Eating Disorders: The Toxic Stereotypes

By: Vanessa Nguyen, Staff Writer

For decades, social media has painted a picture of the “perfect” body type. Young girls and boys sculpted an idea for how they assumed their body should look; seeing models online and envying their thin waist and flawless skin or broad shoulders.  For most, when exercising and diets weren’t working, they resort to increasingly unhealthier methods. Eating disorders become ways to cope with stress and body image issues. Along this rough road, with the persistent pressure manifesting from each persons’ own minds, comes the whispering and hurtful assumptions from other people. 

To define an eating disorder: persistent behavioral conditions that lead a person to distressing thoughts and emotions. There are six most common types of eating disorders: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, pica, rumination, and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder; each one of these are extremely dangerous for one’s physical and mental health. Eating disorders don’t necessarily have signs but instead have red flags: patterns that show up over and over again that show an eating disorder is emerging. There are no real, singular causes for eating disorders either. It could come from someone’s experiences with their environment, family, friends, and/or genes. It could start from pressuring yourself or being pressured by others to fit the “beauty standard” and forcing yourself to pick apart your features and hide the flaws people see like thicker thighs or a wide rib cage. Once the disorder starts, it’s hard to control your habits around food and it’s hard to go back to how things were when the restricting or the binging starts. 

Often, when people hear of an ED, they assume it’s about women. But, anyone could develop an eating disorder; any age, gender, or size. It has been stereotyped that it’s not common for men to have eating disorders and assumed that women care more about beauty standards and are required to look a certain way. People oftentimes think that feminine women develop EDs in order to be perceived as thinner. However, the truth is, anyone could develop an eating disorder. Although it’s more common in women than men, the disorder doesn’t pick and choose who it wants to be it’s victim. Whether it’s men or women or any other person, it affects everyone on a psychological level. 

Another one of the many stereotypes that come with eating disorders is when people see a “midsize”  or “overweight” person and assume they’re healthy. They ignore the fact that there are different types of disorders and assume that a victim of ED is skinny.  Some people aren’t educated on the topic of EDs, so their assumptions could immediately turn into stereotypical comments. There are also different types of eating disorders meaning that the person with the ED could be of different weights. A binge eating disorder is one of the top six eating disorders and can affect the increase in the amount of food you consume. This could cause you to overeat or continuously binge even if you’re guilty with the binging that’s out of control. The truth is that eating disorders aren’t restricted to one size/weight. Although body image can have a huge effect on someone struggling with binging, it can be hard for them to stop. 

The reality of struggling with an eating disorder goes far deeper than what’s on the outside. Everyone deals with stress in different ways and not everyone’s destressors are healthy. The best thing you could do is be patient with your friend and understand they’re dealing with things that are out of their control. The toxic stereotypes could lead to making bad assumptions and leaving a friend dealing with overpowering thoughts and the false belief of achieving a “perfect body”. There is no such thing as a perfect body. Instead of jumping to conclusions, find the healthy parts of you or your friends, the part of you that is reaching out for help, and beat the beauty standard.