South Asian Parent talks to Merryl Bear, Director of the National Eating Disorder Information Centre about how we as parents, individuals, and as a community, need to start thinking about and acting upon eating disorders.
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It’s NOT about vanity
It’s really important to recognize that food and weight preoccupation and eating disorders are not about vanity. They are not about vanity. They are about wanting to attain a sense of control over a life that might seem quite chaotic. They’re about emotional regulation.
There’s enormous stigma attached to mental illness in all communities, and it does such a disservice. It does so much harm to the individual who’s experiencing an eating disorder, as well as to their family members and their community.
I suppose the line that we say regularly is that it’s not our bodies that need changing, it’s our attitudes, and it’s a really nice slogan but it’s very hard to implement in a society and culture that endorses harmful behaviours like dieting for weight loss, like body altering practices, and values that are about individualism and commercialism.
Bodies as commodities
I would say that eating disorders seem to be a universal expression of distress in physical terms, and so when it comes to the South Asian community, there are likely to be the same kinds of stresses on individuals that would impact their risk of developing an eating disorder, and also their resilience to developing an eating disorder.
We all develop in a socio cultural context and that context is common to a group, and the messages that prevail in that mainstream socio cultural context are heard by and shared by many individuals.
And the message for females in particular is that being thin or slender is equated with being in control, being beautiful, being popular, being successful; and being toned or buff for boys is exactly the same. It’s mythologically linked in our culture to good character, to strength, and all the things that boys and men are supposed to be.
And those traditional values are quite contradictory to many of the other messages that girls and boys are receiving in contemporary North American society, which is for girls that you can be anything that you want; and for boys that they need to be more emotional, sensitive, and caring.
And so those are predominant messages that boys and girls get in a culture where domination and manipulation of our environment and self-help and individualistic norm is very strong. It’s a society which “commodifies” everything, and it’s a society which has “commodified” bodies as well. So our bodies become marketable, and we see how those are marketed for both females and males everywhere in the media.
Substance over image
I strongly believe the parent’s responsibility is to teach their child to think critically about what they see and hear, whatever it is. To teach values of substance over image. And to nurture self-esteem—so a belief in one’s self worth on a range of characteristics and capacities rather than on physical appearance.
Where one physical appearance is deemed the best appearance, it is going to impact negatively on everyone regardless of whether they fit that or not. Because there will be a fear around not reaching it or losing it, and so there’s an overemphasis on physical appearance rather than what our bodies can do for us. I’d encourage people to start talking about the negative impact of constantly talking about diets and food and weight. And to put physical appearance into context and into perspective. And to encourage their own self esteem and the esteem of their children based on a much wider variety of much more important values.
Start early!
Children by the age of 4 have developed a concept of their bodies. And by 5, when they’re asked to select a preference, girls are already preferring thin figures. One needs to actually be really vigilant to teach children and to embody it oneself that people come in all shapes and sizes. And that there is a biological, or a genetic predisposition, to weight, shape, and size in the same way that there’s a biological predisposition to height. And that we can influence it positively by eating healthily and normally, which includes treats or snacks, but we cannot actually alter it significantly without restricting or manipulating our food and physical activity without engendering enormous physical and mental costs.
