There are so many people struggling with weight issues in today’s society. These people are faced with so many different body image disturbances for example, magazines and advertisements are falsely advertising what the perfect body type should be which, leads people to believe that that is why women are stuggling with weight issues but, what these people don’t realize is that there are more underlining reasons to why women struggle with these weight issues.
Three theoretical models have been designed to give people a better understanding as to what contributes to these eating disorders.(1) The biomedical model. this model gives “important scientific research about the possible physiological causes of eating problems and the physiological dangers of purging and starvation” further more, this model has come up with “medical treatment strategies that may disempower and traumatize women”. unforunatly this model ignores important factors that could influence eating patterns which are “social, historical, and cultural factors”. (2) The psychological model. this model labeld eating problems as “multidimensional disorders” which are “influenced by biological, psychological, and cultural factors”. this model is useful in its exploration of effective treatments however, like the biomedical model ignoring important factors, this one tends to neglect working class women, women of color, and lesbians. (3) The culture of thinness model. This model, designed by feminists, offers information on why “the vast majority of people with eating problems are women, how gender socialization and sexism could relate, and how masculine models of psychological development have shaped theoretical interpretations”. This model is offered as a main reason to why eating problems acure among women rather than men. According to this model, thinness is a “culturally, socially, and economically enforced requirement for female beauty”, which brings on the vulnerability of dieting, weight loss, and subsequent weight gain, resulting in anorexia nervosa and bulimia. After reviewing the feminists model Thomas silber says that “many well-trained professionals have either misdiagnosed or delayed their diagnoses of eating problems among African American and latin women due to stereotypical thinking that these problems are restricted to white women”, which has lead to “being more severe due to extended processes of starvation prior to intervention”. The feminists and sociological research has developed a larger agenda in finding out better ways to “understand how race, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality” plays part in women’s eating problems.
In the eighteen interviews that Becky w. Thompson conducted, “61 percent were survivors of sexual abuse”. eating problems associate with sexual abuse because after being abused these women develop eating problems as a way of coping. Binging helped women “numb out” their feelings. food was seen as something that could be trusted and would always be there when needed which gave women the comfort and security that they needed.
As well as sexual abuse, racism and class standing also played a part in women’s eating problems. African American and Latin families who were working class and interacting with the white community thought that “if you were a truly well-to-do family, then your family was slim and elegant”, which lead the men to pressure their wives and daughters to be thin, resulting in these women developing eating problems.
By Tara