Polarization Effect

By Christopher Clark, Executive Director, The National Association for Males with Eating Disorders, Inc. (N.A.M.E.D.)

NAPLES, FL - As eating disorder treatment professionals grapple with the differences between how a female and a male experience an eating disorder, there seems to be emerging a polarizing effect, in which females are believed to experience an eating disorder one way and males another way.  To reflect these differences, eating disorder treatment professionals may refer to a person as experiencing a more “male type” or “female type” of eating disorder.     

The stereotypical male eating disorder looks something like this: The individual is obsessed with not only being lean, but with being muscular and developing an attractive body “shape.”  These men tend to be excessive exercisers or avid athletes.  They may take steroids and supplements, may use self-starvation to slim down, and may follow very rigid fat-free diets to promote weight gain to build muscle without adding fat. 

On the other hand, females with eating disorders tend to seek after “thinness” at all costs.  Believing thinness to be beautiful, they are on a never ending quest for thinness.  They will use both purging (vomiting, laxatives, diuretics) and non-purging techniques (food restriction, exercise) to rid themselves of weight.

While in both cases, beneath the quest for physical attractiveness and/or health, there are deeper underlying psychological issues lurking, which makes eating disorders difficult to stop "cold turkey."

There are two problems with identifying eating disorders as a more “female type” or “male type.”  First, these “types” represent the stereotypes of the two different genders, and therefore, do not take into account individual differences of how an eating disorder is experienced.  Secondly, such labeling can be counterproductive to helping people with eating disorders develop positive self-esteem.  For example, if a male has a more “female type” of eating disorder, that will only make him feel more ashamed and poorly about his identity as a man.

To identify a boy or man with a “female type” of eating disorder, because he does not as clearly fit the “male-type” of  eating disorder can be very unsettling to him.  It is bad enough to have an eating disorder, let alone to be labeled as having a “female type” of eating disorder.

It would be better to use other labels to describe the female and male types of eating disorder experiences, such as by “Body Atrophy Type” (to describe the female characteristic tendencies of an eating disorder) and “Body Dysmorphia Type” (to describe the more male type of experience of an eating disorder).  The terms chosen here, “Body Atrophy” and “Body Dysmorphia,” are the defining physical features of the two types, and not based on gender bias.

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