Myths About Eating Disorders and Gender That Need to Go
An eating disorder is a mental disorder defined by abnormal eating habits that negatively affect a person’s physical or mental health. They include binge eating disorder where people eat a large amount in a short period of time, anorexia nervosa where people eat very little and thus have a low body weight, bulimia nervosa where people eat a lot and then try to rid themselves of the food, pica where people eat non-food items, rumination disorder where people regurgitate food, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder where people have a lack of interest in food, and a group of other specified feeding or eating disorders. Anxiety disorders, depression, and substance abuse are common among people with eating disorders. These disorders do not include obesity.
The causes of eating disorders are not clear. Both biological and environmental factors appear to play a role. Cultural idealization of thinness is believed to contribute. Eating disorders affect about 12 per cent of dancers. Individuals who have experienced sexual abuse are also more likely to develop eating disorders. Some disorders such as pica and rumination disorder occur more often in people with intellectual disabilities. Only one eating disorder can be diagnosed at a given time.
When a relative of mine developed an eating disorder, it blew past the radar of everyone who cared about him.
“He’s just a picky eater,” they explained. “It’s a diet,” they brushed off. “He has a weird relationship with food, but it’s nothing to be worried about,” they declared. The implication always hidden that if he were a girl, there’d be reason for concern.
But why stress over him? Boys don’t get eating disorders, the thinking went. He’ll eventually grow out of this phase.
But when I came home from college one summer to see how he’d withered away, skeletal beyond recognition, I told his mother that this was unacceptable: “Aunty, he’s sick. You need to do something.”
When he finally saw a doctor, he was given an eating disorder diagnosis almost immediately. He had all of the obvious signs of anorexia nervosa: extreme caloric restriction, body image disturbance, fear of weight gain. But because he came in male packaging, they were missed by his family and friends.
The assumption that eating disorders are predicated on womanhood — and a very particular cisheteronormative standard of womanhood at that — is harmful to people who are suffering and fall outside of that stereotype.
And it means that men aren’t the only gender category where eating disorders are missed. Trans people, queer women, and masculine people, to name a few, are groups in which eating disorders consistently go unnoticed.
Breaking down the stereotype that eating disorders only affect certain kinds of women means allowing more room for people of various genders and sexual identities to be acknowledged in their struggles and survivorship.
So, here are four myths about gender and eating disorders that we need to smash right now.
Myth 1: Femininity is a predictive factor
The idea goes like this: The more feminine you are, the more at risk you are for developing an eating disorder, regardless of gender.
If you’re feminine, people assume you overemphasize the importance of beauty. This may, in turn, make you more susceptible to engaging in extreme behaviors to fit an ideal.
And the assumed relationship between eating disorders and weight loss is often overstated. A drive for thinness alone isn’t what causes eating disorders.
But people think that feminine people develop eating disorders in their pursuit of the thin ideal.
Here’s the truth: Our assumptions about eating disorders and femininity may be the result of long-standing researcher bias regarding gender roles.
While scales created to measure gender identity seem to prove objectively that femininity is a risk factor of eating disorder development, the scales themselves are subjective: The gender roles in the scales are rigid, associating femininity with women and masculinity with men.
Yes, eating disorders are more common in women. No, that doesn’t inherently make femininity a predictive factor.
Instead, it’s been found that when these scales allow for more fluidity in gender roles, nuances around femininity and masculinity in eating disorder development are no longer evident.
Eating disorders affect people regardless of the gender roles they subscribe to.
Myth 2: Straight men don’t struggle with body image
As mentioned earlier, we tend to make the association between femininity and eating disorders. A consequence of this is that folks tend to assume the only men who struggle with their body image and develop eating disorders must be gay, bisexual, or queer.
It is true that queer men are more likely than their straight counterparts to experience negative body image and develop eating disorders. But that doesn’t mean that straight men don’t.
In fact, according to the National Eating Disorders Association, the majority of males with eating disorders are heterosexual. And this could partly be linked to the fact that masculine beauty standards are becoming stricter and more extreme.
According to Dr. Harrison Pope, a Harvard psychiatrist who studies bodybuilding culture, “There has been a striking change in attitudes toward male body image in the last 30 years,” he told The New York Times.
