Anorexia is a serious disease. For those of you, that may not know what anorexia is it is an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat.

Some men and women believe that they look too fat or overweight when they look at themselves in the mirror. When they decide that they want to lose weight quicker rather than go through any proper dieting or exercising programs they start to starve themselves.

Anorexia, also known as anorexia nervosa, can be caused by the results that come from both biological and environmental factors. Whether it’s society demanding men to be muscular or women to be thin, there is a lot of peer pressure that causes these individuals to be unsatisfied with who they are.

They feel like they are not good enough and that there is no other way that they will be able to lose weight. They want to be perfect.

Whether it comes from their families, friends, or co-workers these men and women get this idea that they have to be these ideal stereotypes. Men believe that they have to be like the heroes in Disney films. They have to have charming looks and be of high stature in order to get the pretty girl.

Women believe that they have to be like the princesses. They have to be thin and look gorgeous in order to get the handsome guy. Then the women who are evil in these films are always ugly. Except for Mother Gothel from Tangled, but still!

It’s wrong to judge a man or woman that has a different appearance from everyone else. They’re attractive in their own way! Nonetheless, they never see how physically attractive they really are because people are always saying negative things about them.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, men account for less than 10% of reported cases of anorexia, but this disease in men is increasing. Unlike men, more than 1,000 women die annually from anorexia.

Caroline Knapp once said, “Anorexia is a response to cultural images of the female body—waif-like, angular—that both capitulates to the ideal and also mocks it, strips away all the ancillary signs of sexuality, strips away breasts and hips and butt and leaves in their place a garish caricature, a cruel cartoon of flesh and bone.”

Even though anorexia nervosa happens more with women than it does with men the results are never pretty. Seeing men and women’s bones trying to poke out through their skins is sad. They shouldn’t let negative people control their thoughts or their bodies.

Every man and woman are capable of escaping this disease, but Celia Imrie said, “Anorexia is an awful thing, but you get yourself into it, and only you can get yourself out of it.”