The Politics of Body Image

The eating disorder treatment community typically treats body image struggles as a type of disordered thought without any context. The cognitive behavioral model identifies it as a false idea that needs to be contradicted and then will be best treated through distraction techniques.

Although this form of support and guidance can be helpful, the clinical approach to body image also ignores the larger context of women’s body image in our society and the physical self as a means of societally condoned self-loathing.

I am certainly no expert in women’s studies or the objectification of women, but the rise of eating disorders starting in the late 60’s also coincided with the media saturation of images of women that instigated a deep sense of inadequacy for women and their appearance. In fact, there is clear evidence that the introduction of western culture quickly triggers eating disorders in societies without any bias for thinness. The best example of this change is in Fiji in the late 90’s where American television created an eating disorder culture within a few years.

However, the clinical community cannot also function as a philosophical guardian for our culture. We as clinicians may be able to treat symptoms, but we cannot police a culture gone awry that has, through powerful, pervasive messages touting body inadequacy, disempowered women at a time when their power and strength has finally risen.

Where should clinicians then draw the line about accepting eating disorders as a reality in our world? Should part of eating disorder advocacy also involve recognizing the need for a fundamental shift in how we view women’s bodies? Is the correlation between eating disorders and addiction a way of normalizing these illnesses and not facing their societal ramifications?

As a man in a women’s universe of eating disorders, I may have some perspective but also by definition am outside this daily reality of inhabiting a woman’s body in today’s world. Yet I think it behooves the eating disorder clinical community to recognize the events that have brought up a brand new set of illnesses in recent decades. Sanctioned starvation combined with culturally acceptable self-loathing of women’s bodies have made eating disorders a new fact of modern life. These realities need to be more clearly expressed and called out by the activist organizations.