Dying to be thin

"The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don't like their bodies," says body-image researcher Sarah Murnen, professor of psychology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
"And body dissatisfaction can lead girls to participate in very unhealthy behaviors to try to control weight." (USA Today)

These behaviors are identified as disordered eating--this term includes a broad range of eating problems, including frequent dieting, anorexia nervosa (self-starvation, unhealthily low weight, and fear of becoming fat), and buliia nervosa (binging and purging).

An estimated 5 million people suffer from eating disorders in the US.

As many as one in seven people diagnosed with anorexia nervosa will die from the illness.


In 2006, photographer Laura Greenfield documented the stories of four young women suffering from eating disorders at the Renfrew treatment center in South Florida--people who are literally dying to be thin.









Greenfield: "It's not what we tend to see in the media when we see celebrities having it--it doesn't have this kind of--glamorous tinge--that we sometimes see associated with it in the media."