The Sexist Nature of Eating Disorders in our Society

In recent years, I have written about dieting as the most important risk factor for an eating disorder. Our bodies are genetically designed to respond to undereating in specific ways. For some people, that means restricting food triggers an eating disorder.

I wrote more about the cultural meaning that the majority of people with eating disorders were women in the earlier years of this blog. Psychiatry and mental illness historically created diagnoses that disempowered and pathologized women including hysteria, different personality types, the schizophrenogenic mother and, more recently, eating disorders.

The institutionalization and then corporate strategy to glorify thinness handcuffs women throughout our society. No level of personal and professional success is sufficient for many communities which value thinness first and foremost. Even women who lead full, complex lives, often do so while battling low self-worth driven by the need to lose weight at all costs, disordered eating or often eating disorders.

And so the overarching effect of eating disorders is to disempower women. It’s difficult for them to achieve their most full lives when these added pressures and compulsions of thinness are all consuming.

Rather than protect people from predatory practices around food, dieting and exercise, the culture and even the medical establishment praise these problematic industries as promoting health rather than creating eating disorders. The society creates an environment in which so many women develop an illness and then blames people for being crazy. People who don’t know anything about eating disorders often say, “Why can’t they just eat?” and don’t see how misguided and cruel that question is.

One of the reasons I needed to reiterate how sexist our society is about eating disorders was the recent loss of abortion as a right. As angry and saddening this court ruling has been, I didn’t expect the it to hit so close to my professional home. I heard stories of women in New York who needed abortions in the late 1960’s when it was illegal. They could get an abortion if two psychiatrists would write a letter stating they would commit suicide if they couldn’t get one. They had to manufacture an illness to merit this medical procedure.

The history of women who are either labeled as sick to take away their power or rights is a long one. Psychiatry has been used for many years as a tool to treat women as second class citizens.

The history of abortion in New York reminded me how sexism plays a role in eating disorder diagnosis and treatment. The glorification of thinness, sanctioned food restriction and the societal instinct to subjugate women are all central to the increased incidence and insidious role of eating disorders.

Any thorough treatment of eating disorders needs to take these issues into account. Individual treatment must focus on what will help that person heal and still has to be informed by the inherent sexism in our country.