Positive articles and advertisements
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Understanding does exist!
Here is where you can look at some positive articles or ads that have been found in the media. These articles and ads are worthy of praise. They help us in our quest to spread more awareness about eating distress.

"Jamie Lee bares her soul over her 'imperfect' body" on the Sunday Independent 25/aug/02.

This was a positive informative article with a good message to people. "The public are sold a certain, sanitised version of celebrity reality". This is a point that people don't always remember. Many photos are retouched with airbrushing or colour enhancement. In some films the actresses don't even use their body in shoots but someone else's is used to make the actress look "perfect". The point made by Jamie Lee Curtis about cosmetic surgery and lack of information about the risks involved was also good. Magazines advertise cosmetic surgeries at the back of their magazines without any warning or information saying that such procedures have risks. They convey to the public that it is easy to change what you don't like. Just phone up a surgery and you can have a new body!
It is nice to see a celebrity admitting that what we see is not always true, that some media sources do deceive the public. It's nice to see her take action against an issue that is damaging to people and one that she feels she can help to rectify.


"The politics of THIN" on the Sunday Independent 12th Jan 03

I felt this article was good in the sense that it highlighted how society as a whole has become obsessed with the culture of thinness. It detailed how many people use food to deal with emotions rather than using it to fuel the body. "Hunger and appetite have become unlinked and nature dislocated".
The article also emphasised how the media have helped spread an "ideal", a standard of perfection that we sadly strive as a society to achieve. It spoke of obesity mirroring anorexia and I felt there was an understanding in the article that both are symptoms of the same negative mindset. The article spoke of starving and overeating as merely behaviours.
Overall I felt the article did clarify that eating distress is not about food and that it is a way of coping with negative feelings. The journalist emphasised that this is a problem that affects all of society, which I thought was good, rather than those suffering from eating distress alone.


"Eating Disorder sufferers' 'slipping through net' " on the Irish Examiner 05/FEB/03

I felt this aricle was good because it highlighted some important misconceptions of eating distress often shared by the general public, carers' and sufferers' themselves. First of all it spoke of how many sufferers' are being left untreated because they don't fit a certain current diagnostic criteria. It is believed often and presented in the media that you have to be a certain shape and have certain behaviours before you have eating distress. The true fact is that you can be of ANY SHAPE, GENDER, AGE, RACE to have eating distress. The article also highlighted how men can suffer from eating distress as much as women and that they can exhibit behaviours such as working out extensively in the gym.The final important point the article made was that more financial add needs to be given to sufferers' as not all people have easy access to treatment facilities and neither can some people afford the costs of treatment. In general, I felt the article highlighted many important issues and the misconception that you have to fit into a certain diagnostic criteria result in many people believing that they are not bad enough or deserving enough to seek help and support.