Moreover, portrayal of men as lean and muscular “is dramatically more prevalent in society than it was a generation ago,” Pope said.
It’s no surprise, then, that one-quarter of men with a normal weight perceive themselves to be underweight.
As such, disordered eating behavior, especially compulsive exercise, is on the rise for straight men. Research has found 90 percent of teenage boys exercise at least occasionally with the goal of bulking up, while 6 percent of them have experimented with steroids.
Eating disorders aren’t reserved for women. Anyone of any gender can have an eating disorder. And knowing how eating disorders present differently in men can help us recognize the signs more quickly.
Myth 3: Trans people don’t have eating disorders
Point blank: Trans youth are at an increased risk for eating disorder development. In fact, they’re the group most likely to have received an eating disorder diagnosis in the past year — even when compared to straight, cis women.
And yet, when we think about eating disorders, we rarely, if ever, concentrate on the experience of trans folks. Trans experiences are often pushed to the side and overshadowed by the myth that eating disorders are most common in straight, cis women.
But according to a large-sample 2015 study, trans folks “may use disordered eating behaviors to suppress or accentuate particularly gendered features.” And the safety issues involved in not “passing,” or being read by others as their gender, might play a role here.
At least 26 trans people — most of them trans women of color — were murdered in 2018. Considering this danger, combined with the body dysphoria some trans people experience, it’s little surprise that trans folks may use weight loss or gain to “suppress features” of their gender assigned at birth or to “accentuate features” associated with their gender.
Trans folks are more likely to engage in compensatory behaviors often associated with bulimia nervosa, such as:
- the use of diet pills
- self-induced vomiting
- laxative misuse
There are also several reasons why trans folks may be more likely to have an eating disorder diagnosis. For example, they’re more likely to already have contact with mental health professionals: 75 percent of transgender people receive counseling already, which could lead to an eventual diagnosis.
Regardless, the high rates of eating disorders in the trans population are alarming. It’s high time for us to recognize how seriously we need to take this community.
Myth 4: Queer women are immune to beauty standards
As a queer woman myself, this myth really bothers me.
The thinking goes that because queer women belong to a sub- or even counterculture, we’re protected from mainstream beauty standards. Because we don’t worry about preferences meant to entice men, we escape those standards entirely.
Not so fast.
It’s true that dating in lesbian culture, as compared to the dominant culture, lacks the same emphasis on physical appearance. And it’s true that queer women are, on the whole, more satisfied with their bodies and less concerned with the media’s portrayal of women’s attractiveness than straight women.
But the idea that queer women, especially those who are also attracted to men, somehow escape patriarchal oppression is absurd. Queer women are still women. And on top of that, we face extra pressures due to our sexual identity.
One study found that, similar to straight women, the following played a role in eating disorder development for queer women:
- a search for identity
- an exertion of self-control
- a pursuit of feminine beauty
That said, queer women specifically pinpoint the “response to the stress and uncertainty of not fulfilling heteronormative expectations” as an explanation for the development of their eating disorders. Researchers also noted they used their eating disorder as a way of “avoiding their sexuality by focusing instead on food or by ‘looking straight.’”
In short: The overlapping of gender and orientation complicates body image. It doesn’t make it easier.
As such, there’s no significant difference in eating disorder occurrence between straight and queer women at all. Queer women may be less likely than their straight counterparts to develop anorexia, but they’ve also been shown to be more likely to develop bulimia and binge eating disorder.
Queer women aren’t immune to beauty standards or eating disorders. Believing that we are makes it much harder for us to receive help.
Eating disorders know no gender or orientation
The truth is simple: Eating disorders know no gender or orientation. They’re mental health conditions that can affect anyone. And obliterating the myths that say otherwise is an important step in making sure all people have access to acknowledgment, diagnosis, and treatment.
Celebrities Who Talked About Their Eating Disorders
These brave, inspiring women opened up about how their eating disorders or body image issues were controlling their lives. If you can relate, get help ASAP and find inspiration in their recovery.
Demi Lovato
Demi has been an advocate for others struggling with eating disorders, mental illness, and addiction — all of which she’s gone through herself and has openly talked about to fans.
