Expert discusses image issues
SHEILA FLYNN
News Writer
More than 20 years ago, Leigh Cohn's wife told him she was bulimic. At the time, there wasn't even a word for the disorder.
Since then, the couple has worked to increase awareness of the condition and other eating disorders, and Sunday he came to Notre Dame to discuss body image issues.
Cohn focused on the role the media has played in shaping society's perceptions of how people should look. He showed slides of Renaissance and Impressionist paintings which presented images of "beautiful" men and women in the past, constrasting these more natural, heavier individuals with the models in ads, such as Calvin Klein's, and on television today.
"People are getting rich off of selling people the idea that they should be different from what they are," Cohn said.
He pointed out that the trend toward extremely low weight began in the mid-60s with the supermodel Twiggy. He also emphasized that women are not the only targets of advertising; men, too, now deal with body image issues.
"Eighty percent of women want to lose weight," Cohn said. "And 80 percent of men want to change their weight. However, half of these want to lose weight, while the other half wants to gain weight as muscle."
He questioned why the media does not display images of normal, healthy people, stating that these everyday individuals are often happier and healthier than anorexic or bulimic models. He used Barbies and action figures as examples of how unrealistic media ideals are; he pointed out the contrast between Star Wars action figures and the actual bodies of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in the movie as an example.
Throughout his talk, Cohn emphasized how dieting and attempts to change one's appearance are often unsuccessful, since the main factor in body type is genetics. He included slides of his own friends and family, highlighting the similarity in body types of family members from different generations.
Cohn spoke of diet-induced obesity, which occurs when a person stops dieting and the metabolism continues to function under starvation conditions, burning calories slowly, storing fat, and causing the person to gain back the lost weight and more. Yet Cohn explained how society still is obsessed with dieting, spending over $50 million dollars annually on diet products.
"More women would rather be thinner than happily married," Cohn said. "And not only women have this problem. Every airport bookstore I've been to has had men's health magazines displayed."
Cohn went further to explain that the characteristics and phases of eating disorders barely differ, whether suffered by men or women.
"Eating disorders progress in very much the same way," he said. "The obsessiveness, eating rituals and concern with appearance are all the same."
People must focus on more in their lives than weight in order to find happiness, Cohn said. Instead, individuals should incorporate love, spirituality, prayer, solitude, relaxation, enjoyment of nature and countless other factors into their routines in order to fully enjoy life.
"Thinness does not equal happiness, a full life or full relationships," he said. Cohn invited the audience to sign up for group or individual discussions with him Monday.
Cohn has written and edited several books, and he is the editor-in-chief of a magazine dedicated to eating disorders.
The talk was the first in a series of lectures for Body Image Awareness Week at Notre Dame and Saint Mary's.
All News Stories for Monday, February 26, 2001
