Feb. 21-27, 2010 is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. I recently posted a blog here on everybodysgood.com about Eating Disorders Awareness Week, eating disorders in general, and their connection to the LGBT community. You can read that entire entry here. In a nutshell, however----eating disorders are a significant issue for LGBT people...and so I thought we'd pose the very general question to our community:
DO YOU LOVE YOUR BODY?
Head over to the main page and answer our poll question then come back here and post some of your thoughts. Do YOU think eating disorders and body image are a serious problem for LGBT people? Or a MORE serious problem for us? And if so----why exactly? What is it about being an LGBT person that heightens the risk for or severity of these issues in our lives? Have you struggled yourself with your body? And how did you deal with it?
We want to hear from you!!
i DO think eating disorders are a significant issue in our community, and i also think they are a more serious problem for the queer community than the general population. and i feel that the messages we receive in the culture we live in are largely responsible - messages that are constant & inherently homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic & traditionally gender-normative, but they define beauty and physical attractiveness in our culture. i think we feel a lot of pressure coming from this combination of messages in one way or another, whether we realize it or not, and eating disorders & serious body image issues are just one result of this. i think, especially as queer people, we should be particularly critical of messages in this culture around what is beautiful, what is attractive, what is acceptable... and understand how they actually hurt us, and everybody. i do think that the fat hatred that is so rampant and so accepted in our culture is partly responsible for eating disorders and unhealthy dissatisfaction with our bodies... but i also think that loving our bodies has a different significance altogether for our community, that goes beyond eating patterns and weight issues. so again, i think that body image is an issue of particular importance within the queer community.
Megan---Thanks, once again, for joining the conversation. I agree entirely. I have lots of personal feelings and beliefs about body image as a queer man and as this conversation progresses, I'm sure I'll share them.....but just as a jumping off point----I do wonder about whether the messages about beauty and fitness that exist in the world at large get amplified in the queer community. I mean....look at the queer media. Turn on Logo or Here! network and check out the bodies on the shows there....pick up Queer as Folk or the L-Word on DVD....grab an issue of OUT magazine----if we let those "mainstream queer media outlets" inform our views of our community and its body(ies) then we probably DO end up with a pretty distorted view of what "normal" queer bodies look like!
I agree with Erik. The images our community puts out in advertising and TV and movies glorify the 6 pack, chiseled pec image of gay men. What's even worse, though, is that we as gay men buy into that image completely. Years ago I used to volunteer with the Rochester gay film festival and everyone always knew that the first movies to sell out during the festival would be whatever movies had the most pictures of half naked men with their description even if the movie SUCKED! I don't think people even read the descriptions sometimes! I used to joke and say that they could have written a long description explaining they were going to show a film of a paint drying but as long as the description was next to pictures of muscled men in their underwear, people would still buy tickets. That says a lot about gay body image to me.
thanks for posting about this issue... this website is awesome.
i just wanted to point out that out of 7 people who have taken the poll so far, NO ONE has chosen "yes, definitely!" that they love their body.
and now that i think about it -- is it even possible to love everything about your body 100% of the time?
Alex---Actually, when I just look, there is now ONE person who has chosen "Yes, definitely!"....but that was a great observation on your part. In our offices here we were just talking today about the fact that nobody had selected "yes" and wondering if anyone would....and what would it mean about queer people's body issues if nobody did!?
Alex - that's a really good question. And now that 2 people so far have selected that they definitely love their bodies, I want to get us thinking about your question in a slightly different way:
Does loving your body overall necessarily have to mean that you love everything about your body at all times?
LOL...Oh Allegra what an insightful question....does truly loving ANYTHING mean that you love everything about it all the time? I think every person who loves their partner but hates the way they leave the cap off the toothpaste or leaves the toilet seat up knows the answer to that question!
haha. well erik, that is the point i was getting at, but i think its important to think about that specifically in terms of loving our bodies, because i think that's something we often forget. there may be only certain parts of our body we don't particularly like, or certain times we love our bodies more than others...
because it may seem like the answer to that question is obvious, but i do feel like when it comes to loving our bodies, like everything else in this culture, too often we want instant gratification... we want it to be that we love our bodies 100%, or we want it to be that we love every part of our body... to be happy with them overall.
I'm no psychology expert, but from what I know, I think that eating disorders or other self-harm disorders (like cutting etc...) have something to do with control issues. I think that people who suffer from these sorts of problems often do it because they feel like they do not have any control over certain aspects of their lives (in the case of LGBT people, we don't have control over who we marry, where we can show affection, and in some places we can lose our jobs, homes, or worse simply because of who we are). With all these external pressures of uncertainty and fear I think it's easy to make the leap to become super specific about the things that we do have control over. I think maybe that is one of the reasons why many gays have body image issues. What do you think?
Sean, I actually think that's really insightful and although I'm no psychology expert, either, I do think that concept probably comes into play quite often here...
Because, you're right, there is no single cause of eating disorders, and they are rooted in complex psychological patterns and histories...
and while weight and body image issues probably play an integral role in all eating disorders, I think they are actually rooted in many factors, including negative family influences and cultural pressures, and certainly in taking back that control.
Thanks for making that connection.
Sean is right. It's a misconception that everyone with an eating disorder is someone whose primary motivator is to be thin.....that is why we often tease out eating disorders and body image problems as separate but often connected issues. Certainly some people do engage in eating disorder behaviors simply to control or impact the appearance (and their perception) of their body. However, lots of people do so (especially engaging in binge-purge cycles) simply to exert control when they feel powerless. I knew someone very close to me who had extreme binges followed by frightening purges whenever they fought with they parent(s). In that way...for some, their eating disorder may manifest in ways that somewhat similar to substance abuse patterns
I think there's no one definitive root cause of eating disorders or body image for queer people (or people in general)...but a menu of risk factors that need to be explored.
One other factore that I often think/talk about but we havent' mentioned here yet is MASCULINITY. As a femme queer man, I have certainly suffered at the hands of sissyphobia---both from the dominant culture and from other queer people/men. I think masculinity is a very sensitive issue for queer men----its value, its meaning, and how it is expressed. And I wonder if sometimes a desire and effort create a certain body type (often fueled by body image problems, eating disorders, exercise disorders and possibly even abuse of steroids) isn't a function of a desire to create and/or maintain a certain form of masculinity.
I definitely think that queer culture "feeds" into disordered eating among LGBTQ people. I also find it interesting how people feel so comfortable making judgments, assumptions, and mean remarks towards people based on their appearance (whether it be weight or something else). As a lesbian, I am proud to embrace my sexual orientation. I also embrace my body and challenge others when they are demeaning their own body or someone else's. The messages I received and overheard regarding sexual orientation impacted me deeply. The same was true for the messages I received about body image. I am now proud to "come out" as both queer and unapologetic for my perfectly imperfect body.