She’s since been a major supporter of loving her body just how it is, sharing one Snapchat this past summer of herself in a bikini with the caption, “My body isn’t perfect, I’m not my fittest but this is me!! And I ❤ it.” Amen. She also bared even more of her body (and her #selflove soul) in a revealing photo shoot with Vanity Fair, saying, “What does it mean to be confident? It means letting go, being authentic, saying I don’t give a fu*k and this is who I am.”
Kesha
In 2014, Kesha checked herself into an undisclosed rehab facility to receive treatment for an eating disorder. She emerged stronger and with an empowering perspective that she shared with her fans in an essay for Elle UK, revealing, “I felt like a liar, telling people to love themselves as they are, while I was being hateful to myself and really hurting my body. I wanted to control things that weren’t in my power, but I was controlling the wrong things. I convinced myself that being sick, being skinny was part of my job.”
She went on to declare in an Instagram post, “I have decided to take my life back…and also a big ol’ f**k u if u wanna hate on my body. Just remember that makes u look like a dickhead.”
Candace Cameron Bure
Even though the Full House (and now Fuller House) star began her career very young and essentially grew up on camera, it really wasn’t until after the iconic series ended that Candace says her bulimia developed. She revealed her difficult relationship with food during an #EatingRecoveryDay panel in 2016 saying, “I got into a cycle of binge eating and feeling such guilt and shame for that, that I would start purging. And without even knowing, it soon just took over to a point where you feel such a loss of control.”
She has since regained control and has developed a better pattern with her diet and has found a love for fitness that has clearly turned into a passion for exercise.
Jade Thirlwall
The Little Mix singer opened up in the group’s new book about struggling with anorexia so severely when she was younger that she was even hospitalized. She says in the book, “At 13, you’re at that age when you don’t really have control over anything, and I felt as if the only thing I could control was what I was eating. I started skipping meals and stuff like that. I would look in the mirror and it wasn’t that I’d think I was fat, I just had it in my head that I wanted to be really, really skinny….It took going to hospital to make me realize what I was doing, that it wasn’t a game, it was something really serious.”
She went on to say that doctors and nurses at the hospital told her, “You’re destroying your body and if you keep doing this you will die.” “I can’t do this to my family. It shocked me into a change,” said the singer.
Shawn Johnson
The gymnast and Olympic gold medalist revealed to People that during the 2008 Games she restricted her carbs so obsessively she wouldn’t even eat a noodle in her soup, saying she was eating only 700 calories a day. “I was always the very strong, powerful, muscly, bulky gymnast and I felt like people always wanted me to be thinner and lighter and leaner,” she said in the interview. “As a 12-year-old, the only way I really understood how to achieve that was to eat less and restrict myself. Instead of putting in the time and effort to be healthy and do things the right way, you look for a quick fix that might work for a week or two.”
Johnson has since recovered and has celebrated her marriage to Andrew East earlier this year. She even dropped by our studio for a little one-on-one chat and fitness trivia.
Hilary Duff
Hilary Duff may have first risen to fame playing Lizzy McQuire as a child actress, but theYounger star and mom looks to be healthier and happier than ever — dating her personal trainer probably helps.
Last year, the SHAPE cover girl told us she went easy on herself when it came to getting back into shape after having her baby, saying, “There’s so much pressure to always have it together, and I’m not falling for it. You see supermodels who have babies, and the next week they look as if they were never pregnant. That was not the case with me. Some days I feel great, others I feel pretty normal, and that’s acceptable.”
Kate Winslet
Kate may be a revered, Oscar-winning actress who flaunts her curves on the red carpet with extreme confidence. But she wasn’t always among the 10 most body-positive women in Hollywood, as she admitted to an obsession with losing weight fueled by laxatives when she was a teenager trying to break into Hollywood.
She has said she was rather uncomfortable and self-conscious as a teenager, wanting to lose weight in hopes of breaking into the acting world. She lost 10 pounds, but “then I became addicted to losing weight and went too far. I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful. Luckily I was strong enough to be able to say to myself, ‘What are you doing? You are just really hungry,’” reports The Daily Mail.
