Driving Athletes to Eating Disorders

My sister recently told me about a friend's eight-year-old daughter who desperately wants to take ballet classes, but ends up devastated after each class from being told she's too fat to be a dancer. Her mother is torn between removing her from participation in a sport she loves and that should, in an ideal world, be healthy for her, and allowing her to continue with the risk that she'll become irreconcilably  obsessed with her weight.

Eating disorders are a serious problem among female athletes, particularly those in sports that place great emphasis on lightness and image. Huff Post's interview with figure skater Jenny Kirk has shed light on just how many figure skaters suffer from eating disorders: Kirk estimates 85 percent, and other stats have 62 percent of figure skaters and gymnasts struggling with disordered eating.

In a recent Psychology Today article, Dana Chadwick talks about dropping out of one sport after another (dancing, cheerleading, rowing) because she couldn't deal with the constant pressure to stay thin from coaches and constant weigh-ins. Jenny Kirk, meanwhile, says that the more professional a figure skater becomes, the more she and her coaches, judges, and critics become obsessed with weight. It becomes the number one determiner of competitiveness: a skater who has gained weight or is slightly heavier than the others is dismissed as uncompetitive. Coaches, Kirk states, frequently care more about seeing an ultra-thin skater win a competition than ensuring she isn't harming herself with an eating disorder.

At a meet in 1988, one judge told gymnast Christy Henrich that she was too fat and would need to lose weight to join the Olympic Squad. Henrich turned to anorexia, and in 1994 died of multiple organ failure at the age of 22.

Eating disorders are dangerous for anyone, but for athletes the danger is particularly acute due to the constant stress and pressure placed on their bodies. The phenomenon of eating disorders in female athletes is apparently so common that a specific term has been created for their medical problems: the "female athlete triad," a combo of low energy, menstrual irregularities, and weak bones.

The argument on behalf of coaches and judges is often that thinner athletes are more competitive -- until, of course, they get so sick they no longer perform well. Competitiveness as a function of thinness is also a recent development: the average weight of both gymnasts and figure skaters has decreased since the 1970s.

It seems incredibly sad to me that in an area in which women could show the strength and power of their bodies they are instead being asked to make themselves into fragile wraiths to the point of grave unhealthiness. Sports could be a way to make women feel empowered by their bodies; female athletes (like the famous World Cup women's soccer team or the Williams' sisters) could be role models of female strength and confidence.

Instead, they're being molded into the same delicate, emaciated models we see everywhere on billboards and magazine covers. The culprits here are the judges, coaches, and industry standards. Hopefully Jenny Kirk and other athletes, activists, and women will speak out against them to encourage female athletes to refuse the pressure to starve themselves into poor performance and disempowerment.

Photo: Zipckr's Photostream