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Home
June 15 - June 21, 2000
Home
Donna Karan Named in Sweatshop Suit
(in National News)
Newcomer High School Stays Put
(in Bay Area News)
Normalizing Trade With China
(in Business)
A Love With Limits
(in A&E)
Lead Editorial
(in Opinion)
Starving in Silence
Eating and body image disorders plague young Asian and Asian American women
By Eunice Park
“Weight is nothing but a number, two or three digits on a scale,” says 19-year-old Susan,* laughing bitterly. “Yeah, I wish that was all it meant. But the scale will dictate my mood for the entire day. As long as it’s 100 or below, I’m happy, but as soon as the scale tips a little over 100, I’m devastated.” She flicks her cigarette—she started smoking to help curb her appetite. At 5’5”, this young Korean woman is already dangerously slim, but she insists, “I would, I will, do anything to be thinner. Diet pills, diuretics, laxatives, enemas, binging, purging, fasting, exercising. If it’s any way to stop the scale from tipping, I’ve tried it.”
Susan suffered from anorexia for a year, fasting until only 80 pounds remained on her skeletal frame. After eating enough to reach her previous weight of 110 pounds, she recently lapsed into bulimia, desperate to lose the weight she had just gained.
Words such as “anorexia” and “bulimia” remain strange, foreign words to many Asian Americans, especially those who are first generation. Indeed, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have been labeled “white girls’ diseases,” especially with the rash of stick-thin celebrities led by Calista Flockheart, Jennifer Aniston and Lara Flynn Boyle—and a generation earlier, the high-profile death of Karen Carpenter at age 33.
The myth that eating disorders are only prevalent in white teenagers is common even among mental health practitioners. Many assume that certain “blanket factors” protect minority communities from the disease, such as a general appreciation for larger body sizes, less emphasis on physical attractiveness, and a stable family and social structure.
Such factors, however, do not seem to apply to Asian American populations, as can be seen by the rising numbers of Asian Americans seeking treatment for eating disorders at mental health clinics.
Generally, in many non-Western societies, plumpness is considered attractive and desirable, a trait associated with prosperity, fertility, and a sign of economic security. However, as many Asian countries become Westernized and infused with the Western aesthetic ideal of a tall, thin, lean body frame, a virtual tsunami of eating disorders has swamped Asian countries. Eating disorders have been most rampant in South Korea and China, countries that are undergoing rapid economic change and increasingly Western acculturation. In one study performed in 1993, 1,044 Hong Kong-born bilingual university students were asked to complete the English version of the EAT (Eating Attitudes Test). The results indicated that young Chinese women were almost as preoccupied with their weight as white women, with 36 percent reporting that they wished to lose weight. And in Japan, it is estimated that as many as 1 out of 500 women display extreme dieting behavior, reminiscent of anorexia.
This obsession with weight appears to be just as prevalent among Asian Americans. Although no official studies have yet been conducted, a survey taken by Liz Dittrich, an eating disorder specialist, in 1997 of 234 women attending a junior college, found that there were no ethnic differences in body image dissatisfaction among Asian American women, all other minority women, and white women. Overall, 49 percent declared that they wished to lose weight, with 43 percent of Asian American women admitting that they considered themselves overweight.
While Asians living in Asia have to cope with rapid Westernization, it has been suggested that the pressures of discrimination, trying to blend into Western society, and certain stereotypes compound the problem for Asian Americans. Another recovering bulimic, Karen,* says, “When people looked at me, they always said five words I hated: ‘big for an Asian girl.’ What does that mean anyway? At 5’3” and 115 pounds, I was considered normal among American girls, but when someone thrust me among Asians, I became suddenly obese.”
Susan adds, “Guys are always saying, ‘Yeah, those Asian girls are so petite and skinny.’ The truth is, we are trying to fill a stereotype of the older Asian generation, that of our petite 100-pound mothers with size 5 feet. We grow up in America, where everything is bigger. There’s no surprise that we, too, are physically larger.”
In addition to trying to conform to lingering stereotypes, studies suggest that today’s younger generation of Asian Americans is losing weight in an effort to adopt Western standards of the slim, toned professional career woman, an image that has replaced the Rubenesque beauty ideal of the past. Indeed, almost all of prominent Asian American women in the media are bone thin, including Lucy Liu, Kelly Hu, Lisa Ling, and China Chow to name a few.
