By:  Juliette Terzieff

Original Source: Alternet

In the United States the number of eating disorder sufferers has more than doubled since the 1960s, according to the Washington-based American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, with an estimated 10 million girls and women and 1 million men affected by anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating and other eating disorders.

Anorexia is a mental illness that progressively damages the body, is fatal to between 15 to 20 percent of sufferers, and causes more deaths among females aged 15 to 24 than all other causes combined. Forty-seven percent of U.S. females in fifth through 12th grade say they want to lose weight because of magazine pictures and 60 percent say magazines influence their ideas of desirable body types, according to the Philadelphia-based Renfrew Center Foundation.

"The worst part is that the images being portrayed in popular culture are completely unrealistic, airbrushed, manipulated . . . while putting a lot of pressure on young people to look a certain way," says Grefe. "Simply put, this is dangerous."

Eating disorders drive many sufferers into isolation, overcome by feelings of deficiency in the single-minded obsessive pursuit of perfection. To allay the ensuing loneliness, many young people turn to the Internet where scores of Web sites are devoted to their friends "Ana," "Bella" and "Mia," cyberspace nicknames for anorexia and bulimia. While anorexia proponents cite the Web pages and communities they spawn as places to draw strength, health care advocates have spent the last decade condemning them.

Scouring through magazines, clothing catalogs, newspapers, television and the movies, some eating-disordered women seize upon super-skinny celebrities for "thinspiration," a term used on pro-anorexia Web sites to describe admiration for their role models.

Supporters post pictures of their thinspiration favorites on Internet sites and community discussion boards. Popular thinspiration celebrities include movie star Keira Knightley, tennis star Anna Kournikova, and models Kate Moss and Oksana Pautova. Even those like Mary-Kate Olsen and Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, who have publicly admitted to their battles with eating disorders, are held up as templates for success.

Juliette Terzieff is a freelance journalist currently based in Buffalo, New York who has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, CNN International, and the London Sunday Times during time spent in the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Asia.