The Confusion in the Mirror

In my previous post, I showed some sketches that I drew as my reaction to the media and its depiction of women. I also posted pictures of the massive amounts of magazines that are all over our grocery stores with headlines all about weight loss, with beautiful women posted on the cover.

I was triggered to pay attention to this after the many articles that we read in my women's studies class that talked about the issue of how women are portrayed in media and the dangers that this has associated with it. I also found a study that I put a link to that showed just how these images and articles can potentially cause a woman to develop an eating disorder.

I used my pictures and previous sketches to come up with a final piece that is really just depicting all of this misinformation.

Anorexia is a disorder that causes you to have an obsession with weight loss, nutrition, cooking, dieting, exercising, and a fear of weight gain(1). While it is a good thing to pay attention to what you put into your body as fuel and to exercise, an obsession is not. My question is, how are we supposed to not be obsessed? We are literally bombarded with dieting tips, fat loss recipes, new exercises, and so many things in magazines all around us, that it is hard not to be. This is probably the reason that over half of teenage girls use unhealthy ways to control weight, 91% of women on a college campus say they are on a diet, and 25% of women on a college campus engage in binging and purging as a way to manage weight. (2)

I used only the covers of 4 magazines that were in the grocery line to fill the outline of this drawing and show just how much we are brainwashed to think there are quick fixes and also just a need to look like these models on the cover.

I drew a mirror, with a woman who was larger in the mirror than she really was to depict the disease, as women with eating disorders, even after losing weight, see themselves as fat. (1)

"The Confusion in the Mirror"

This is done with colored pencil and marker

1. "Eating - Facts on Anorexia Nervosa." Eating - Facts on Anorexia Nervosa. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/svp/uhs/eating/eating-anorexiafacts.htm>.

2. "ANAD." Eating Disorders Statistics « « National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/>