You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
"A Way Outa No Way": Eating Problems among African-American, Latina, and White Women
Contributor:
Thompson, Becky Wangsgaard
Published:
Sage Publications, 1992
Published in:
Gender and Society, 6 (1992) 4, Seite 546-561
Language:
English
ISSN:
0891-2432
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
This article offers a feminist theory of eating problems (anorexia, bulimia, extensive dieting, and binging) based on life history interviews with African-American, Latina, and white women. Until recently, research on eating problems has focused on white middle- and upper-class heterosexual women. While feminist research has established why eating problems are gendered, an analysis of how race, class, and sexual oppression are related to the etiology of eating problems has been missing. The article shows that eating problems begin as strategies for coping with various traumas including sexual abuse, racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and poverty. Identifying eating problems as survival strategies shifts the focus from portraying them as issues of appearance to ways women take care of themselves as they cope with trauma.