According to Prah, there is a complicated combination of biological, psychological and social factors that cause eating disorders, and our culture continues to endorse thinness (3). Over time there has been a shift in the way that society views being thin. Starting at the end of the Middle Ages, “women who fasted were thought to possess evil spirits and were accused of being witches bent upon destroying the Catholic Church” (12). Next, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when women were too thin, they were thought of as being “victims of poor health” (12). Then in the 1940s and the 1950s, the full figured woman became the ideal (13). When Twiggy, a famous model who stood 5’9” and weighed 90 pounds, was growing up in the 1950s, she hated her body. She wanted to “look like Brenda Lee, very curvy and round” (Abagond), because that was the optimal body. But today, our society not only approves of being thin, but idealizes it. Before Twiggy, “the average fashion model weighed just 8 percent less than the average American woman, but today fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women” (13). The exposure starts at an early age; children are being exposed to the “thin ideal” with dolls such as Barbie, who “would stand 5’9” and weigh a mere 110 pounds” if she were a real person (13). This early introduction makes a big impact because as girls’ bodies develop, they become worried about the places that they are gaining weight where they didn’t have fat before (14). A sickening figure depicts that more than 50 percent of 9 and 10-year-olds say that “they feel better about themselves when they’re dieting” (33), and research found that girls who were as young as 7 years old thought that the thinner women in drawings were more popular and happier (34). These…