Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders, Essay Example

Eating disorders refer to complex maladies that have a litany of etiologies and are serious and potentially life-threatening conditions, often arising from a complex matrix of biological, psychological, cultural, and social factors. Moreover, they are associated with a vast array of negative physical, psychological, emotional, and social consequences. An individual who suffers from an eating disorder may begin merely consuming smaller or larger amounts of food. However, over time their urge to eat less or more completely spirals out of control, and it ironically centers around issues of control. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are real, treatable medical illnesses that often coexist and intersect with other illnesses including depression, substance abuse, and various anxiety disorders. Eating disorders affect both men and women despite the fact that they are stigmatized as a female malady. Rates among women and girls are two and a half times greater than among men and boys, which may be attributed to the female stigma attached to eating disorders which results in under reporting. Eating disorders often fully manifest themselves during one’s early teenage years or young adulthood, but also may develop during childhood or later in life (The National Institute of Mental Health). External pressures normally function as the etiologies of disordered eating behaviors, which spawns adverse health consequences.

Poor body image germinates as a result of various external factors such as the mass media and parental influences that directly contribute to the provocation of disordered eating behaviors. The superficiality of society today with regards to aesthetics, thinness in women, and muscularity in men has spawned an epidemic of eating disorders in both men and women that further underscores how glib western society has truly become. Young boys and girls are inundated on a quotidian basis with images of thin celebrities and muscular men on magazines and on the television as the ideal that they must attain in order to be considered attractive. From a feminist perspective, it is clear that ordinary girls develop the propensity to adopt disordered eating behaviors because images in the mass media underscore and perpetuate female inferiority by limning ht ideal female body as something both unattainable and unnatural, Advertising instills in  Americans an immense trepidation of becoming fat as a means to contain female power. As women continue to encroach on traditional male preserves, society at large has made great efforts to contain women both figuratively and literally, thereby encouraging them to remain small. As such, the media disseminates images of fragile, thin women in order to maintain the gender status quo. Repeated exposure to such images and the dieting obsession has propelled many young girls and boys to develop disordered eating habits. While the majority of the corpus of literature exhibits unequivocal correlations between social and cultural pressures to achieve thinness through the mass media vis-a-vis anorexic and bulimic behaviors in boys and girls, a litany of studies elucidate the significance of parental relationships in the development of a children’s–especially girls’–attitudes towards eating and food as well as their body image. Extant quantitative research reveal that mothers do directly impact their daughter’s attitude towards and perception of weight and body image through modeling eating behaviors (Kilbourne 408).  Kilbourne cites a cogent study from the American Family Practitioner that was conducted in 1988 that found that the mothers of dieting girls encouraged them to adopt such behaviors in comparison to only 14% of non-dieting girls (Kilbourne 409). Western culture encourages a relentless pursuit of thinness through the glorification of thin models and celebrities, and mothers often internalize such messages and in a sense pass them down to their progeny.

The prevalence of so many illnesses and diseases in the modern day certainly encourages healthy eating habits. Cancer remains uncured, and diseases such as diabetes and liver problems are  time and again connected to poor eating habits. Moreover, being an athlete or fit individual requires a person to embrace a healthy lifestyle, although athletes often embrace the false notion that thinness or low body fat will enhance performance. Anorexia is a disease in which an individual abstains from consuming any calories in an effort to lose weight and achieve the ideal body type. Women seek to be unnaturally thin, so they find ways to avoid eating such as smoking cigarettes and drinking beverages with zero calories. In a similar fashion to the social and cultural idealization of thinness for women, there also remains a masculine idealization of muscularity, which propels men to often ingest anabolic steroids and engage in serious weight training. Engaging in such arduous physical activities can impact their psychological and physical health because of the high risk factors for developing disordered eating behaviors like anorexia. Health risks of anorexia are manifold and include the reduction of bone density, which puts an individual at risk for early onset osteoporosis, and fatigue. One’s risk of heart failure increases because anorexia causes the denial of necessary nutrients the body needs to be able to function normally.  Bulimia represents a person’s desire or attempt to stabilize themselves in a chaotic yet highly demanding culture and society where shifting demands often spawn a confused sexual identity in both females and males, which trigger conflicting perceptions of how their body reflects their identity. Sociological and psychological studies and research on bulimia elucidate a complex matrix of influences on the development of the disorder, which manifests itself in binging on food and drink and subsequently purging vis-a-vis self-induced vomiting or over-exercising. Bulimia poses serious, adverse nutritional risks including the inflammation or rupture of one’s esophagus due to constant vomiting as well as electrolyte imbalances that can cause irregular heart beats and other heart problems.

Educating a client on eating disorders and the vagaries associated with them can help him or her manage disordered eating habits, but I do not believe eating disorders can be cured because they are trenchant, psychopathologies that develop and can never be eradicated fully. Eating disorders remain a taboo discussion in the modern day, so if a friend were showing signs of developing one I would either have a discussion with him or her, depending on how close we are, or I would schedule an intervention during the nascent stages of his or her disorder before it develops into a full-fledged, life-threatening habit. A friend’s denial of disordered eating always remains the most difficult part in dealing with eating disorders. Orthorexia refers to an obsession with eating foods that are considered to be healthy, thereby eschewing any and all so-called junk foods. This avoidance of “harmful” foods manifests itself primarily in adolescent girls, which suggests that it is closely related to anorexia. Harmful foods are often perceived as foods that will make an individual fat, so refusing to eat them often results in under eating.

Works Cited

Keel, Pamela K. Eating Disorders. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc, 2005. Print.

Kilbourne, Jean. “Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness.” Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders. Ed. Patricia Fallon, Melanie Katzman, and Susan C. Wooley. New York: The Guilford P, 1994. (Ch. 20). 394-118. Print.

The National Institute of Mental Health. “Eating Disorders: About More Than Food.” The National Institute of Mental Health. N.d. Web. 27 Jul. 2015. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/eating-disorders-new-trifold/index.shtml