptance from the opposite sex, their peer group, as also to measure up to the body images promoted by today's media. Behavioural scientists consider these diseases to be family ones rather than individual ones. That is why it has been noticed that family therapy has proven to be the best cure for anorexics. They are able to develop a healthier identity and gain more individuality.
In today's context, there is only so much we can do to control what our children watch, who they meet, what they look up to, etc. The only thing we can give them is the right kind of guidance, help them to be level-headed and balanced enough to withstand peer pressure, and we can stay involved enough in their lives for them to be aware of our attention and unconditional love. There is no substitute for any of these.
al mother-teacher, runs Life Express - an after-school center for children. She can be reached at juhimalini@gmail.com. She also writes 'Reflections of an inner Journey'
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