This document discusses photo options for representing eating disorders in a campaign for an eating disorder charity. It analyzes several black and white photos that depict skinny girls in various poses and scenarios meant to convey the struggles of living with an eating disorder. The photos use gestures and expressions to symbolize feelings of not being skinny enough, constant battle against oneself, cry for help, and loss of control over the illness at its final stages.

1. Joanne Perry
AS Media Studies
Photo Options
I took this picture after researching
various anorexia websites and
information in order to discover what
would be a most effective and
verisimilitude approach upon the
illness. Eating Disorders are
stereotypically presented within girls
and skinny people. Therefore in order
to represent this ideology in order to
appeal to the audience I felt it is best
to use girls within my photos who are
perceived as skinny. The tape
measure presents the girl to be
measuring her waist and therefore
represents the continuous struggle to
be skinnier. I have also used a black
and white effect on this image in order
to create a more effective approach in order to allow the audience to feel sympathetic for the girl in
the photo. Her loose grip on the tape measure also represents her loss of control in order to
represent the impact in which the
illness can have on a person.
This photo is similar to the previous
image however, instead of using a tape
measure, the girls hand is positioned in
a grabbing motion upon her stomach.
This shows to the audience that the girl
still sees herself as ‘fat’ due to her
grabbing her stomach in a hatred
manor. The black and white effect
again represents an effective,
emotional impact for the audience to
feel when looking at the image. The
image is a connotation of a girl
suffering in silence and fighting a
constant battle against herself,
distressed due to her weight.

2. This image has been created in a
polysemic concept in order for it to
speak to people, mainly niche
audiences who are aware of how the
girl in the image is feeling. The image
shows a sign of how the girl feels
everyday and her struggle with her
eating disorder. The image represents
a verisimilitude approach to how silent
sufferers feel in their own minds. The
words ‘NOT GOOD ENOUGH’ anchor
the audience in due to the powerful
context of the illness. The black and
white effect outlines the words clearly
and effectively, creating more emotion
within the image for the audience to
feel when they view it. The clear wide
shot of the girls stomach, represents how skinny the girl is and how she still does not feel that it is
good enough. It represents eating disorders to be and endless loop of being not good enough
unless recovery is invoked.
This image I have taken uses an over the shoulder
shot in order to allow the audience to have a
verisimilitude perspective on how the girl in the
image feels. The expression the girl invokes
represents her sadness and desperation to lose
weight. Her hands, clutching her stomach, represent
the determination and also the disgust in which she
feels with herself and her body. This image is very
powerful due to it allowing the audience to see her
expression and emphasises sympathy for the girl
due to her uncontrollable illness. The black and
white effect represents her dark thoughts and

3. emotions running through her mind as she stares appalled at her own body.
I took this image in order to represent various
scenarios in which occurs throughout an eating
disorder. It represents a different type of eating
disorder which is regularly, Bulimia Nervosa, in order
to represent that my charity campaign supports all
types of eating disorders and not just Anorexia
Nervosa. This allows more of a mass audience onto
the charity campaign website. This also gives off a
stereotypical girl with an eating disorder, trying
various ways in order to make herself lose weight.
The black and white effect is empowering due to the
ideological denotation of a girl in need of help,
creating sympathy for the audience and allows a
more emotional effect to take over.
I chose to take an image of a girl with her hand covering her mouth in order to represent her
feelings of insecurity and helplessness. The image represents her cry for help although she can’t.
This leaves the audience curious as to why she can’t. This could be for a large variety of reasons
e.g. she is too afraid, she is embarrassed etc. Her eyes create an emotional impact on the
audience as they show purity and innocence and therefore makes it feel as though she is being
completely controlled by something out of her power (her eating disorder). The connotation of
‘Stories’ on her hands allowed me to make it an affective way in order to create a new page.
Therefore this image will be featured on the ‘Stories’ page and will be a recognisable way in which
the audience can establish what they are looking at. It also represents that the girl is not ready to
tell her story yet as her eating disorder still has control of her. The black and white effect again

4. suggests her innocence and allows an
emotional impact to take control of the
audience in order to make them feel
sympathetic towards her.
This image represents the final stages
of an eating disorder and the most fatal.
It represents how serious the illness
can be in a verisimilitude approach
through the ideology that the girl has
been admitted to hospital due to the
band on her arm. The way the hand is
positioned represents that she has lost
all of her own control. The shadow
positioned across her hand represents
her going deeper and deeper into the
shadow which can be interpreted as the
dark side, death etc. The black and white effect represents
a more serious tone for the image and portrays the shadow
to be darker and more deadly. It represents lost hope at the
girls final stages and therefore perceives how serious the
illness can be.
A close-up image of weighing scales simply represent
another stereotypical way in which people with eating
disorders are perceived to continuously use and
therefore represents them in a different scenario. The
black and white effect captures the numbers on the
scales and allows them to stand out more clearly and
more effective in order to allow the audience to see how
much these simple numbers can effect a persons life.