Written By Carly Rabie

Edited By Jayda Smith

We live in a culture where replacing meals with coffee, over-exercising, under-eating before consuming alcohol, and skipping meals altogether have become normalized and even praised in some circumstances. These practices and others like them fall under the umbrella of disordered eating. Disordered eating behaviours have become commonly practiced and promoted, creating a culture in which these behaviours are normalized, particularly among university students. This cultural shift among university students is heavily influenced by the media and further exacerbated by the university lifestyle. This is also a highly gendered phenomenon as body image ideals are highly gendered.

Although disordered eating may sound similar to having an eating disorder, the two are not to be confused. Eating Disorder Hope– an organization that helps support, educate, and provide hope to people struggling with disordered eating and eating disorders- differentiates these issues by explaining that disordered eating is when one “regularly engages in abnormal eating patterns or food behaviours” (Ekern, 2023). On the other hand, an eating disorder is when someone regularly experiences “extreme anxiety about food” and is distinguished from disordered eating by the “frequency and severity of behaviors, and the distress they cause to the individual” (Ekern, 2023). Eating disorders and disordered eating exist on the same continuum and those who engage in disordered eating are at a higher risk of developing a clinical eating disorder (Giovannetti et al., 2022). It is critical to acknowledge that addressing these issues looks different. It requires validating the struggles of those who have eating disorders, while not diminishing their condition or equating it to disordered eating. For the purposes of this article, I will be focusing on disordered eating.

People today are constantly bombarded with a wide range of media including bus stop ads, TV shows, TikTok, and Instagram posts, to name a few. The media we consume is heavily populated by people who are representative of body ideals rather than a realistic range of body types. In the age of social media, people are confronted with both commercial and user-generated media that are heavily edited and represent unrealistic body standards (Rodgers et al., 2020). Unrealistic and edited user-generated media can be particularly harmful as it is made to seem casual and natural, making unrealistic body standards seem more normal and attainable, which can be especially disheartening to those who do not fit these body ideals. In a study on the effect of media consumption on our self-esteem, Rodgers et al. explored the influence of social media on the development of body image concerns, disordered eating, and muscle-building behaviours among adolescents (2020). The study found that appearance-focused media is associated with higher levels of internalizing of appearance ideals, such as beauty standards related to weight and body type (Rodgers et al., 2020). Internalizing body ideals leads to self-objectification, which is when people see themselves as objects to be viewed and evaluated by others (Warnick et al., 2022). In turn, self-objectification is related to disordered eating behaviours (Warnick et al., 2022). When people see themselves as objects, they are more likely to evaluate themselves and their worth based on their appearance. Therefore, feeling dissatisfied with one’s appearance influences one deeply as they see their worth as contingent on their appearance, which may motivate them to attempt to change their body by engaging in disordered eating behaviour. The media has overwhelmingly negative impacts on disordered eating by not only making people feel as though they must conform to an idealized body but also making them believe that their worth is dependent on the extent to which they conform to these ideals. It is in the pursuit of this ideal body that people become vulnerable to disordered eating behaviours.

Pressures from media that can push people to engage in disordered eating are only exacerbated among university students through negative body talk and the stressful university environment. The normalization of disordered eating is heavily influenced by the prevalent issue of negative body talk as the more people talk negatively about their bodies, the more their peers believe it is normal for them to do the same. Negative body talk has become a cultural phenomenon which is pervasive among men and women, however; it is particularly common among women, with 93% of women middle school age to adulthood engaging in negative body talk (Warnick et al., 2022). The fact that negative body talk is so common makes us desensitized to how harmful it is, which has a normalizing effect. Women will even engage in negative body talk as a social strategy to fit in with their peers (Warnick et al., 2022). Negative body talk can help women fit in as it is a form of conforming to the behaviour of their peers and relating to other women through the shared experience of self-deprivational body talk. Engaging in negative body talk is dangerous as it not only normalizes body-scrutinizing and shaming but also increases people’s chances of engaging in disordered eating behaviours (Warnick et al., 2022). Further, disordered eating is related to and common in the work-focused, hustle culture and drinking and partying culture of universities (Muller, 2022). Among university students, disordered eating is related to high perfectionism, low self-compassion, and poor and inflexible problem-solving, all of which are implicated in the high-pressure and high-stress academic lifestyle (Giovannetti et al., 2022). Additionally, because most university students live away from home, the lack of parental support and guidance in navigating pressures to fit in and do well in school contributes to students turning to maladaptive coping mechanisms like disordered eating (Muller, 2022). The combination of media pressure, social pressure, the academic lifestyle, and the party lifestyle among university students makes them especially vulnerable to disordered eating and contributes to disordered eating being highly pervasive and normalized among this population.

