ABSTRACT
Historically, sociocultural factors render the female image and construct meanings that define ideal beauty based on a complicated mixture of politics, art, fashion, historical events, and individual choice. While icons of beauty are ever shifting depending on the social climate, the enduring image of a woman with an eating disorder is that of a white woman or girl who is emaciated, frail, and with a vacant expression. The woman of color has not been seen by culture as having eating problems or problems with body image. To the contrary, the stereotype of a black woman is that she is comfortable with her larger size and that for her both food and sex are taken with uncomplicated pleasure. Only in the last twenty years has science included black women in studies of eating and body-image problems. While black women may not have been considered to suffer with eating disorders, per se, I believe that their ideas about food and their bodies are impacted in unique and challenging ways by the racially charged historical and sociocultural atmosphere in which they exist and grow. Black women are not immune to the pressures that stem from the white beauty ideal of excessive thinness, either. While, at the same time, they are impacted by equally unrealistic black beauty ideals, destructive racial and sexual stereotyping, and the social pressure to use their bodies to express allegiances to both black and white culture.
