In my last blog post, I talked about how men are less likely to come out about eating disorders. They may feel like they aren’t supposed to feel like they can be affected by something like this or even because society says that it’s abnormal for them to be affected by this illness.
I decided to look up how likely men are to come out about eating disorders, I found this article from mirror-mirror.org that I thought was interesting.
https://www.mirror-mirror.org/men.htm
The article talks about how in today times, people are more likely to think that teenage girls are affected by eating disorders and that’s it. People don’t realize that older and younger women can be affected and are surprised when they hear that men can have eating disorders also.
The article then says, “It is estimated that approximately 10% of eating disorder sufferers are men, but it is likely that this figure would be higher if more men came forward with their problem”. There are so many men that are afraid of what society would think of them for having a disease like this since it’s not “manly”. The article states that eating disorders are a “women’s disease” and that makes it harder for men to come out about them.
I truly don’t understand why society puts people in categories and says that they can’t be or have one thing because they are a certain race or gender. The whole concept of eating disorders being a “women’s disease” does make sense though because think about if a football player was to come out about their eating disorder. Football is seen as one of the toughest and manliest sports so coming out about something that could seem more girly would give them a higher chance of being made fun of or picked on.
In a different article from Eating Disorders Victoria, it says that 25% of people that have an eating disorder are males.
https://www.eatingdisorders.org.au/eating-disorders/eating-disorders-a-males
Once again, I bring up how society views athletes and people in general and it ruins some people at times. It tears a person a part because they feel like something more is wrong with them since they have a certain problem that society says that they can’t have.
We put in boys’ heads that they have to like trucks not Barbies, the color blue and not pink, they have to play football and not be dancers and what we don’t see is that we are ruining them. They become scared to speak up about something because it’s too girly and in my opinion that should change.
There is no reason why a man cannot speak up about an eating disorder.
Eating Disorders within our Sports 