I always thought that anorexia was a female problem, something affecting young women manipulated by media and peers, even bullied, to become closest to what men want in a woman or what a successful woman is supposed to look like: tall and thin. This would be a social cause.
However, I read that some people, including men, become anorexic to control: they cannot control much in life, but weight is something they can control, like a way to cope with trauma. This would be a psychological cause.
My question is what’s the bigger trigger to anorexia, society or inner trauma?
It dos not make much sense trying to separate the two reasons you named, because inner trauma is usually caused by social experience, so these two can strongly overlap. I knew an anorexic person (female) and it started with her own father bullying her into anorexia/bulimia when she was a young teenager. Which is especially fucked up because her father was constantly bringing home tons of sweets and unhealthy food and at the same time denied her doing sports. She then found pro-anorexic websites that made it worse. Around the age of 15 she almost died from organ degradation. Later in her life, when she did not even live in the same country as her parents anymore, the pathological weight control trip had become an integral part of her personality that was pretty much independent of her father. So it started out with social pressure during childhood, which created psychological trauma that was sustained into adulthood and remained, even when there was no more social pressure.