Eating disorders and the Politics of Identity: The South African Experience

Eating disorders are considered rare on the African continent. A handful of case histories in black Africans have been reported over the years (Nwaefuna, 1981; Buchan and Gregory, 1984; Famuyiwa, 1988), all from either Zimbabwe or Nigeria, and at least two of these had major exposure to Western European culture via schooling in England and assimilation of their parents. Generally speaking, the notion that has pervaded eating disorders research is that problems such as anorexia and bulimia are more or less confined to white Europeans or Americans. The reasons for this are postulated to be largely cultural (Swartz, 1985; Dolan, 1991). In the Western world, women are exposed to a particularly stringent thin body ideal that presses them to engage in weight control practices (Garner et al., 1980). Furthermore, self-doubt associated with identity conflicts and role choices in Western women are believed to be widespread, and there is evidence that these anxieties are the driving force of the thin body ideal (Silverstein and Perlick, 1995; Gordon, 2000).