... of the article, "The Role of Body Image in Women's Mental Health", has contributed to an understanding of why women are suffering from eating disorders. She offered both a sociological and a psychoanalytical based discussion of the problem women have with body image. The first argument presented concerned the consumer industry. Cussins explains how the consumer industries are to blame for the increase of eating disorders in the female population (2001; 106). She argues that we once lived in a world with substance, dependability and real values, but this world is long deceased. It has been replaced with superficial standards and images of self-gratification (2001:106). Adolescents cannot grow in a culture like this because presently our society encourages lack of self-confidence, lack of self-identity and a homogenous body image. "Without a culture offering its adolescents a framework to grow up in that can be widely understood, there will be ...

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