Eating Pathology in Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals: Prevalence, Related Sociocultural Factors, and Treatment
3 - (Sym 65) The Relationship Between Feminist Beliefs and Disordered Eating in a Sample of Sexual Minority Men and Women
Saturday, November 19, 2022
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM EST
Location: Juilliard/Imperial, 5th Floor
Keywords: LGBTQ+, Eating, Body Image Recommended Readings: Calzo, J. P., Blashill, A. J., Brown, T. A., & Argenal, R. L. (2017). Eating disorders and disordered weight and shape control behaviors in sexual minority populations. Current psychiatry reports, 19(8), 49. Diemer, E. W., Grant, J. D., Munn-Chernoff, M. A., Patterson, D. A., & Duncan, A. E. (2015). Gender identity, sexual orientation, and eating-related pathology in a national sample of college students. Journal of Adolescent Health, 57(2), 144-149. McClain, Z., & Peebles, R. (2016). Body image and eating disorders among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. Pediatric Clinics, 63(6), 1079-1090.
Outreach Education Specialist Samaritan House Virginia Beach, Virginia
The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between feminist beliefs and disordered eating in a sample of LGBQ+ individuals, particularly considering the roles of media pressures and appearance ideal internalization. Participants were 174 female and 158 male adult volunteers (Mage = 32.50, SD = 7.30) who self-identified as LGBQ+ recruited via TurkPrime’s optimization tools for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants completed demographics including feminist self-identification, Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-4r (Schaefer et al, 2017), Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale (Stice et al., 2000), Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder Inventory (Hildebrandt et al., 2004), and Feminist Perspectives Scale (Henley et al., 1998).Independent samples t-tests showed that those who met criteria for an eating disorder (n = 124; 69 women and 55 men; 38.8% of the sample) scored higher on measures of feminist beliefs (all ps < .01). Independent samples t-tests also showed that those who self-identified as feminist (n = 193; 114 women and 79 men; 58% of the sample) scored higher on media pressures and disordered eating symptoms (all ps < .01) but not on thin or muscular ideal internalization. Serial mediation analyses using PROCESS Model 6 showed that the positive direct effect of feminist beliefs on disordered eating symptoms (B(SEB) = .0037(.0009), t= 3.8990, p=.0001, LLCI= .0018, ULCI=.0056) was no longer significant (B(SEB)=.0177(.0125), t=1.4201, p=.1567, LLCI=-.0068, ULCI=.0422) when accounting for the significant indirect effects of media pressures, thin-ideal internalization, and muscular ideal internalization (B(SEB)=.0763(.0141), t=5.422, p< .0001, LLCI=.0486, ULCI=.1040). Feminist beliefs appear to have a very complex relationship with disordered eating symptomatology. The roles of media pressures and appearance ideal internalization may reflect the increased attention to media while critiquing it, a core part of feminist action. This attention may operate in much the same way as adding disclaimer labels to photoshopped images calls attention to the altered portions of these images rather than mitigating the effects (Bury et al., 2014; Tiggemann et al., 2013). Much of the previous work in our field has not included those who are LGBQ+, and when it has, focuses solely on issues related directly to their sexuality. However, it is important to study the complex relationships among these variables in diverse samples.