Feminist Perspectives on the Etiology and Treatment of Body Dissatisfaction, Eating, and Weight-Related Disorders

Abstract

Ninety percent of patients with eating disorders are women and girls. Sexual minority men are at particular risk. A feminist perspective on body image and eating and weight-related disorders holds on a cultural analysis of the changing gender roles and appearance-related ideals across time and place. Cultural objectification refers to the tendency to reduce the social worth of women and girls to their sexual appeal. The frequency with which women and girls are objectified in Western cultures is increasing in nearly every form of media communication. For girls and women, in contemporary Western and Westernized cultures, conformity to the thin-ideal is associated with rewards in the educational, occupational, and relational realms. The modern era dictated a level of thinness that could not be attained by the majority of women via healthy means. As to treatment and prevention of eating and weight-related disorders, feminist theorists continue to develop many different approaches to curbing the negative impact of the thin-ideal internalization, self-objectification, and maladaptive social comparison.