Conservative Student News

About 7 million females and 1 million males in the U.S. cope with some form of disordered eating. Serious eating disorders can lead to death if they are untreated.

It is no secret that there are certain stereotypes associated with attending St. Thomas. As a visiting high school senior, one of the first things I learned from the comments of current students was that St. Thomas students are perceived as preppy, cell phone addicts who drive flashy SUVs and turn up their noses at any brand of clothing “lower” than J. Crew. As strange as these comments seemed, even more disturbing were the comments these students made about the females on this campus.

Almost every girl I met was quick to make comments like, “The girls on this campus are so skinny,” and “Anorexia is a real problem on this campus.” These claims disturbed me because they seemed to point to an even larger problem of insecurity and poor body image among those who made such continual observations. I began to wonder whether these claims were based on fact or rooted in insecurity.

A psychology study performed in the fall of 2002 by St. Thomas student, Angela Flatgard, entitled Eating on the UST Campus and Perceptions of Female Body Size, confirmed my suspicions. Flatgard’s study stemmed from her hypothesis that both male and female students perceive St. Thomas women as being underweight, while in reality, the majority of St. Thomas women are at a healthy weight. The study hypothesized that such perceptions cause women to feel uncomfortable eating around other women who they deem to be thinner than they are.

Flatgard’s hypothesis seemed to correspond with my original intuitions. However, I was initially cautious to accept the results of her study. I asked Flatgard how many students she had surveyed in her study, and how she could be sure that her findings were statistically significant. Her response quickly put me at ease. Flatgard explained that by polling 187 students of both sexes at a wide variety of locations around campus, she insured that her polling sample was random and representative of the overall campus population. Flatgard’s results were “statistically significant,” meaning that if anyone else were to perform a similar study at St. Thomas, they would likely obtain statistically similar results.

Flatgard polled both male and female students by asking them to respond to a free response survey. Students were asked to rate the potential eating locations available to them (The Café in Murray Herrick, Scooters, The Binz, The Grill and their room/where they live) according to how comfortable they felt eating in each location and how often they did so.

Next, students were asked to indicate their preference for company while dining (alone, with strangers, with all-male/all-female companions or in a mixed sex group). From here, students were asked to rate the weight of the average male and the average female at St. Thomas on a scale of one to five, where one was “very underweight” and five was “very overweight.” Finally, each participant provided their own height and weight. These last two pieces of information were used to calculate the Body Mass Indices of the participants in the sample size.

Although Flatgard’s study was primarily intended to study the eating habits and body image perceptions of the females on campus, she used the male’s responses to help put the female responses in perspective.

Flatgard’s results revealed that women tended to be significantly less comfortable eating in their least favorite location (most participants named The Café) than men were in theirs. Furthermore, men ate more often in The Café while women preferred to eat in their rooms more often than men did. In fact, 9% of women named their room as their “most favorite” place to eat, while there were no men who said this. Furthermore, 52% of men indicated that their rooms were their least favorite place to eat, while only 26% of women said the same. This finding is interesting because it would seem that a preference to eat in one’s room rather than with friends or acquaintances on a normal basis could be indicative of abnormal eating habits.

Although both sexes most often indicated a preference to eat in mixed-sex groups, women were significantly more likely to prefer eating alone than with others. Women were also more likely to point to attributes of the atmosphere as factors that determined whether they enjoyed dining at a particular location. Several females made comments indicating that they disliked eating in various public locations on campus because they felt that they were in competition with other (skinnier) girls and being watched and judged by the men on campus.

Do these differences in eating preferences indicate anything about the state of body images of women on campus? Furthermore, do the eating preferences of women and their perception of other women’s weights on campus match the reality of the situation or are they distorted due to their poor body images? To answer these questions, it was essential to analyze the Body Mass Index scores of Flatgard’s sample size.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a relationship between weight and height, determined by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by one’s height in meters squared. One’s BMI score is a good predictor of one’s health risk. A BMI score below 18.5 means that the subject is underweight, anything between 18.5 and 24.9 is normal, anything between 25.0 and 29.9 shows that the subject is overweight and anything above 30 is indicative of obesity. Flatgard found that the BMIs for St. Thomas women, averaging 22.7, put women in the normal, or healthy, range while the average BMI for St. Thomas men, determined as 27.4, put the men in the overweight range.

Flatgard compared this reality with the perceptions that students, particularly women, held. Many women perceived the average woman as being underweight and although men also perceived women as below a healthy weight, the disparities between the men’s estimates and the reality of the situation were not as drastic as for women.

It might be tempting to disregard Flatgard’s study by saying that it was only one study done on one sample size and cannot accurately explain the situation of the entire campus population. However, as noted at the beginning of this article, Flatgard’s sample size was selected randomly and was large enough to be considered statistically significant, meaning that anyone who duplicated this study would find similar results and her sample was representative of the population.

Thus, Flatgard’s study cannot be taken lightly. The fact that there is a serious discrepancy between the way women perceive the average woman’s weight on this campus and reality, combined with the finding that so many women feel uncomfortable eating in very public settings on campus reveal a trend of poor body image among many St. Thomas women.

While poor female body image can be traced to many causes, including the unhealthy ideals in weight promoted by the mass media, it seems that, consciously or not, an unhealthy ideal female body type is perpetuated by the students at St. Thomas. In other words, since most women perceive the average woman as being underweight, it seems that a false, sub-healthy standard for weight is promoted by the St. Thomas student body. This false, yet pervasive standard has created an atmosphere where women, to a greater extent than men, feel uncomfortable eating in public settings and in certain kinds of company and environments.

St. Thomas has many resources available to women who suffer from poor body image or eating disorders. Walking outside of the Wellness Center during February, for example, I picked up two very informative brochures on such topics. St. Thomas students can speak with a caring counselor at the Wellness Center or a medical professional in Health Services for free if they are concerned that they might be struggling with an eating disorder or poor body image.

The Wellness Center’s personal counseling link on their website, http://www.stthomas.edu/wellness/, also has an enormous cache of self-help tools and links, including an online survey that can be used to help self-assess whether one has an eating disorder. Healthy U is also considering hosting a brown bag lunch this spring that will address body image and disordered eating.

However, poor body image is also created and sustained by the attitudes of men and the media. While there are resources available to women who suffer from poor body image, these women ultimately cannot dismantle the unhealthy physical ideals that are held by others. They can’t be expected to be unaffected by societal pressures. Thus, the problem of poor body image affects everyone at St. Thomas.

Men need to treat women with respect and dignity. They need to avoid jokes and comments that objectify the female body. On a larger scale, society needs to relax its standards for thinness and overcome the ubiquitous hypocrisies it displays by using underweight models in health and fitness advertising. The problem of poor body image is a community problem with a communal solution.