The most important ideology in the relentless pursuit of thinness is the belief that through individual hard work and determination one can be successful. One object of women's hard work, which, potentially is also a means of their success, is the body. In a sense, women have had some power through controlling their bodies. The recent emphasis on fitness, youth, health and thinness has played on this power through the body. Especially in the last decade, women have been given the message by men, that their efforts in improving and perfecting their bodies would be rewarded by success in both their personal and professional lives.
Many women develop eating disorders because of the pressures to conform to an unrealistic image.
We must look beyond the psychological aspect of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia and look toward how these eating disorders are culturally defined. If they are unable to distinguish between their own desires and the perceived wishes of their parents, how much more vulnerable do they become to the messages of the culture at large concerning both achievement and beauty as they grow older. It is strongly suggested that social pressures to be thin is a stronger trigger that catapults young women already prone to be influenced by social ideals of beauty and acceptable weight norms into extreme behavior that in other times and other societies would find expression in other psychological disorders. In the past, before thinness was fashionable, there were no social pressures to be thin. On the contrary, extremely thin people were regarded as being ill and in poor health.