National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is Feb. 23 to March 1 this year, and I’m very happy to see UND’s Health & Wellness Hub is hosting a few events to get people talking about eating disorders.

The most deadly mental disorder the American Psychiatric Association recognizes is anorexia nervosa. It’s not schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It’s not even depression. It’s an eating disorder.

What I find most messed up about how our culture deals with body image comes to me when I realize we’re causing the problems ourselves. I was flipping through channels on T.V. the other day and was blown away at how clearly we are being plagued by our own unnecessary standards.

One advertisement I flipped by showed an airbrushed model glowering up at the camera while a female narrator whispered, “Achieve ageless skin.” The next channel showed Jennifer Hudson standing under a Weight Watchers logo congratulating some woman for losing 15 pounds.

Both ads presented their products as wonderful, cutting-edge — even philanthropic — miracles that would drag people out of their misery by remedying their nightmarish “ailments” and grant them the ever-elusive but attainable happiness they’re sure can only be bought and not found.

What a ridiculous misrepresentation. These ads claim to say, “This will make you happy.” What they’re actually saying is, “You’re not happy.”

Why do we put up with an entire media culture that relentlessly tells us that we’re not good enough, not trying hard enough and not “happy” enough?

What people need to realize is that we, as a whole, make the rules. We foster an attitude of “we’re not happy enough” then get upset when we’re unhappy!

There is nothing intrinsically “good” about being tall, blonde and thin. Any value in it is entirely created by us simply saying there is. We don’t do the same thing with scientific discoveries or religious beliefs — it’s understood those things need to be backed with some kind of evidence. So, why do we let our idea of body image have its high place of honor in our society without defending itself?

It doesn’t even have an evolutionary reason. As Bill Nye says, “survival of the fittest” refers to an organism’s ability to “fit in” with its environment. It has nothing to do with some absurd idealized version of ourselves as trim, cut bodybuilders.

There is nothing in our DNA, nothing in nature and nothing in our common sense that tells us we should simultaneously create and submit to a cultural requirement that kills more people than 150,000 people a year. That’s all us, people.

If we’re not going to stop this nonsense, let’s at least talk about it and do our best to help people struggling with it. Don’t be weird about it. Don’t hide it from your friends. Get help. Get your friends help. There’s no reason you shouldn’t.

Will Beaton is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].