---
title: Culture and Media
description: Becoming aware and healthy despite environmental body and weight pressures 
canonical_url: https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/page-2
language: en-GB
date: 2012-09-19T06:51:39Z
notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/page-2.
markdown-tokens: 922
---

> **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/page-2. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content.
> **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above.


Here you will find articles discussing the various ways culture and media can affect both the development of an eating disorder and eating disorder recovery.

Links to various articles in the news and other websites and blogs representing cultural voices will be posted here along with commentary.

 

   Details    Category: [Culture and Media](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/)  ![Black Swan film, control and suppressed adult sexuality](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/black_swan.jpg)

The Black Swan artistic creative team brings the anorexic lived experience to the screen. Women with a history of bulimia and compulsive overeating identify with part of Nina’s experience, especially the confusion between fantasy and reality. But the person with severe anorexia is described meticulously.

In the film, you see what looks like the fragile and delicate vulnerability of Nina. The film catches the seemingly exquisite spiritual quality of the anorexic woman that is a facade for the dark and powerful destructive elements within her.

 

 [  Read more … ](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/cultural-and-media/black-swan-beautiful-public-appearance-and-ugly-secret-body-destruction-1-8)

 

 

   Details    Category: [Culture and Media](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/)  ![Black Swan film, control and suppressed adult sexuality](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/black_swan.jpg)

Nina, the ballerina in the Black Swan, believes that people who attempt or threaten to interfere with her distorted thinking are dangerous to herself and her goals. She is as merciless with them as she is with herself.

She doesn’t perceive the emotional consequences to others her behavior causes. If she gets a glimmer of pain she causes in others she will justify it to herself by saying she had no choice. And indeed, to her eating-disordered mind, she didn’t have a choice.

 

 [  Read more … ](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/cultural-and-media/black-swan-danger-to-others-6-8)

 

 

   Details    Category: [Culture and Media](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/)  ![Black Swan film, control and suppressed adult sexuality](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/black_swan.jpg)

For Nina, the obsessed ballerina of the Black Swan, to get help in establishing her healthy process of development she would have to:

 

 [  Read more … ](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/cultural-and-media/black-swan-is-help-possible-for-nina-8-8)

 

 

   Details    Category: [Culture and Media](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/cultural-and-media/)  ![Black Swan film, control and suppressed adult sexuality](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/black_swan.jpg)

In The Black Swan, Nina’s distorted perceptions based on fantasies and limited vision become hallucinations she believes. Brain cells deprived of nutrition do not function normally. Nina believes perceptions that take her deeper into her hallucinations and guide her behavior.

The end of the film shows the extremes of glorified and malignant romanticism based on the unrealistic definition of personal perfection. Nina glorifies meaningless death and destruction.

 

 [  Read more … ](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/cultural-and-media/black-swan-end-of-the-film-and-beyond-7-8)