Healani Brennan
Staff Writer

Eating disorders are the leading cause of death in young women and have the highest number of fatalities of any mental illness. Around 95% of the individuals with eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25.

Society plays a part in this epidemic, with magazines paraded around everywhere with thin, beautiful people on the covers, social media sites, and even television. Most of the population consumes all of these on a daily basis.

Tumblr users post photos of themselves showing how skinny they’ve become. This act is a sense of victory to them and will encourage others to do the same. Individuals with this mental illness have a flirtation with the disease in that they want to stop, but the feeling of being thin is addictive. The masochistic feeling is what they like, and to most, being affected with the disease is a privilege.

Many people on social media sites, Tumblr especially, will post about how they only had a handful of fruit and water today and tag it with “pro-ana” [anorexia] or “pro-mia” [bulimia]. Pro-ana and pro-mia sites are the biggest offenders on the web.

These sites provoke and encourage individuals to have eating disorders. One site even lists the “Thin Commandments.” These commandments say things such as “If you aren’t thin, you aren’t attractive,” or “Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing afterwards.”

Girls as young as 13 can see these sites, pushing the ones with low self-esteem to act on what they read or hear.  The girls that don’t see these websites are most likely to stumble upon a magazine that doctors all the photos of every model within its pages. A study even showed that 46 percent of girls from the fifth to twelfth grade reported wanting to lose weight because of magazine images.

Some magazines such as “Seventeen”have made policies to never doctor a photo unless a bra strap or hair mess ups show in a photo. A disclaimer in every “Seventeen” magazine essentially says that they do not touch up girls’ bodies or their faces.

The same could not be said for other magazines, as a number of celebrities have addressed their photoshopped pictures before. Women such as Kate Winslet and Kelly Clarkson have been targeted but both came back with comments towards their airbrushed photos. Kate Winslet’s remark was, “I’d much rather be known as some curvy Kate than as some skinny stick.”

Magazines and websites infect the minds of young girls and boys, too often pushing them to think differently of themselves. Eating disorders are all around, and there are multiple forms. Anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating are a few of the most common illnesses.  Things like excessive exercise or extreme dieting are signs of an eating disorder and are also labeled as mental illnesses.

If you know a friend who has one of these disorders, it’s never too late to call for help or stage an intervention.