About Healthy Eating Behavior - Quality Of Life, Reviews

Ideal figure

• USA, 1997
• Director: Douglas Barr
• Starring: Amy Joe Johnson

A large part of the population suffers from hunger, the other is desperately trying to lose weight. "Fighting overweight" is carried out in all ways, a huge amount of time and effort is spent on it. And of course, for many, this war becomes a means of making money, and therefore it will be supported … At the same time, "excess weight" is objectively not always "excess". And the desire to lose weight can take neurotic and more serious pathological forms.

Anorexia - refusal to eat, resulting in fatal weight loss and death

Women are more likely to suffer from anorexia, perhaps because it is so important for women to be beautiful, it is important that the body is approved or even admired. And young girls are especially vulnerable: they are categorical, their body image and self-esteem are unstable, they depend on the assessments of others. A separate risk group includes those who must monitor their weight by virtue of their profession: athletes, models, dancers. The film "Perfect Figure" shows us just such a story.

The main character is a teenager, she is seriously engaged in gymnastics and hopes to get to the Olympics. Her family likes this idea and the possible status of the Champion's parents. But you need to have a little weight, and the girl begins to lose weight. A friend tells her the way she uses herself: eat and induce vomiting. They greedily pounce on food and then run to the toilet.

Fasting and gluttony with vomiting are two sides of the same coin, they often replace each other. As a result, the pathological dynamics is growing: in the middle of the night, the girl pumps her abs, in a cafe she is disgusted by the sight of her neighbors eating.

The result is sad and opposite to the heroine's expectations. Instead of the Olympics, she fails, physically and mentally exhausted. Parents blame the coach for everything, and he returns them responsibility: they themselves demanded sports achievements from their daughter and ignored the symptoms of anorexia.

The film is fictional, but realistic. The desire for thinness, the desire to lose weight at any cost is a big problem of our time. The fact is that ideas about corporeality are becoming more and more distorted.

Previously, the main stream of information came from the real world: the girl went with adult women to the bathhouse and saw what a woman's body really is, with the pros and cons of each figure

The modern world delivers virtual information: cinematography, glossy magazines, photoshopped photos on the Internet are far from reality, they impose some unattainable "ideal". Girls of previous generations played with dolls that were quite similar to real people.

The famous Barbie doll is unrealistic and far from the natural proportions of the body

Unwittingly, an unattainable and distorted image of ideal corporeality settles inside a modern person, to which he begins to strive. Plastic surgery, diets, even the use of parasitic worms are used. Often, these methods lead to a violation of physical and psychological health.

Keeping in touch with reality, healthy ideas about corporeality is an important task. Yes, you can admire an artificial ideal, but it is important not to confuse the ideal and the real!