MORE THAN THIN WHITE WOMEN:
EATING DISORDERS DON’T DISCRIMINATE, SO WHY DO THEIR CAMPAIGNS?
“Transmen cannot get eating disorders. Poor people cannot get eating disorders.
Eating disorders are something that only young white females who live in big houses
and drive beautiful red cars to school develop. Eating disorders are not something
that transmen who live in trailer parks and walk to school in last year's shoes
develop.” -Benji Young, via the Marginalized Voices Project
Eating disorders awareness has had a slow progression in the United States. It
was only 60 years ago that the term “anorexia” entered the lexicon, and about two
decades after that “bulimia” became a clinical diagnosis. And while we’ve made
some positive strides forward between then and now (for instance, differentiating
size from health status), we still see eating disorders through a very narrow and
biased frame.
Eating disorders are what I would classify as a “soft” mental illness- one that is
socially accepted (or even appropriated), viewed as less threatening than other
disorders, and portrayed primarily by the privileged. (I’d argue that anxiety,
depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder fall into the same category).