Beatriz Ulloa

Writing 2
June 9, 2016
Three Sides to the Same Story

Do you know anyone with a current or past eating disorder? Chances are that you do,
even if you are not aware. Eating disorders have become a widespread phenomenon that have the
ability to impact anyones life. The truth of the matter is that eating disorders have the ability to
be pose a high risk health consequences, and in some cases they may even lead to death.
Research is being conducted to pinpoint the issues of eating disorders and patterns around the
world. There are articles written within the global studies and communication disciplines, and
even some within the scope of popular media. Each of the disciplines take a different approach to
attempt to understand eating disorders. The different types of articles have the ability to highlight
how one topic can be dissected in various ways and each of the ways have a different set
audience that they format their papers to. The formatting of each paper uses different moves to
give an essay style that is chosen by the writer to either inform or entertain depending on the
audience. In this case, the global studies and communication papers cater to their audiences by
trying to inform readers about eating disorders from the lense of their own discipline, while the
magazine article presents the information in a more entertaining, casual way that the magazine
readers are accustomed to.
Global Studies incorporates gathers information from a variety of disciplines. Like many
other fields of writing, global studies researchers uses moves. The essay includes data that is
taken from psychologists and other scientists to gather information to find patterns within world
trends and to analyze the rise of eating disorders through numbers and personal stories. The
essay Eating Disorders East and West: A Culture Bound Syndrome Unbound, by Richard A.
Gordon debates the rising trend of eating disorders within developing countries and the
possibility of a decreasing trend within developed countries.

The essay opens with a short italicized paragraph that is titled, Debate Question that
explains the questions that the essay is going to try to answer.. The clear formatting of the topic
allows readers to have an idea about what the essay is about so they know whether the essay is
relevant to what information they are looking for. Then the essay has a clear bold heading that
says, The sociocultural panorama(Gordon). The paragraph outlines the ways in which social
and cultural aspects are associated with the emergence of eating disorders. Issues such as the
economic state of the country, and perceptions of beauty standards made a difference about how
women viewed themselves and developed eating disorders. Gordon goes through a sequence of
events by date that elaborate on the evolution of the research of eating disorders. The linear
structure of his argument is a move that allows readers to chronologically follow the history of
the study of eating disorders. The visual of the timeline and the linear structure make it easier for
readers to follow the information that the essay presents.
The author uses techniques that are used in scholarly research papers meant to inform.
Writers often adapt to the format of research papers, so that the reader knows where to go for
information throughout the paper. The body paragraphs include percentages that add
mathematical data to support the points that they were making. The section that focuses the most
on evidence is titled The global rise of eating disorders: Discussing the evidence, and just from
the title itself people are directed to the support of the paper (Gordon). The author includes a
table that acts as visual in which data can be presented so it can be easily accessible. The table
also allows the contrast between the numbers of different countries to be more visually
noticeable.
The essays include details such as how a woman feels about her weight and fitting into a
certain dress from different regions. Personal details, such as the emotions people feel when they

think about their own bodies, appeal to the pathos aspect of the research paper and also tie into
the main argument about how eating disorders can be socially oriented. The subcategory of
Africa highlights the differences between cultures and values within these cultures (Gordon).
The different sections are a move that help the reader compare and contrast information. The
researcher includes details like the fact that heavy is a positive attribute for a women in Ugandan
tribes because fat is seen as a sign of fertility. The information that the Global Studies paper
present also places value on particular situations, and about how eating disorders affect the
individual and the country as a whole.
Overall, the tone is neutral and tries to be more professional and biased free as it deters to
use any words that display the writers emotions about eating disorders . There are no major
indicators of the authors opinion about eating disorders but it is structured in a way that clearly
points out that the trends of eating disorders are being impacted by the countries beliefs and
economic wellbeing. The essay was primarily factual; the facts were presented as either
paraphrased ideas from other scientists, statistics, surveys, and observations but also includes
information about specific cases of eating disorders to give a more rounded point of view. The
reader is able to read the collected knowledge in an organized manner and compare the
information between the different regions of the world without having to read in depth about the
writers opinions, opinions that can affect the way the information is understood.
The second essay falls under the communications category. The essay is titled, The
Relationship Between Media Consumption and Eating Disorders by Kristen Harrison and
Joanne Cantor.The global studies paper utilized bold headers and more spacing to distinguish
topics and sections, but the communication paper does not, there seems to be more information
because of the formating but its hard to distinguish between the sections. Instead, the