Karen remarks, “Margaret Cho is the only high-profile Asian American woman who is slightly on the larger side, and she is ridiculed for it. I hear comments all the time like, ‘Well, at least she’s a comedian, so it’s OK.’”
Despite having received much press in recent years, anorexia and bulimia are still not familiar words in the household lexicon of many Asian American families. Many parents who have children with anorexia or bulimia express skepticism about their children’s condition. “My mother thought I was making up some strange mental disease just to defy her,” Susan admits. “She always told me, ‘It’s not like you can’t eat, you just won’t eat.’ But it’s not that easy.”
While some refuse to believe that anorexia and bulimia are legitimate diseases, still other parents may instigate the behavior by over-emphasizing the importance of their children’s physical appearance. In many traditional households, there is still the subtle expectation that the best way a girl can serve her family is to marry into a prominent family. Parents encourage their children to groom themselves carefully, hoping that physical attractiveness will provide the lure to a viable match.
“My mother was always bothering me about my weight,” Karen says. “She was the one who actually brought out a bowl once after dinner and suggested that I vomit into it after dinner. She said, ‘This way, you won’t get fat.’”
But before Asian American families can hope to help children in their battles with an eating disorder, they must first understand what it is. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are two separate disorders that are almost inextricably intertwined. It is estimated that at least half of those with anorexia fluctuate through periods of bulimia.
With anorexia nervosa, individuals are obsessed with dieting and thinness, leading to excessive weight loss, usually at least 15 percent of the prior body mass. Bulimia nervosa is often called “the sequel” to anorexia, usually occurring after the individual has recovered from anorexia. Those with bulimia engage in frequent episodes of binge eating (rapid, compulsive consumption of food in one sitting), which is almost always followed by purging (ridding the body of food). Bulimics will go to extraordinary lengths to purge the food by vomiting, abusing laxatives and diuretics, exercising compulsively, or fasting.
Even with treatment, anorexia and bulimia can persist for years, haunting the individual daily. Susan says wearily, “It’s like fighting a battle every day. Every morning I wake up, and my first thoughts are about food. How will I avoid it? What should I eat? Will I be able to resist the temptation to eat? If I do eat, how will I get rid of the food? Nothing goes into my mouth without agonizing over it.”
Karen says, “Before I was bulimic, I went through stages of anorexia, or extreme fasting. No one noticed my weight loss because I always wore huge, baggy clothing. It was funny, because while I was losing the weight, supposedly becoming skinnier and more appealing, I actually just wanted to hide myself more.”
The necessity to conceal is, in fact, a major characteristic of anorexia and bulimia. Anorexics will often hide food they claim to have eaten. Moreover, they will lie about having eaten, while bulimics will lie about not having eaten. Because of the secretive nature of both disorders, friends and family may not notice any behavioral changes in those who suffer from either disease.
The desire for secrecy is a manifestation of the need for control. Victims of anorexia or bulimia often feel desperate and hopeless with a sense of powerlessness over their lives. The only thing they can control is what goes into and out of their stomachs. In many cases, anorexics will ritualistically cut their food into tiny pieces, while bulimics will time their schedules for binging episodes. The preoccupation with weight becomes a distraction from other stresses, in essence, a negative coping mechanism for anxiety.
“My mother was so overbearing and domineering,” Susan reflects. “I could never do anything right, and I was never good enough. I felt that she controlled everything in my life, except for one thing: what I ate.”
Indeed, victims of eating disorders often feel a perverse “high” or sense of power after periods of starvation or purging. Tricia,* a recovered bulimic says, “Somehow after a purge, I felt clean. It was a kind of purification process, a way of cleansing myself of evil food.”
Extensive studies of anorexia and bulimia patients reveal that those who suffer from the eating disorders share a few common characteristics. They usually have low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. And they are often perfectionists or excessively compliant. “I would do anything to be popular, and the way I thought I could do it was by losing weight,” says Tricia.
Victims experience feelings of guilt for not meeting the expectations of others, for being a “burden” to other people, and for the eating behavior itself. These thoughts can cause another vicious cycle of binging and purging. In addition, individuals are prone to depression, culminating in mood swings, lack of motivation, anxiety, isolation, and loneliness.
