Black women suffer from eating disorders too. There’s a stereotype that claims that eating disorders are for White teenaged women. However, when I had to Google, “Am I addicted to food?” one night as I finished off two large bags of Honey BBQ Cheese Doodles and was working on my third row of Chips Ahoy Soft Batch cookies, knowing full-well I was about to meet my best friend for dinner.
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You see, I knew I wasn’t even hungry after the first bag of cheese doodles, but I just had to eat. I wanted it, so I consumed it. As I brought my cheesy fingers to my mouth while reading these Google results stung each time I read a new sign because it had me written all over it.
- Am I ashamed about my eating habits? Do I hide food and eat it behind closed doors?
- Do I feel guilty after I eat?
- Do I eat when I’m simply upset about something but not hungry?
- Do I eat differently in public than I do in private?
- When I eat, do I feel pleasure and comfort that I can’t really seem to achieve through other means?
I knew that I loved food and thought as long as I labeled myself a “foodie” that it was ok for me to consume food the way an entire football team would. I also thought that hiding said food and consuming it in private wasn’t an issue, but it was. And even though it embarrasses me to admit, most of my day, if not all of it, is consumed by when and what I will get to eat that day. I’m thinking about what I’ll eat for lunch, right now. It’s a constant war in my head that will never go away, no matter how much I feed the hungry monster inside of me. There will never be enough food to fill the void I feel in the pit of my gut.
Ever since I learned about eating disorders in 6th grade, I thought there was no way it was affecting girls like me. It seemed like it was something that was only ailing the White girls in my class, who were often chatting amongst themselves about how fat they were, when they were literally half my size. Never mind the fact that in that very class, there were two snack-size Snicker bars in my bag that I couldn’t wait to sneak a bite of. I wasn’t the one with the problem.
Now I know, that’s just not true. White girls aren’t the only women who suffer from eating disorders. Erika Nicole Kendall from EBONY broke it down for those of us whose views on eating disorders start and stop at said stereotype.
Black women also suffer and it’s often from a very different eating disorder–binge eating. “The binary that we create when we discuss eating disorders, coupled with the myth that eating disorders are ‘White girl problems,’ harms us more than it helps us. It erases the existence of Black people who binge, and it dismisses the problem before any real attention can be drawn towards it so that people can get help,” Kendall says.
Help. What an interesting thought to include in this discussion. I remember chatting with my mentor years ago and she talked about the pain that many Black people carry around in their lives and how we always want to make it seem as if we’re not hurting by ignoring it, or better yet, praying it away. Some people, like myself and like Kendall (used to), deal with their pain by diving face first into their favorite snacks and that, isn’t how problems are solved. Even though I thought the temporary satisfaction was somehow relief from life’s ills, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was stuffing my face yet again, attempting to remedy yet another problem. It took Kendall getting therapy to realize that she indeed needed mental help to overcome her demons. Now, I know what I need.
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Kendall makes a point of the mental health issue attached to eating disorders, claiming that Black folks just refuse to or just don’t know how to get real help. Kendall says:
“What’s most damaging about the rhetoric surrounding eating disorders, specifically among the Black community, is the inherent denial of the existence of a problem that might require actual psychiatric care in our community. We cannot continue to perpetuate the ideal that psychiatric care cannot and will not help us uncover the tools we need to overcome our battles. This mentality cannot persist.”
White women are not the only victims of food and the odd relationships they can create. I find it interesting that statistics backs up this claim. According to a study uncovered by The Root, Black girls are 50 percent more likely than their White counterparts to be bulimic and girls from background with a lower income are 153 percent more likely to fall victim to bulimia. Kendall asks, “What would the numbers look like if we included binge eating?”
What do you beauties think–are Black women ignoring the psychiatric care we need in regards to eating disorders?
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