communication paper uses italics to distinguish change, but because italics are used in other
places throughout the paper the italics are no longer as powerful and some of the information is
lost within the unnoticably divided paper.
The communications essay begins with an introduction of the current trends of how
eating disorders are at an all time high. The distinguishing factors between the essays are more
distinct in the main body paragraphs because of the differences between the data that they chose
to include about eating disorders. The communications essay focuses on media and the
relationship with body image issues and how that two can negatively affect a persons health.
The communication paper uses some non academic resources such as the Playboy and The
Beverly Hills diet to provide evidence, but it does not undermine the credibility because of the
analysis that goes along with the information presented. The article does not only have to rely on
academic resources, because components of communication include platforms that are not
always academic, but can be analyzed in an academic fashion.
Throughout the essay, words that have significant importance are italicized to emphasize
them and introduce new terms. The italicizing signals that the term is important, and therefore
suggests to the reader what to pay attention to. For example the writers strategically choose to
italicize when they introduce drive for thinness, the paper informs that, Drive for thinness. A
strong drive for thinness was also posited by Garner(1991) to be closely related to disordered
eating (Harrison and Cantor). These new terms have a couple of sentences that identify their
meaning and later go into the importance of the term in relation to the research. It takes eleven
pages for the author to finally get to the portion of the essay that conveys the six different
hypothesis. The length of the paper and the in depth analysis suggests that the paper is geared
towards an audience that is interested in eating disorder research. The research in this paper is

more widespread and detailed. There are six different possibilities that are presented before the
author goes into her method.
The communication paper performs an experiment on students to see whether any of the
hypothesis align with the information he finds on the field. The fact that the research is
performing a brand new experiment adds credibility to the paper, because of the new data that is
being presented can reinforce the claim that they already made about how media has the power
to negatively affect peoples body image. The essay relies heavily on individuals responses and
their struggle with body image and then compares that with media. There are tables that provide
results of the relationship between media and eating disorders with equations that present the
correlation between the two. About four pages of the essay focus on analyzing the numerical data
of the experiment along with explaining what the numbers mean in the context of
communication. This information is critical for the readers that are not accustomed to looking at
numerical data and knowing exactly what it means. The paper ends with the typical discussion
where he lists the results and the limitations of the experiment. The limitations allow the reader
to understand that the experiment was not perfect and therefore some of the data can be skewed.
The discussion also serves as a tool for other researchers to expand on the experiment in the
future.
This communication paper in particular was extremely detailed. There were a total of 28
pages that described both previous research and the research that she was conducting within the
paper. The length of the paper is a move itself, because the writer chooses to give substantial
information to the reader. Although, the length has the power to deter readers because of how
time consuming it is or attract readers because of how detailed it is. The audience are most likely
other researchers within the communication field, because of all the information was presented.

The formatting aligned closely with the typical research paper format which made it easier to
find different sections within the lengthy essay. The discipline of communication does rely on
numbers to gather and organize the data sometimes, but it relies primarily on the relationship
humans have with media in this specific paper.
The last article is from Cosmopolitan online. Eating Disorders Are More Common at
Schools With More Girls Than Boys by Hannah Smothers, explores the relationship between
genders within schools and eating disorders. The article is nestled between sidebars of
advertisements, because Cosmo is a magazine that makes money through advertisement deals.
There is also a large picture that goes along with the essay that serves to grab the readers
attention, and to visually appeal to the reader. The article is a couple of paragraphs long, because
the readers of Cosmopolitan are most likely not looking for long research papers when they pick
up a leisure magazine. Most of the time readers expect an easy read that they can relax to,
without receiving an overwhelming amount of information. The piece has to be formated in a
way that fits into the rest of the magazine, so it is short and uses conversational language.
The magazine article is not conducting any of its own original research, or analysis it is
just presenting a glimpse of a vast topic. It is simply just stating a report of what one researcher
has found. Cosmos main point is not to give a widespread knowledge on the topic, it is to quickly
let the reader know about an issue that affects popular media. The information given is limited,
but it does link readers to pages where more information can be found about the article. Even
though the article is short, she still manages to use a move mentioned in the They Say, I Say
Appendix, titled introducing standard views when she mentions that most people think that eating
disorders are more common amongst woman (Smothers). At the very end there is a link for the
reader to follow the author on Twitter. The audience are most likely women in their late teens

through their mid-twenties. The piece is brief and informal. There are sources used, but they are
one sided. The article is probably not used by other researchers, instead it is probably used by
woman that are just browsing the magazines website.
Each of the pieces use techniques to perform the best function for the discipline that they
fall under. The global studies piece effectively uses global data to compare eating disorders and
the patterns within these different regions. The communication piece wisely incorporates its own
research to reinforce the credibility of their research. The Cosmo article dealt with eating
disorders in a light manner to appeal to the readers. In order to achieve the ultimate goal of
informing the two research papers molded their papers around the data, while the magazine
article appealed to the casual reader that is interested in reading a short introduction about eating
disorders. Each of the papers anticipated what was going to more beneficial for their intended
reader to read.

Works Cited
Gordon, Richard A. "Eating Disorders and Cultures in Transition." Google Books.
Brunner-Routledge, 2001. Web. 11 May 2016.
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Harrison, K. and Cantor, J. (1997), The relationship between media consumption and eating
disorders. Journal of Communication, 47: 4067. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1997.tb02692.
Smothers, Hannah. "Eating Disorders Are More Common at Schools With More Girls Than
Boys." Cosmopolitan. N.p., 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 11 May 2016.