Susan Renes

About the author: Susan Renes is an eating disorders specialist and a certified relapse prevention specialist.

In our media-centered culture, we are constantly bombarded by advertisements and messages that suggest that thinness leads to happiness and fulfillment. As a result, individuals, and particularly teenagers, become obsessed with meeting these unrealistically high standards for body shape and size set by society. Ironically, those who aggressively pursue thinness in their quest for happiness are usually led to self-destruction.

In the summer of 1994, I visited Dachau, a restored concentration camp outside of Munich, Germany. The visit had a profound effect on me in many ways. I wept when I saw how the prisoners had suffered, and the terrible conditions under which they lived. It had another effect on me as well...