The 'Thin White Woman' Narrative and the Erasure of Black Women

It is a lesser-known fact that in the U.S. recurrent binge eating is more common among Black women than among white women (Striegel-Moore, et al., 2000). Similarly, young Black girls are 50% more likely to engage in bulimic behaviour compared to their white counterparts (Goeree, et al., 2011). Though these statistics prove that young Black women are marginally more affected by eating disorders than white women, the societal narrative of the ‘thin white woman’ prevails.

Eating disorders are non-discriminatory. This is a fact that cannot be disputed. However, due to the Western societal exclusion of non-white people, the narrative surrounding eating disorders has been shaped around the ‘thin white woman’. Throughout the course of their histories, eating disorders have been portrayed as a white woman’s disease. White women were the focal point. They were the ones centred within the conversation. They were the ones able to access support from medical professionals. They were the ones able to be studied. Although some studies have now been made which focus on marginalised communities, the framework utilised and applied onto them is still influenced by this discriminatory narrative. The danger is that this effectively implies the white experience is universal, when in reality it is not, contributing to the erasure of ethnic minorities as victims of these disorders.

Anorexia nervosa, the most well-known eating disorder, was discovered by Sir William Gull, a famous London physician. He referred to it as, “…a peculiar form of disease occurring mostly in young women, and characterised by extreme emaciation, and often referred to latent tubercle, and mesenteric disease,” (Vandereycken & Van Deth, 1989). Writing in the nineteenth century, when Sir Gull said, “young women,” he was referring to white women; white women who were able to access support and who had the privilege to be perceived by society. Even though his diagnosis was based on a specific group of the population, the initial framework Gull created is still used to this day. Thus, as the symptoms might not, and in a lot of cases, do not, apply to other minorities’ situations, this framework helps perpetuate the erasure of non-white people as victims of eating disorders. Similarly, The Golden Cage by Hilde Bruch is still the classic book on anorexia nervosa, for patients, parents, mental health trainees, and senior therapists alike (Bruch, 2001), which is highly problematic. 

Bruch’s book did advance the field’s knowledge by depicting anorexia nervosa through the viewpoint of patients. Nevertheless, the mainstream portrayal of patients suffering from anorexia were still thin white women and The Golden Cage is only one example. Princess Diana’s candidness about her bulimia in the 1990’s made her a poster child for this particular disorder and Karen Carpenter’s death due to anorexia nervosa further solidified the narrative that eating disorders were something which seemingly only affected white women. As with many forms of media, white women appeared to be the only casualties from eating disorders.

Medical professionals further contributed to perpetuating the white only eating disorder narrative. For decades, the buffering hypothesis, the argument that women of colour were ‘protected’ from eating disorders by their own cultures and the disease’s, “…roots in white body ideals,” were used to justify excluding non-white women from most research (Riobueno-Naylor, 2018). Because body image studies among Black women revealed lower levels of body dissatisfaction and less thin-ideal internalisation, many clinicians prematurely concluded that ethnicity formed a barrier to developing eating disorders (Riobueno-Naylor, 2018—a worrying narrative. Although it is true that anorexia nervosa is less common in Black Americans than in white Americans, Black Americans with anorexia nervosa develop the disorder at younger ages and struggle for longer (Taylor, et al., 2007). Moreover, a study on depression and coping behaviours in adolescent Black and white females found that those who reported higher levels of depression were more likely to experience an eating disorder. Black women experience chronic depression at higher rates compared to white women (Bailey, et al., 2019). 

Black women are victims both of eating disorders and a system which does not want to see them as such. Therefore, although the ‘thin white woman’ narrative has warped how eating disorders are seen, society needs to remember that not only white women exist. Other people can have eating disorders too, and do.

Photo: Huffington Post

Works Cited:

Bailey, R. K., Mokonogho, J., & Kumar, A., 2019. Racial and ethnic differences in depression: current perspectives. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 15, 603–609.

Bruch, H., 2001. The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa, With a New Foreword by Catherine Steiner-Adair, Ed.D. 1st ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Goeree, M. S., Ham, J. C. & Iorio, D., 2011. Race, Social Class, and Bulimia Nervosa. IZA Discussion Paper, Issue 5823, pp. 1-36.

Taylor, J. Y., Caldwell, C. H., Baser, R. E., Faison, N., & Jackson, J. S.,2007. Prevalence of eating disorders among Blacks in the National Survey of American Life. The International journal of eating disorders, 40(S3), p. S10–S14.

Riubeno-Naylor, A., 2018. “Not just a white woman’s disease”: Radicalizing eating disorder knowledge (Honors Thesis, Wellesley College). Retrieved from https://repository.wellesley.edu/object/ir836  

Striegel-Moore, R. H. et al., 2000. Recurrent binge eating in black American women. Arch Fam Med, 9(1), pp. 83-87.

Vandereycken, W. & Van Deth, R., 1989. Who was the first to describe anorexia nervosa: Gull or Lasegue?. Psychological Medicine, 19(4), pp. 837-845.