Short-term effects include frequent headaches due to lower blood pressure; irregular and/or slow heart beat due to electrolyte imbalances and vitamin deficiencies; tingling in hands, feet, and face; dizziness, feeling faint; brittle hair, skin, and nails; and hormonal imbalances. More dire, long-term effects include dental problems (teeth and gum decay), arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiac arrest, organ failure, and in extreme cases, death.
The statistics of those who suffer from anorexia and/or bulimia are bleak, with 10 to 20 percent dying even with treatment. “To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” Susan says. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this, counting every calorie and fat gram.”
She describes her routine: “I had exactly one half-cup of non-fat, sugar-free yogurt every morning because my mother said I had to eat breakfast. After that, I would throw my lunch away and after dinner, I would run to the bathroom to throw up. If I ever absolutely had to eat something, I would take laxatives after it or exercise for at least two hours. Sometimes my throat was so sore from throwing up that I used ipecac syrup.”
Karen’s behavior was equally disturbing. She says, “At my worst, I was skipping breakfast and lunch and drinking clear chicken broth for dinner. If the soup had one bubble of grease on it, I wouldn’t drink it. It drove my mother crazy.”
As the population of Asian Americans increases, the number of eating disorder cases is expected to rise proportionately. Some attribute the recent jump in reported cases to more Asian Americans being informed about the diseases and seeking help. In addition, mental health practitioners are beginning to realize that eating disorders do not afflict only upper-class white females. While fasting may be a way of dealing with discrimination, eating disorders themselves do not discriminate, infecting all genders, minorities, and cultures.
“I just want Asian American parents to realize the danger of these diseases,” Tricia says. “No one realizes that you can starve yourself to death as surely as any Holocaust victim. They need to realize that dieting needs to stop at a certain point. It’s one thing to look good and another to be unhealthy.”
Susan sits pensively, staring at her half-eaten sandwich. “I’ve been seeing a therapist for a little while, but when it comes down to it, I won’t change until I really want to,” she says. “I would still like to be a little thinner, just a little.” Stamping out her cigarette, she promptly walks towards the bathroom.
* Susan, Karen, and Tricia are names used to protect the girls’ identities.
Donna Karan Named in Sweatshop Suit
(in National News)
Newcomer High School Stays Put
(in Bay Area News)
Normalizing Trade With China
(in Business)
A Love With Limits
(in A&E)
Lead Editorial
(in Opinion)
Starving in Silence
| Donna Karan Named in Sweatshop Suit (in National News) Newcomer High School Stays Put Normalizing Trade With China A Love With Limits Lead Editorial |
Eating and body image disorders plague young Asian and Asian American women
By Eunice Park
“Weight is nothing but a number, two or three digits on a scale,” says 19-year-old Susan,* laughing bitterly. “Yeah, I wish that was all it meant. But the scale will dictate my mood for the entire day. As long as it’s 100 or below, I’m happy, but as soon as the scale tips a little over 100, I’m devastated.” She flicks her cigarette—she started smoking to help curb her appetite. At 5’5”, this young Korean woman is already dangerously slim, but she insists, “I would, I will, do anything to be thinner. Diet pills, diuretics, laxatives, enemas, binging, purging, fasting, exercising. If it’s any way to stop the scale from tipping, I’ve tried it.”
Susan suffered from anorexia for a year, fasting until only 80 pounds remained on her skeletal frame. After eating enough to reach her previous weight of 110 pounds, she recently lapsed into bulimia, desperate to lose the weight she had just gained.
Words such as “anorexia” and “bulimia” remain strange, foreign words to many Asian Americans, especially those who are first generation. Indeed, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have been labeled “white girls’ diseases,” especially with the rash of stick-thin celebrities led by Calista Flockheart, Jennifer Aniston and Lara Flynn Boyle—and a generation earlier, the high-profile death of Karen Carpenter at age 33.
The myth that eating disorders are only prevalent in white teenagers is common even among mental health practitioners. Many assume that certain “blanket factors” protect minority communities from the disease, such as a general appreciation for larger body sizes, less emphasis on physical attractiveness, and a stable family and social structure.
Such factors, however, do not seem to apply to Asian American populations, as can be seen by the rising numbers of Asian Americans seeking treatment for eating disorders at mental health clinics.
