College Eating Disorders: The Pressure To Be Perfect :: Health Fitness

College Eating Disorders: The Pressure To Be Perfect an article by Eric Goodman informs us about the difficulties college women face while attending Miami University and other universities. The article talks about nine women living off campus their second year at Miami University and the problems the women face with eating disorders such as bulimia. All the girls were concerned with losing what's referred to as the freshman 15 the summer after their freshman year. This diet only led to more serious problems their sophomore year. When they moved into a house their sophomore year there wasn't a gram of fat in either shared kitchen except what Ashley bought, the one who ate the best out of the nine women living in the house. She said that if you wanted something with fat in it, such as peanut butter, you would have to buy it and eat it somewhere else other than in the house (Goodman-154-155). Miami University is medium-size and extremely competitive academically. Miami looks and feels like a private university at public university prices. A tradition of academic excellence helps attract a regional student body that is remarkably homogeneous: suburban, conservative, upper middle class and 94.3 percent white. With everyone coming from the same background there is only one way to look, one way to be: ultra slim and ultra toned. Not all Miami women feel this way but a large number do and it’s an ideal shared at similar schools across the country. Also shared at schools across the country is an epidemic of eating disorders (Goodman155). Almost every female undergraduate at Miami whom Eric Goodman interviewed said she knew of someone who had died of an eating disorder. Simple bulimia was so common it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Eating disorders result from individual psychological problems: an unhealthy competition between mother and daughter; low self-esteem; and a need to be perfect in every aspect. Eric Goodman found out though that the more students and experts he interviewed the more he was struck with an inconsistency in logic. How could individual psychological problems produce a national epidemic? He concluded that many young women with a predisposition to eating disorders developed them partially, or even primarily, in response to the pressures of their immediate environment (Goodman 154-155). Julie Campbell-Ruggaard, Ph.D., is a full time member of the Student Counseling Service at Miami University. She estimates that about 20 percent of Miami’s women undergraduates meet official clinical guidelines for eating disorders.