ABSTRACT
In both the professional literature and the mass media, eating disorders are portrayed as a problem that affects almost exclusively White women. The belief that race is a major risk factor for the development of eating disorders derives from at least three sources. First, early case descriptions of anorexia nervosa (AN) were based on European or, later, American cases of White girls or women (Bromberg, 1988). Early formulations of AN emphasized the cultural (Western) and class (bourgeois) context of the disorder. Second, cross-cultural studies comparing women in Western societies with women in non-Western cultures found significantly greater prevalence rates of eating disorders in Western industrialized countries (e.g., Pate, Pumariega, Hester, & Garner, 1992). Finally, racial differences have been reported for a number of variables (e.g., body dissatisfaction and fear of fat; Abrams, Allen, & Gray, 1993) that have been hypothesized to contribute to the development of eating disorders.
