Eating Disorders, Gender, and Society: Causes and Effects

Introduction: Eating Disorders and Gender

There are medical conditions which more commonly occur in one gender than another. These conditions can be either mental or physical — very often, they are both. Certain medical situations are extremely severe and can potentially result in serious harm to the body or even death. Some conditions begin with a mental impression, a false belief ingrained within the mind that then manifests itself physically in the individual. One of the most common and most disturbing of these is the eating disorder. By this term, it is meant that the patient suffers a mental conditioning which makes them either unwilling or unable to eat in a healthy manner, resulting in either overeating or undereating and malnutrition.

Eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia are the result of psychological issues on the part of the individual afflicted. They appear far more often in females than in males as a direct response to the psychology of the majority of society, which imposes itself on women throughout the world. What was once considered a problem facing only white women has transcended age and ethnicity to become a universal problem, sometimes even crossing gender boundaries and affecting men.

Historical and Cultural Perceptions of Body Image

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, according to the age-old adage. In certain periods of history, a larger woman was considered beautiful. Fleshy arms and legs with a full figure was the image that women aspired to. A larger woman indicated that she was well-fed and, very logically, was in possession of considerable money and resources (Bates 1). This soft-bodied woman was, however, also seen as vulnerable because she was less able to exert herself physically. Her opposite — a woman with a hardened, lean body — was one who had to work in the fields and had little food to eat.

In the modern era, the opposite perception prevails: those who are thin are considered beautiful and desirable, while women who are more full-bodied are regarded as unattractive. This new perception began around the mid to late nineteenth century. At that time, science and medicine began to grow in importance, where before mythology and religion had been the major explanatory forces in a person's life. In the mid-1800s, women were in the grip of a repressive Victorian regime in which they were arguably more oppressed than at any prior time. They were expected to remain within their specified domestic sphere rather than participating in the outside world. They were marginalized and forced into isolation, sometimes by doctors or psychiatrists who were becoming more widely consulted. Part of this indoctrination into their separate sphere demanded strict adherence to medically prescribed diets. For women, this meant they were not permitted to eat much meat, while men were encouraged to eat more. This denial of meat deprived women of much-needed protein and iron and rendered them physically weak — which was precisely what the male-dominated power structure desired: women who were weak, subservient, and completely dependent.