While the race for thinness is illustrated in absurd challenges on social networks, this virtual pressure is really becoming palpable in Japan. The diktat of thinness affects more and more young people in the country who suffer from eating disorders,anorexia or bulimia. The Japan Society for Eating Disorders is sounding the alarm, arguing that this “pressure to be thin among young women has gone too far”, he says in a BBC survey. The collective made up of psychiatrists and specialists in these eating disorders points to a problem that has been little known so far in Japanese society.
taboo subjects
Eating behaviors and the relationship to the body are subjects that are absent from the public sphere or even taboo. The stigmatization of eating disorders and the fear of being singled out partly explains this shyness and reluctance for people who suffer from them to seek help. Few of them dare to talk about it to those around them. Very few teenage girls will seek support from a doctor or psychologist to change their perception, often biased, of their figure and work on their relationship to food.
Mokoto is one of those “anonymous” victims who prefer to keep their troubles quiet. She was 16 when she fell into anorexia. She then began to exercise excessively and drastically reduced her food portions. “I hated my curves when I was little. The others made fun of me so I always wanted to change”, she justifies quoted by the BBC. When her parents discovered her illness three years later, they preferred to close their eyes, advising her not to see a doctor.
“Loves see acts like throwing themselves on food or throwing up as something shameful,” says Dr. Aya Nishizono-Maher, psychiatrist and member of the Japan Society for Eating Disorders.
For public acknowledgment of the problem
Mokoto got away with it after attending a support group. She is now a married woman with one child. But not everyone has the same luck as Mokoto. “Hundreds of people are suffering in silence. Very few services are available to help these patients,” the Japan Society for Eating Disorders told the BBC. The group of experts calls on the government to take up the problem. “The medical system is failing to help these people” continue the doctors, before adding: “We want public recognition of this growing problem of eating disorders”.
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