Disordered eating is also a highly gendered phenomenon as it is entrenched in concerns about body ideals, which vary by gender. This is influenced and demonstrated by social media’s promotion of gendered idealized bodies (Rodgers et al., 2020). Warnick et al. also highlight these gender differences by demonstrating how negative body talk varies by gender, where women mostly engage in negative body talk about their bodies in comparison to others, and men mostly about masculinity and body fat (2022). These differing social expectations of male and female bodies lead men and women to strive for different ideals and attempt to attain them through different disordered eating and exercise behaviours. Among men, body image struggles and disordered eating are often related to muscularity and increasing muscle (Rodgers et al., 2020). Both scholarship and society generally often overlook male body image issues and disordered eating, which invisibilizes their struggles. Despite the lack of conversation around it, men also struggle with body image issues and engage in disordered eating behaviours (Rodgers et al., 2020). This invisiblizing of male body image struggles and disordered eating is exemplified by the fact that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 lacks symptoms of eating disorders and body dysmorphia that are more common in men (Warnick et al., 2022). Toxic masculinity, or the pressure on men to be hyper-masculine and avoid any perceptions of being effeminate, also has a role in silencing male disordered eating. Pressure to be masculine makes men afraid to appear weak and admit they are struggling, which can prevent them from accepting or sharing their struggles with body image and disordered eating. In addition, eating disorders and disordered eating are commonly perceived as a ‘female issue,’ therefore men may not share they are struggling with disordered eating out of fear that they will be seen as feminine and have their masculinity called into question. These fears of appearing weak and feminine only lead to more silence and stigma around male disordered eating.

Although people of all genders struggle with disordered eating, women struggle disproportionately, largely due to the societal importance placed on women’s appearances. As mentioned above in the discussion of self-objectification, society tells women that they are valued as objects to be viewed and scrutinized (Warnick et al., 2022). This increased value on appearance leads women to engage in disordered eating in the pursuit of an idealized body, which women often desire so strongly because they are told their self-worth is tied to their appearance. Additionally, the majority of literature on disordered eating and body image fails to include and account for people who do not identify as male or female, even though people of all genders struggle with this issue.

Disordered eating practices are dangerous and harmful to people’s bodies, health, self-worth, and overall well-being. Unfortunately, these behaviours have become highly normalized and even endorsed among university students today. People are vulnerable to engaging in disordered eating due to body ideal pressures from the media, which are further exacerbated by their peers and the high stress, academic, and party lifestyles at university. Disordered eating is also a highly gendered issue. The way society perceives and treats the issue and the way it is experienced manifests differently between genders where it is invisibilized among men, disproportionately pervasive and tied to self-worth among women. Understanding the pervasiveness of disordered eating is an essential first step in addressing this issue as it is impossible to combat disordered eating when it is so heavily normalized that we often fail to even see it as an issue.

References

Ekern, J. (2023, January 1). What’s the Difference between Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders? Eating Disorder Hope. https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/eating-disorders-disordered-eating 

Muller, R., & Boggs. L. (2022, September 15). When Disordered Eating Permeates College Culture. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/talking-about-trauma/202209/when-disordered-eating-permeates-college-culture

Rand-Giovannetti, D., Rozzell, K. N., & Latner, J. (2022). The role of positive self-compassion, distress tolerance, and social problem-solving in the relationship between perfectionism and disordered eating among racially and ethnically diverse college students. Eating Behaviors, 44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101598

Rodgers, R. F., Slater, A., Gordon, C. S., McLean, S. A., Jarman, H. K., & Paxton, S. J. (2020). A biopsychosocial model of social media use and body image concerns, disordered eating, and muscle-building behaviors among adolescent girls and boys. Journal of Youth and Adolescence : A Multidisciplinary Research Publication, 49(2), 399–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01190-0  
Warnick, J. L., Darling, K. E., &; Rancourt, D. (2022). The association between negative body talk and body shame on disordered eating symptoms among college students. Eating Behaviors, 46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101648