is everyone really a size 2

PinkFridge

Fri, Sep 12 2014, 10:36 am

amother wrote:

I can't really say much about the size-obsession thing in general, but, as someone who has anorexia, I must say I disagree with the idea that living a lifestyle that includes religious restrictions on food encourages excessive restriction of food intake or other eating-disorder behaviors. I think that notion is built on the myth that eating disorders are about food and eating. They are not.
Behaviors and attitudes about eating are just the ways people with EDs expresses their feelings. Eating disorders occur in every culture, even in those that do not prize feminine thinness! There is a great website called www.scienceofeds.org that has many articles and abstracts of studies about this very topic. In one notable study, researchers compared young women in Tehran with women from California of Iranian descent, and found few significant differences in ED attitudes or behavior, despite the fact that they grew up in different cultures, and the Tehranian women had to obey laws restricting their dress and activities.
Each person with ED just contextualizes his or her behaviors with ideas that are prevalent in the surrounding culture. So, for example, an American female anorexic might say that she wants to be thin so she can achieve a certain look (though that is not the real reason deep down, and many anorexics would not even say that at all). But another anorexic from a different culture might explain his or her behavior in terms of asceticism, or penance for guilt, or claim the issue is physiological, or something else.

Thank you for sharing this! I read the post you're referring to and wanted to say something. You expressed it so well. Hatzlacha in your journey.