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There is another important aspect relating the cultural expectations for women to eating disorders: competition. Claire M. Davis, a cultural informant with experience involving the study of eating disorders, puts it: �As women are introduced into this new competitive world, the levels of competition and stress focused towards goals translate themselves into disordered eating behavior. Heightened levels of competitiveness amongst women have risen in the past fifty years in correlation with the rise of eating disorders.� There are two separate factors involved: competing for men and competing with men. In the competition for men, it is desired to be the prettiest, thinnest and most sexually appealing in concordance with the standards of beauty imposed by society. In the competition with men, academic stresses in particular characterize the competition. In these stresses, there is the desire for high achievement, and there are the pressures of the tasks women feel they must perform in order to be successful in modern society. The combination of the desire to be thin and attractive with the stress involved in striving for success can easily mix together to produce eating disorders. In other words, it is not just the images of thin and beautiful women in the media but also images of academic and financial success that influence eating disorders. As Marya Hornbacher states in her book Wasted: �In our culture, thinness is associated with wealth, upward mobility, success . . . . [T]hese things are associated with discipline . . . [associated with] perfect people with high-powered jobs . . . .[It is] an ideal symbolizing assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with a higher socio-economic class� (46). In short, a major factor in the initiation of anorexia nervosa is the influence of a society that causes an increased desire for women to be competitive.
The concept of �control� is also highly promoted by the society, and it is widely considered a virtue and a sign of success. Many have heard the familiar maxim, �Eating disorders are about control.� This is somewhat true, but in different ways than one might assume (the usual implication is that it represents a desire to �control� the body to return to a pre-pubertal stage, which is not true in many cases). Self-control and self-discipline in particular are stressed; these principles deeply underlie eating disorders. Thinness is �an ideal symbolizing self discipline [and] control . . . fat is associated with weakness [and] laziness� (Wasted 46). In this situation, the obvious solution is to attain thinness by the strictest, most self-controlling method possible. Only then will one be successful.
In addition to the issue of self-control, there is also the related idea that eating disorders are the only form of control one has in a world otherwise beyond one�s reach. In the tight monitoring and forceful disciplining of one�s body, one can feel like she has the desired power and can affect change that is, as it seems to her, unattainable by other means. Another irony lies here: in striving for power, the anoretic often deprives herself of power by being consigned to a hospital or treatment programs where she is stripped of all power and forced to carry out the requirements of the program. Nevertheless, it is felt that power is increased when weight is lost. The culture presents this idea of thinness as control, and control as necessary to success, the combination of which produces eating disorders.
There are several noted factors about the presence of eating disorders in concordance with the psychological makeup of the afflicted. In addition to an eating disorder, the anoretic often has had other psychological diagnoses prior to it. Specifically, many eating disorder patients have had childhood anxiety disorders approximately five years prior to onset (Wasted 38). This is particularly significant, because it shows that there are other connections between individual cases aside from a common culture. In addition, there are many associations between obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia. Many anoretics also are diagnosed with OCD, and there are clear associations between the behavior patterns present within anorexia and those present in OCD. For example, many afflicted with OCD explain that they feel certain rituals and behaviors to be �magical� keys to functioning properly, where those with eating disorders often attribute a similar �magic� to certain events and behaviors involving food, often in terms of how long it takes to eat food, how long one goes without eating, how many bites food is eaten in, and extensive systems of calorie counting (Wasted 106). This is particularly true in the latter: there are many wide and varied systems of calorie numerating, dividing and reduction. These behaviors, if not adhered to, will, as in OCD, lead to extreme anxiety and stress. In essence, it is easier for the anoretic to follow the patterns than not; it is easier for the anoretic to be anoretic than not. Therefore, the obsessive-compulsive personality is a definite psychological factor both in the initialization and perpetuation of the disorder.
Other personality features are involved: �[T]he personality of an eating-disordered person plays a huge role��[they] are often extreme people, highly competitive, incredibly self-critical, driven, perfectionistic�(Wasted 6). There is certainly a basic personality associated with eating disorders, generally agreed on as having characteristics: of extremeness, competition, self-criticism, perfectionism, strong desires for achievement, prone to self-imposed pressure, the desires for acceptance, intense concern for how they are viewed by others (Wasted; www.healthyplace.com). This is also true in the case of male anoretics, who in most cases do not have the cultural stimulus of expectations of excessive physical thinness. Male anoretics (as in female anoretics) tend to be intense perfectionists with obsessive personalities, suggesting that this is a clear cause having nothing to do with societal images, and highly indicative of a fundamental psychological basis for eating disorders. The personalities of anoretics tend to have extreme beliefs; they are often all-or-nothing people��for them it is impossible to be mediocre or in-between anything. This is an obvious accelerating factor in eating disorders: what starts as dieting quickly becomes extreme and metamorphoses into self-starvation. �God forbid you be average,� says Marya Hornbacher. So, personality trends of eating-disordered people have a definite role in the formation of the disorder.
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