Eating disorders - Image is the problem, not reality

IT is an unfortunate but entirely illustrative irony that Eating Disorders Awareness Week began yesterday, just as half the world sat up agog at the chemically and surgically modified waif-women who high-heeled it up the red carpet to the Oscars ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angles or at London Fashion Week.

Can it be any wonder so many of our children and young adults have “issues” with their “body image” if we put such a huge value on what the fashion of the day decrees the ideal of human physical beauty. Especially if that ideal is far beyond the reach of the vast majority of humanity, even if they undergo bizarre surgery carried out by bizarre perma-tanned doctors or the latest vanity starvation regime. How can we expect our children, so easily influenced and so perceptive and vulnerable about how they are viewed, to be happy in a world where 100-pound stick insects are the template?

Well, too many of them are not.