VertigoGal said:
It just seems to me (although I don't have much experience with it at all) that a lot of the people with eating disorders have very similar backgrounds, and that it's possible many of them started their habits to feel thin. I'd definitely agree that it seems to become about much more than thinness pretty quickly though...
Well, wanting to be thinner, or having a parent/coach/friend/boyfriend/whatever make some comment about being "fat" can certainly be the jumping off point, so to speak. I can't believe that this is the
cause though, b/c then I think we'd see over half of young women struggling with a full blown ED (although I'm guessing near half of women, maybe more, have at some point participated in disordered eating and such). I mean, what young women
doesn't go through a time where she feels fat or ugly? That's just not enough for me. There's more to it. You have to have a certain personality, a certain level of perfectionism, and a certain ability to totally control yourself in order for it to stick. "Correlation doesn't prove causation". Same thing here. I don't completely understand it myself, but I simply can't believe that desiring to be thin is THE CAUSE of a clinically diagnosed ED. Having been obsessed with gymnastics since I was 8 and being a female college student, I know a lot of people who practice disordered eating and a bunch of people w/ clinically diagnosed EDs, and of the latter, I've never heard "thinness" given as the cause of the ED.
Nevermind the alcoholism analogy, if that's confusing. Think of a sexual predator - they don't rape b/c they enjoy having sex; they use sex as the means of controlling women. At the simplest level, that's how an ED works. Being thin is purely incidental. It's all about control. Weight is the best/easiest/most efficient choice because it is visible and easily measureable.
If thinness were the cause of most EDs, why do we see such an increase of male EDs? Last year I did a study of ED cases in both male and female gymnasts competing at the highest levels of the sport. The most severe case was actually a guy who has had an ED for three years, including being hospitalized for it. He had been clinically diagnosed and gone through counselling and unfortunately at the time my research was due, was still struggling with the lasting effects of the ED.