An estimated 24 million people in the U.S. have eating disorders. This is a glimpse into what that means.
They aren't just about body image.
Negative body image is undeniably a factor in the emergence of eating disorders, but it isn't the only one. Many people who struggle with anorexia and/or bulimia also present psychiatric conditions like depression, anxiety disorders, and OCD, and the habits — restricting, binging, and purging — often develop as dangerous coping mechanisms. So, it isn't just an extreme attempt at weight loss; it's a legitimate, diagnosable (and therefore treatable) psychiatric disorder.
They aren't adolescent disorders.
A 2012 study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found eating disorder symptoms in 13% of the women surveyed, all over the age of 50, with as many as 66% of those women reporting unhappiness with their overall appearance. Eating disorders are indiscriminate when it comes to age, but since they're often associated with pre-teen and teenaged girls, they can instill a sense of shame and contradiction in older women who struggle with them -- especially those who identify as strong feminists.
They aren't women's disorders.
Though previous studies have found that 10-15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are male, the real number is most likely higher. A recent study published in BMJ suggests that the incidence of anorexia and bulimia in men is actually rising, nearing 25%, while this 2011 study shows that binge eating is as prevalent in men as it is in women. Because men are less likely to seek treatment, they tend to be underrepresented statistically.
Flickr: christmas-on-mars / Creative Commons
They aren't white disorders.
There's an idea that women of color don't struggle with eating disorders, because the equating of thinness with beauty is, historically and culturally, a white practice. But this just isn't the case. "What we've seen is that African-American girls are now becoming increasingly more likely to suffer from disordered eating, and this seems to be a sort of post-integration experience," Melissa Harris-Perry says in this NPBC video. "More and more young black girls are going to school in environments that give them sort of very strong messages about normative body types that African-American girls have a difficult time fitting into."
