An open invitation to productive conversations about feminism and the spectrum of eating disorders (part 1): basic principles of feminist approaches

Abstract

Plain English Summary Feminist research has been contributing to the eating disorders field for decades; yet, there continue to be questions about its relevance in 2022. In this set of two papers, we explore some of the questions around and disagreements about feminist approaches to eating disorders. We argue that feminist approaches to eating disorders continue to matter because they enrich the science of eating disorders, help us to better understand and situate diagnoses, consider treatment and prevention in context, attend to lived experiences, broaden our approaches to doing research, and consider recovery in context. In this first paper, we outline what feminist approaches are and dig into some key tensions around them. These include how sociocultural approaches to understanding eating disorders have been critiqued, relationships between “biological” and “feminist” understandings of eating disorders, and the role of men. We then consider one of the key contributions feminist approaches has made in the field: an invitation to think about eating disorder diagnoses in relation to contemporary concerns about food, weight, and shape.