“When eating disorders were first being recognized, people seeking treatment were young, white girls, so the belief developed early that nobody else suffers from them,” says Gayle Brooks, vice president and chief clinical officer of the Renfrew Center, the country’s first residential treatment facility for eating disorders. “When that became the core of our understanding, we stopped looking at diversity being an issue. We missed a lot.” – The Dangerous Myth that Only White Women Get Eating Disorders
Many believe that anorexia is a white girl disease. It’s not, and we need to stop believing it. Eating disorders are dangerous and kill more people than any other mental illness. There have traditionally been two categories of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Now there is a third category: EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified) – a catchall term for problematic and dangerous eating habits that do not fit the strict confines of bulimia and anorexia (I believe Binge Eating Disorder – BED – has also been recognized more recently as well).
Eating disorders are widespread and do not discriminate. Unfortunately, the outreach programs, the advertisements and awareness campaigns, and even treatment facilities are predominantly white. Some women of color in need of treatment have trouble relating to the very different cultural context of many white women in treatment programs and may not even get to the point of receiving a diagnosis and treatment because of the widespread belief that EDs are most common among white women. Women of color have also been excluded from most of the research on EDs.
These women often receive the catchall diagnosis of EDNOS because they may not be underweight necessarily or obsessed with thinness (for example, among latino women, the guitar shape is considered more desirable). Different cultural expectations and beauty ideals shape the disorder but the result is often the same: an unhealthy and obsessive relationship with food, dieting, exercise, and body image. For many, eating disorders are a source of control in a world where they feel they have no control and may be triggered underlying factors and fed by unrealistic expectations of what women are supposed to look like. There’s still a lot we don’t totally understand about why some women develop EDs and how widespread it really is the main point is that eating disorders are dangerous and need to be treated. We have to start by dispelling the myths that keep so many from getting the help they really need.
– Lindsay