Beauty or liberation? Horror for some! What no sane individual would consider to be beautiful has become a goal for many women and girls, and a bountiful source of income for psychologists. Maybe it is a testimony to the new culture of death and self-destruction, but for many it is perhaps nothing other than an addiction to pain.
Many of these women cannot even sit anymore without feeling intense pain where their hip bones stick through the parody of what once used to be their buttocks. However, at great costs to society and to their extended and immediate families, these women's chosen lifestyle drives them to pursue the achievement of what they see as an ideal to be obtained even if they have to pay for it with their lives. What normal humans consider macabre, these women strive to acquire: their vision of today's "ideal" female body – a living skeleton.
 Nothing much helps to "cure" these women. Why should it? Anorexia nervosa is the lifestyle of their choice! They believe in all earnest that nothing is wrong with them. Starving themselves liberates them, even if they don't know from what. Some people may think that perhaps it is the gamble with death that makes them do it, but that can't be it, because the human body is so resilient that death hardly ever occurs as a consequence of anorexia nervosa.
| Christina Hoff Sommers identified, in debunking the myth of more than 150,000 deaths that some feminists allege occur annually in the US from anorexia nervosa, that deaths very rarely occur as a result of anorexia nervosa, no more than about 54 of them per year. Still, one must wonder how it is possible that some women survive the devastation they wreak on their bodies. | 
Photo: Daniel Masclet |
A 1994 article published by the US
Food and Drug Administration, "On
the Teen Scene: Eating Disorders Require Medical Attention", by Dixie
Farley, states the following:
About 1,000 women die of anorexia each year, according
to the American Anorexia/Bulimia Association. More specific statistics
from the National Center for Health Statistics show that "anorexia" or
"anorexia nervosa" was the underlying cause of death noted on 101 death
certificates in 1994, and was mentioned as one of multiple causes of
death on another 2,657 death certificates. In the same year, bulimia was
the underlying cause of death on two death certificates and mentioned as
one of several causes on 64 others.
____________
Note by F4L: Going by the scarcity of articles at the FDA website that
show reliable and credible statistics on anorexia nervosa being the
primary cause of death, the FDA attaches not much more importance to
that cause of death than it does to other rare causes of death. As
the FDA shows anorexia nervosa to be the primary cause of death in no
more than 101 cases in 1994, no conclusions can be drawn from that
statistic to what the variations in annual deaths due to anorexia
nervosa are or what the average annual incidence of death due to
anorexia nervosa is. Therefore there is absolutely no reason to
doubt Christina Hoff Sommers' finding that anorexia nervosa by itself
causes on average no more than 54 deaths per year in the US.
In contrast to the face shown to the left, above, the one from the early 1950s shown at the right is still beautiful by today's standards.  Anorexia nervosa is a name for a medical condition that was once so rare that the term didn't become part of the English language until 1873. Not
as today, then there were few people for whom the designation of that condition was a common household word.
Today, if we don't know of a member in our immediate or extended families afflicted with the condition, then we most likely know someone in our circle of friends or at work who is pursuing the obsession of self-imposed starving.
Click on the photo on the left if you wish to see a larger version with better resolution. If that is not enough to convince you of the extents aficionados of anorexia nervosa will go, have a look at the website from which the photo was copied
(archived
file). It has an amazing collection of photos of women trying their best to make themselves thin. Obviously, it is not possible to do that without many of them them making themselves look abhorrent, like the walking dead, and as if their bones are about to clatter. Still, anorexia nervosa kills very, very rarely — extremely rarely. Death does not fit the game these women play. Putting anorexia nervosa into perspectiveSomeone wrote from Mexico and asked whether anorexia nervosa can be inherited through a genetic predisposition.
Here is the answer to that:
It is too bad, but I do not know much Spanish. This has been translated from English into Spanish; via Bablefish. (Translation appended)
No researcher has found solid evidence of a genetic predisposition of anyone to "contract" anorexia nervosa.
There is a research group that claims to have found such evidence, but it is possible that their claim has no more substance than their claim on which they base the need for millions of dollars of funding for their research.
They say that, Anorexia nervosa is a serious eating disorder and is the most lethal of all psychiatric illnesses. It is one of the most common causes of death in young women...
That is a false assertion, at the very least a
seriously misleading one. Therefore I see no reason why anyone should believe everything else they assert.
Information about their study can be found at
http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/angenetics/press.html
In truth, the most common causes of death (1995 figures) for women and men aged 15 to 24 are: Anorexia nervosa (for all ages) causes annually 54 women to die from its complications (as per Christina Hoff Sommers' findings)
All the best,
Walter Schneider
Spanish:
Es demasiado malo, pero no sé mucho español. Esto se ha traducido de inglés a español; vía Bablefish.
Ningún investigador ha encontrado evidencia sólida de un predisposition genético de cualquier persona "para contraer" nervosa del anorexia.
Hay un grupo de investigación que las demandas haber encontrado tal evidencia, pero él son posibles que su demanda no tiene no más de sustancia que su demanda en la cual basen la necesidad de millones de dólares de financiamiento para su investigación.
Dicen eso, El nervosa del anorexia es un desorden serio el comer y es el más mortal de todas las enfermedades psiquiátricas. Es una de las causas más comunes de la muerte en mujeres jóvenes...
Eso es una aserción falsa, por lo menos de engaño. Por lo tanto veo que ninguna razón por la que cualquier persona debe creer todo ellos afirma.
La información sobre su estudio se puede encontrar en
http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/angenetics/press.html
Las causas más comunes de la muerte (1995 figuras) para las mujeres y los hombres envejecidos 15 a 24 son:
Causa | Varón | Hembra | | Lesiones Inintencionales | 10,313 | 3,529 | | Homicidio | 6,224 | 1,060 | | Suicidio | 4,132 | 652 | | Neoplasmas Malos | 1,009 | 633 | | Enfermedad cardíaca | 659 | 380 | | HIV | 377 | 252 | | Anomalías Congénitas | 258 | 194 | | Bronquitis Enfisema Asma | 133 | 113 | | Pulmonía Y Gripe | 119 | 88 | | Cerebrovascular | 97 | 75 | | Totales: | 23,321 | 6,976 |
Figuras de la tabla 2,
https://fathersforlife.org/US_population_figures_80-96.htm#Leading_Causes
El nervosa del anorexia (para todas las edades) hace anualmente a 54 mujeres morir de sus complicaciones (según los resultados de Christina Hoff Sommers -- descritos en <https://fathersforlife.org/health/anorexia8.htm#Deaths>) |
