The media influences eating disorders whether shown in a positive or negative light, it then has a responsibility to use caution when promoting images that projects an ideal that many turn to eating disorders to attain.To try to address unhealthy body image in the fashion world, in 2015, France passed a law requiring models to be declared healthy by a doctor to participate in fashion shows. It also requires re-touched images to be marked as such in magazines.There is a relationship between "thin ideal" social media content and body dissatisfaction and eating disorders among young adult women, especially in the Western hemisphere. New research points to an "internalization" of distorted images online, as well as negative comparisons among young adult women. Most studies have been based in the U.S, the U.K, and Australia, these are places where the thin ideal is strong among women, as well as the strive for the "perfect" body.In addition to mere media exposure, there is an online "pro-eating disorder" community. Through personal blogs and Twitter, this community promotes eating disorders as a "lifestyle", and continuously posts pictures of emaciated bodies, and tips on how to stay thin. The hashtag "#proana" (pro-anorexia), is a product of this community, as well as images promoting weight loss, tagged with the term "thinspiration".
Psychopathology
The psychopathology of eating disorders centers around body image disturbance, such as concerns with weight and shape; self-worth being too dependent on weight and shape; fear of gaining weight even when underweight; denial of how severe the symptoms are and a distortion in the way the body is experienced.The main psychopathological features of anorexia were outlined in 1982 as problems in body perception, emotion processing and interpersonal relationships. Women with eating disorders have greater body dissatisfaction. This impairment of body perception involves vision, proprioception, interoception and tactile perception. There is an alteration in integration of signals in which body parts are experienced as dissociated from the body as a whole. Bruch once theorized that difficult early relationships were related to the cause of anorexia and how primary caregivers can contribute to the onset of the illness.A prominent feature of bulimia is dissatisfaction with body shape. However, dissatisfaction with body shape is not of diagnostic significance as it is sometimes present in individuals with no eating disorder. This highly labile feature can fluctuate depending on changes in shape and weight, the degree of control over eating and mood. In contrast, a necessary diagnostic feature for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa is having overvalued ideas about shape and weight are relatively stable and partially related to the patients low self-esteem. Pro-ana subculture
Pro-ana refers to the promotion of behaviors related to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Several websites promote eating disorders, and can provide a means for individuals to communicate in order to maintain eating disorders.