Zoë Kravitz
The actress and daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet admitted that she struggled with an eating disorder that first manifested in high school. She told Complex magazine, “I had a really hard time when I was 16, 17, 18. I started with the eating disorder in high school…. Just [a hard time] loving myself … I felt pressured. My mother’s a beautiful woman, and I think, in some way, I felt intimidated by that sometimes.”
But, Zoë says her journey to recovery began when she finally said enough is enough. “I feel like something has left my body, like some part of me is gone now, something that was making me so insecure. And it feels amazing,” she explained in her interview.
Zosia Mamet
The Girls star got real about her struggles with an eating disorder and body image — issues she’s faced since childhood — in a 2014 essay for Glamour, demanding that society needs to start encouraging women to accept themselves.
Zosia says, “The first step, I think, is for those of us who are suffering to start talking about it: people like me, who have been diagnosed, and people who live in that gray area of ‘food control issues.’ We all suffer in some small way; we are all a little bit ashamed of that second cupcake. Let’s diminish the stigma. Let’s remind one another that we’re beautiful. Maybe you’ll help a friend. Maybe you’ll help yourself. And if you’re reading this and you’re suffering, please know you’re not alone. Tell someone: The people who love you will listen, I promise. And you’ll feel better.”
Nicole Scherzinger
The former Pussycat Doll and X Factor judge revealed her battle with bulimia to Cosmopolitan UK, saying it’s a struggle that she kept a secret for years. “It is such a horrible paralyzing disease and it was such a dark time for me. That’s why I can empathize so much with people who have demons and voices in their heads, who aren’t nice to themselves. It robs you of living your life.”
Troian Bellisario
Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario revealed to Seventeen that she turned to anorexia as a way to cope with the pressures of high school — pressures that she put on herself. “I started self-harming when I was a junior. I would withhold food or withhold going out with my friends, based on how well I did that day in school… It was about wanting to please my father and mother and wanting to be perfect to everybody. I just thought if I ever expressed any sadness or anger or anything that’s going on with me, they would disown me. I kept a lot of it bottled up inside, and it turned into self-destructive behavior,” she said candidly in her interview.
Molly Sims
Molly Sims opened up to the Huffington Post about her obsession with maintaining unrealistic weight goals while modeling for Sports Illustrated and Victoria’s Secret. Today, she’s comfortable in her body, explaining, “I think other things have become more important than what I look like. It doesn’t have as much weight now that I have a husband and a family and kids … I’m not consumed with trying to get into a size 2.”
Katharine McPhee
Katharine McPhee was a fan favorite (and runner-up) on American Idol in 2006 — but she was hiding a secret battle with bulimia the entire time, something she later said she felt held her back.
In an interview with People she talks about that bittersweet time in her life saying, “I’d been struggling with bulimia since I was 17. Growing up in Los Angeles and spending all those years in dance class, I’d been conscious of body image at a young age, and I went through phases of exercising compulsively and starving myself. Food was my crutch; it was how I dealt with emotions and uncomfortable situations.”
Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci first came onto the scene in now iconic movies like Mermaids and Casper when she was a child — at a time when she says she was insecure about her changing body. Those insecurities morphed into a battle with anorexia that she sought treatment for.
The actress explained during a 2012 appearance on The Talk, “I think it’s just really awkward to go through puberty and go through growing up and becoming a woman when everybody is always kind of looking at you. You’re doing fittings for a movie, and people are judging how this looks on you and how that looks on you … I would say that if you feel like you are starting to obsess too much about the way you look, then definitely get some kind of therapy or help very quickly. Because that can just grow into an obsession that you can’t control.”
Alexa Penavega
The Spy Kids star opened up about recovering from bulimia while competing on Dancing With the Stars. Alexa revealed that her battle with bulimia began in childhood after a movie producer told her she was “too fat.” She said of her journey to People, “You read textbooks and it’s just so, well, textbook. ‘This is how you get over bulimia.’ But it is so much deeper than that.”
Ginger Zee
The Good Morning America meteorologist first got candid about her battle with anorexia while competing on Dancing With the Stars. She revealed to Us Weekly, “I’m so angry that [anorexia] is the way that I decided to cope. It’s going to be with me my entire life. I’m always going to have body-shaming issues. But I think I’ve now grown into enough of a woman and mature person that I realize life is a lot bigger than that.”