It’s the smaller jeans, the perfect figure, the blush on her cheek.

These are factors that Vanessa Gray, vice president of Students Against Distorted Images, said can influence a child’s perception of her mother — and can make her strive to become just like her.

“I’ve seen girls experience having eating disorders when they look at their mom who’s skinnier than they are,” Gray, a junior in communications, said. “They’ll ask themselves, ‘Why am I not fitting that mold?’ Even though they may not be that same body type.”

It can also work in the opposite way, she said.

“I’ve known of girls from families in which a lot of [family members] were overweight, and they didn’t want that to happen to themselves,” she said. “So they created their own eating regimen because they didn’t want to end up like their parents.”

So, as a child admires a parent’s habits about appearance, does the child also pick up on the unhealthy habits of an eating disorder from family members?

Lisa Eberhart, dietitian and nutritionist for the University, said parents’ actions impact and influence their children in various ways — including their development of eating habits. However, she said parents do not cause eating disorders.

“Eating disorders are very internal and people with eating disorders are often very self critical of themselves and have their own perspective of their own environment which can be influenced by media, peers and family,” Eberhart said.

Eberhart said people with eating disorders are often perfectionists undergoing large amounts of stress.

Family can influence eating disorders, according to Eberhart, but in ways that anyone can influence a person.

“If you are always around someone who is critical, then it can make you more critical,” Eberhart said. “Likewise, if a mother has an eating disorder, then it may affect the child’s own ideas of his or her own body.”

Clare Tattersall investigates the relationship between eating disorders and family in her book, Understanding Food and Your Family.

Tattersall discusses the connection between a parents’ and children’s attitudes toward food.

“What your parents learned about weight and food is what they now teach you,” Tattersall wrote in her book. “If your parents learned unhealthy ways of thinking about their bodies or relating to food, they may pass that behavioral pattern on to you.”

Tattersall also connects families and the media and weight.

“When your parents are the victims of media messages and pressure from their own peers, they may influence you or even insist that you conform to the same standards,” Tattersall wrote. “They can place unreasonable demands on you and give you the impression that thinness and appearance are the only measures of success.”

Family members can influence eating disorders or cause low self-esteem, yet according to Eberhart, parents and other relatives are usually not the only cause.

“Eating disorders are very multi-faceted,” Eberhart said. “When a person goes on a diet, they can receive positive feedback from family and society which can encourage a person with an eating disorder.”

“Eating disorders are a way to handle stress,” Eberhart said. “An eating disorder provides orderliness and rigidity to a stressful life.”

One of SADI’s main goals, according to Gray, is to provide a support network for those who have or have had eating disorders, or know people who have them.

However, she said it’s been difficult for SADI to be such a network.

“We hope that people wouldn’t feel intimidated by coming, but it’s such an uphill battle,” Gray said. “People feel intimidated by coming.”