Generally, in many non-Western societies, plumpness is considered attractive and desirable, a trait associated with prosperity, fertility, and a sign of economic security. However, as many Asian countries become Westernized and infused with the Western aesthetic ideal of a tall, thin, lean body frame, a virtual tsunami of eating disorders has swamped Asian countries. Eating disorders have been most rampant in South Korea and China, countries that are undergoing rapid economic change and increasingly Western acculturation. In one study performed in 1993, 1,044 Hong Kong-born bilingual university students were asked to complete the English version of the EAT (Eating Attitudes Test). The results indicated that young Chinese women were almost as preoccupied with their weight as white women, with 36 percent reporting that they wished to lose weight. And in Japan, it is estimated that as many as 1 out of 500 women display extreme dieting behavior, reminiscent of anorexia.
This obsession with weight appears to be just as prevalent among Asian Americans. Although no official studies have yet been conducted, a survey taken by Liz Dittrich, an eating disorder specialist, in 1997 of 234 women attending a junior college, found that there were no ethnic differences in body image dissatisfaction among Asian American women, all other minority women, and white women. Overall, 49 percent declared that they wished to lose weight, with 43 percent of Asian American women admitting that they considered themselves overweight.
While Asians living in Asia have to cope with rapid Westernization, it has been suggested that the pressures of discrimination, trying to blend into Western society, and certain stereotypes compound the problem for Asian Americans. Another recovering bulimic, Karen,* says, “When people looked at me, they always said five words I hated: ‘big for an Asian girl.’ What does that mean anyway? At 5’3” and 115 pounds, I was considered normal among American girls, but when someone thrust me among Asians, I became suddenly obese.”
Susan adds, “Guys are always saying, ‘Yeah, those Asian girls are so petite and skinny.’ The truth is, we are trying to fill a stereotype of the older Asian generation, that of our petite 100-pound mothers with size 5 feet. We grow up in America, where everything is bigger. There’s no surprise that we, too, are physically larger.”
In addition to trying to conform to lingering stereotypes, studies suggest that today’s younger generation of Asian Americans is losing weight in an effort to adopt Western standards of the slim, toned professional career woman, an image that has replaced the Rubenesque beauty ideal of the past. Indeed, almost all of prominent Asian American women in the media are bone thin, including Lucy Liu, Kelly Hu, Lisa Ling, and China Chow to name a few.
Karen remarks, “Margaret Cho is the only high-profile Asian American woman who is slightly on the larger side, and she is ridiculed for it. I hear comments all the time like, ‘Well, at least she’s a comedian, so it’s OK.’”
Despite having received much press in recent years, anorexia and bulimia are still not familiar words in the household lexicon of many Asian American families. Many parents who have children with anorexia or bulimia express skepticism about their children’s condition. “My mother thought I was making up some strange mental disease just to defy her,” Susan admits. “She always told me, ‘It’s not like you can’t eat, you just won’t eat.’ But it’s not that easy.”
While some refuse to believe that anorexia and bulimia are legitimate diseases, still other parents may instigate the behavior by over-emphasizing the importance of their children’s physical appearance. In many traditional households, there is still the subtle expectation that the best way a girl can serve her family is to marry into a prominent family. Parents encourage their children to groom themselves carefully, hoping that physical attractiveness will provide the lure to a viable match.
“My mother was always bothering me about my weight,” Karen says. “She was the one who actually brought out a bowl once after dinner and suggested that I vomit into it after dinner. She said, ‘This way, you won’t get fat.’”
But before Asian American families can hope to help children in their battles with an eating disorder, they must first understand what it is. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are two separate disorders that are almost inextricably intertwined. It is estimated that at least half of those with anorexia fluctuate through periods of bulimia.
With anorexia nervosa, individuals are obsessed with dieting and thinness, leading to excessive weight loss, usually at least 15 percent of the prior body mass. Bulimia nervosa is often called “the sequel” to anorexia, usually occurring after the individual has recovered from anorexia. Those with bulimia engage in frequent episodes of binge eating (rapid, compulsive consumption of food in one sitting), which is almost always followed by purging (ridding the body of food). Bulimics will go to extraordinary lengths to purge the food by vomiting, abusing laxatives and diuretics, exercising compulsively, or fasting.
Even with treatment, anorexia and bulimia can persist for years, haunting the individual daily. Susan says wearily, “It’s like fighting a battle every day. Every morning I wake up, and my first thoughts are about food. How will I avoid it? What should I eat? Will I be able to resist the temptation to eat? If I do eat, how will I get rid of the food? Nothing goes into my mouth without agonizing over it.”
