Carrying the Weight of Self-Derogation?Disordered Eating Practices as Social Deviance in Young Adults

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study asks if self-derogation in early adolescence increases the odds of adopting disordered eating practices (DEPs) in young adulthood. Using a racially/ethnically diverse random sample of 1,209 youth, our (longitudinal) data show that both boys and girls who disliked themselves at age 13 were more likely to adopt disordered eating practices at age 22. Following Kaplan's theory of deviance, we view disordered eating as a form of internally directed deviance that youth may adopt in an effort to “correct” for negative self-feelings. We find that girls/women adopt DEPs more than boys/men do, although this is not true for African Americans. Family socioeconomic status fails to predict DEPs. Exploratory analyses aimed at understanding connections between self-derogation and DEPs show that perceptions about weight matter. In particular, women who are more anxious about their weight are more apt to engage in DEPs (compared to less anxious women). Our study contributes to debates about theories of deviance and theories of gender, relative to explaining disordered eating practices.