-
- "The teen-agers see TV as a model
for how one gets by in the modern world. They believe the shows depict
reality.''
-
-
- BOSTON - A sudden increase in eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia
among teen-age girls on Fiji may be linked to the arrival of television
in the Pacific island nation in 1995, Harvard researchers said Tuesday.
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- Harvard Medical School anthropology professor
Anne Becker, who has studied Fijian eating habits since 1988, said that
since television's introduction into the country, there had been a sharp
rise in indicators of disordered eating, such as induced vomiting.
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- Some 74 percent of Fijian girls reported
feeling "too big or fat'' in a 1998 survey Becker conducted 38 months
after the country's one television station began broadcasting. It airs
British, New Zealand and U.S. programs such as "Seinfeld,'' ''ER,''
"Melrose Place'' and "Xena: Warrior Princess.''
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- Becker, who was scheduled to present
her findings at the American Psychiatric Association in Washington Wednesday,
said in an interview that 15 percent of the teen-age girls questioned reported
they had vomited to control weight.
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- Traditionally, Fijians have preferred
what Becker called a ''robust, well-muscled body'' for both sexes.
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- But with television's advent on an island
that did not have electricity until 1985, adolescent girls became more
aware of Western ideals of beauty.
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- "What I hope is that this isn't
like the 19th century, when the British came to Fiji and brought the measles
with them. It was a tremendous plague. One could speculate that in the
20th century, television is another pathogen exporting Western images and
values,'' she said.
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- "Nobody was dieting in Fiji 10 years
ago,'' Becker said, adding that at the end of almost every interview with
teen-age girls they asked about dieting.
-
- "The teen-agers see TV as a model
for how one gets by in the modern world. They believe the shows depict
reality,'' she said.
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