Karen says, “Before I was bulimic, I went through stages of anorexia, or extreme fasting. No one noticed my weight loss because I always wore huge, baggy clothing. It was funny, because while I was losing the weight, supposedly becoming skinnier and more appealing, I actually just wanted to hide myself more.”
The necessity to conceal is, in fact, a major characteristic of anorexia and bulimia. Anorexics will often hide food they claim to have eaten. Moreover, they will lie about having eaten, while bulimics will lie about not having eaten. Because of the secretive nature of both disorders, friends and family may not notice any behavioral changes in those who suffer from either disease.
The desire for secrecy is a manifestation of the need for control. Victims of anorexia or bulimia often feel desperate and hopeless with a sense of powerlessness over their lives. The only thing they can control is what goes into and out of their stomachs. In many cases, anorexics will ritualistically cut their food into tiny pieces, while bulimics will time their schedules for binging episodes. The preoccupation with weight becomes a distraction from other stresses, in essence, a negative coping mechanism for anxiety.
“My mother was so overbearing and domineering,” Susan reflects. “I could never do anything right, and I was never good enough. I felt that she controlled everything in my life, except for one thing: what I ate.”
Indeed, victims of eating disorders often feel a perverse “high” or sense of power after periods of starvation or purging. Tricia,* a recovered bulimic says, “Somehow after a purge, I felt clean. It was a kind of purification process, a way of cleansing myself of evil food.”
Extensive studies of anorexia and bulimia patients reveal that those who suffer from the eating disorders share a few common characteristics. They usually have low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy. And they are often perfectionists or excessively compliant. “I would do anything to be popular, and the way I thought I could do it was by losing weight,” says Tricia.
Victims experience feelings of guilt for not meeting the expectations of others, for being a “burden” to other people, and for the eating behavior itself. These thoughts can cause another vicious cycle of binging and purging. In addition, individuals are prone to depression, culminating in mood swings, lack of motivation, anxiety, isolation, and loneliness.
Short-term effects include frequent headaches due to lower blood pressure; irregular and/or slow heart beat due to electrolyte imbalances and vitamin deficiencies; tingling in hands, feet, and face; dizziness, feeling faint; brittle hair, skin, and nails; and hormonal imbalances. More dire, long-term effects include dental problems (teeth and gum decay), arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiac arrest, organ failure, and in extreme cases, death.
The statistics of those who suffer from anorexia and/or bulimia are bleak, with 10 to 20 percent dying even with treatment. “To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” Susan says. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this, counting every calorie and fat gram.”
She describes her routine: “I had exactly one half-cup of non-fat, sugar-free yogurt every morning because my mother said I had to eat breakfast. After that, I would throw my lunch away and after dinner, I would run to the bathroom to throw up. If I ever absolutely had to eat something, I would take laxatives after it or exercise for at least two hours. Sometimes my throat was so sore from throwing up that I used ipecac syrup.”
Karen’s behavior was equally disturbing. She says, “At my worst, I was skipping breakfast and lunch and drinking clear chicken broth for dinner. If the soup had one bubble of grease on it, I wouldn’t drink it. It drove my mother crazy.”
As the population of Asian Americans increases, the number of eating disorder cases is expected to rise proportionately. Some attribute the recent jump in reported cases to more Asian Americans being informed about the diseases and seeking help. In addition, mental health practitioners are beginning to realize that eating disorders do not afflict only upper-class white females. While fasting may be a way of dealing with discrimination, eating disorders themselves do not discriminate, infecting all genders, minorities, and cultures.
“I just want Asian American parents to realize the danger of these diseases,” Tricia says. “No one realizes that you can starve yourself to death as surely as any Holocaust victim. They need to realize that dieting needs to stop at a certain point. It’s one thing to look good and another to be unhealthy.”
Susan sits pensively, staring at her half-eaten sandwich. “I’ve been seeing a therapist for a little while, but when it comes down to it, I won’t change until I really want to,” she says. “I would still like to be a little thinner, just a little.” Stamping out her cigarette, she promptly walks towards the bathroom.
* Susan, Karen, and Tricia are names used to protect the girls’ identities.
Feature | National | Bay Area | Business | Arts & Entertainment | Opinion