Women of Color: Struggles with Eating Disorders and Body Image

Women of Color Struggle with Body Image

The wonderful Robyn McGee paid a visit to St. Olaf College to talk about eating disorders and body image. She created a workshop for the St. Olaf community. This was not the usual event about women's eating disorders that St. Olaf has had in the past.

McGee's workshop came with a unique perspective: black women's struggle with eating disorders and body image.
When McGee tried to engage the audience in a dialogue about black women's issues on body image and eating disorders, my natural inclination was to sigh and stare at the ground because the audience wasn't able to make any good connections with what McGee was trying to ask and speak about. The fact that white people in the audience found it difficult to relate to what McGee was trying to say made me rather miserable. It reminded me about how white people do not need to know the struggles of people of color.

Oh, white privilege....why do you hurt me so....

I felt like the audience needed a "Black Women's Struggle with Body Image and Eating Disorders 101" before we could engage in a dialogue within the workshop. But this isn't right. Why should the oppressed have to explain their conditions and situations to the oppressive dominant majority of the society? That just gets exhausting for the oppressed.

Simply, I think that McGee should have begun with an introduction that would set aside the audience's biases of the mainstream ideas of eating disorders, and ideas of body image (i.e. white females dealing with anorexia). I am pretty sure that only the black women present in the audience really understood all that McGee was referring to.

For instance, a pop culture artist who is an inspirational figure for the issues of hair in the black community is India Arie. Please listen to this song below.

Is Michelle Obama her hair?

Photoshopped Michelle Obama's Natural Hair

Pathology of Perfectionism

Fat in the right places

Courtney E. Martin's book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters is a book for the majority of white women and their struggles with eating disorders.

Martin has a chapter that talks about Latina adolescent women struggle with having "fat in the right places", which means they are pressured to have a big bosom like Jennifer Lopez since that's the stereotype of Latinas. Martin also mentions the struggles about a few other women of color, but it's only one little chapter.

If Martin were to create a workshop about eating disorders and body image, it would be more suitable for St. Olaf's predominantly white student body (80%).

These are really my frustrations with the workshop and the turnout of it. I am perhaps far too cynical. Perhaps race is on my mind far too much.

But no! Women of color have to deal with body image in a vast different way than white women. This is the difference that needed to be stated at McGee's workshop. I wish she compared and contrasted these differences because of the ratio of white women and women of color in the audience.

Double Eyelid Surgery

My little niece came up to me telling me how her eyes are not beautiful. She told me how she had the same conversation with her mother. I asked what her mother (my eldest sister) said to her. My sister told her that surgery is an option. I was absolutely furious within, yet I kept calm for my nieces needs and concerns. Right away, I reassured my niece that her eyes are beautiful. I even Googled pictures of Asian women who have single eyelid like hers and are beautiful (i.e. Lucy Liu). My niece was far more confident and happy with the shape of her eyes. Her eyes do not need a double eyelid like that of white women. This moment in my life reminded me how powerful the universal beauty of whiteness is in the Asian community all around the world. In Korea's pop culture, many of the actors and actresses have gone under the knife to reshape their natural facial features such as the eyes and nose to look more white.