A recent post by Ianqui has me thinking about weight, body image and success for women in academics. As a rough estimate, I'd say about 50% of the young women in my field have had or are currently battling an eating disorder. Of my close friends and colleagues over the past decade, that proportion is staggeringly higher (like, all but two or three).
For example, one of my deans has a problem. This is common knowledge among all the women in the college. At official functions involving food she orders salad with lemons (no dressing). In the middle of the meal she excuses herself to go to the ladies' room, where she purges. She is painfully thin, and extraordinarily successful. Not only is she a dean, but she ranks among the top researchers in her department. She is in her early 30s.
I've been there, too. I am 5'9". In graduate school, around the time of my qualifying exams (and my divorce), I weighed about 95 lbs. I wore a size 2. I felt empowered and happy. Not having to eat made me feel strong and warm - a strange feeling that I've never been able to describe, but "warm" captures it as well as anything.
Then I met the Angry Baker, and he got me back into the habit of eating again. That's the stage at which I was: sub-clinical. Not eating wasn't yet a compulsion, but a habit I had developed. This habit was inconsistent with keeping an Italian lover whose favorite hobby was food. I was back up to 115 lbs within a few months of taking him into my bed.
My problems with anorexia are long behind me, but it's telling, I suppose, that even now I don't feel like it was a real "problem." I know that many professional women struggle with eating disorders. However, it seems as though the Academy has a disproportionate number. Perhaps it's just the social sciences, or my discipline, or maybe just me?
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
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14 comments:
Checking in from long-away from blogs to say-
This is an interesting idea. Do you think the rate of eating disorders in higher in academia (or as my brother-in-law, an academic economist calls it, academania) than in the general population? Perhaps something to do with having a lot of control and well, being obsessive about one's work in a way that makes one successful in academia means that this spills naturally into other parts of life. Like eating? Or not eating as the case may be. The story about the Dean is just so sad. Personally, I've never had an eating disorder or anything that can remotely be called a problem. I hate to think that there is some kind of correlation between success in academia and eating disorders, even if it's due to some other factor that's casual to both... But perhaps there's something to the idea.
Other bloggers have mused that the rate of depression or other mood disorders also seems to be disproportionately high among academics. I guess that if you're right, body image issues and mood disorders could just be two different manifestations of whatever the underlying problem(s) are.
Hope you don't regret the eating thing. I just couldn't handle tofu dogs for our lives together. You desperately needed good food and you look mahvelous now baby!
As far as a disproportionate depression/anxiety rate in academics ... I think everyone thinks their profession has a disproportionate rate of mood disorders. It's simply a big problem with a big stigma so the frequency will always be tough to document.
--AB
This post made me think a lot and I still haven't come to any conclusions. I know that science/research has the tendancy to make a person forget to eat, both men and women included. I think maybe with the women though there is a strange social acceptance factor that clicks in at some point where we start to think "maybe this whole not eating thing is actually working for me".
My completely anecdotal two cents.
As an academic scientist, I have suspected some colleagues of having eating disorders (observing behavior similar to what you described for your dean). It is more common to see both men and women obsessively exercising. I think it has something to do with over-achievement...like a Ph.D. cannot just go for a daily jog, s/he has to train for a marathon or triathalon. I think a lot of us have trouble finding a balanced life, myself included!
While I don't consider myself particularly successful academically (they'd pay me more if I was successful!), I will admit that I will know that I've hit my goal weight when people who haven't seen me in a while say, "Oh my God! You've lost weight! Are you OK!?"
Losing weight -- when it's going well -- is something that gives me such a feeling of smug accomplishment.
I know in my case binging was one of the key ways I handled my anxiety as I went through the PhD process. Now that I'm finished, I'm having to work hard to get rid of the weight gained.
Wow. Am I totally blind? I don't think I've ever worked with or known anybody during my academic career that I suspected of having an eating disorder. Maybe engineer types are more likely to think of the body as a straightforward input-output system.
In my experience, eating disorders often manifest as the result of a feeling of insufficient control. Your story of starting (or stopping, really) during a divorce AND qualifier exams is a perfect example.
As for academics, I think the career appeals to control freaks. Certainly one of my reasons for going down this path is a desire for autonomy. But then, when you're in your fifth committee meeting of the day and can't seem to find time to get that proposal finished, it's only natural to feel a loss of control.
I'm not saying that academics have any less control over their lives than anyone else. I would argue that we have a lot more. What I'm saying is that it draws in a lot of people who desire a perhaps unreasonable amount of control.
My first departmental affair was with a professor with an eating disorder, who also was pounded on by her boyfriend with some frequency.
Quite a few of my colleagues (including myself) have to take long hard looks at their (our) alcohol consumption.
And the longer I work on a project (especially an abstract one) the madder I tend to get.
Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be academics.
One of my students did a research project which showed, she said, that 35% of the undergraduate women AND GAY MEN at our institution had an eating disorder.
I used to watch my weight and worry about it, but being an assistant professor apparently burned so many calories that I stopped needing to. After that I gained weight, 10-15 pounds since graduate school, depending on what week it is. I try to watch it but that doesn't work like it used to ... and oddly, I still fit into my clothes. ???
What upsets me is my generally unhealthy lifestyle, involving late nights on purpose to get some free time, and not enough exercise. I would never have dreamed of living this way when I was younger. The women at the gym say that it is because now we have
more responsibilities.
Grad students here = workout addicts, smokers, drinkers, pullers of all nighters. I have not found out about eating disorders, but would not be surprised. More faculty are compulsively eating than dieting. But the dieters publish the most. Somewhat frightening.
And now I have a really weird comment.
On weight: despite not being too neurotic about it (and yeah, I dabbled in anorexia in high school), I do sometimes 'feel fat'. Usually, I find, this has to do with having some unresolved problem. Once I figure out what is going on, or what to do, those extra five pounds I think I've gained (I don't have a scale), disappear.
On academia and neuroses of academics:
there is a lot of passive agression and covert (when not overt) verbal abuse in academia, or at least in my main discipline. I suspect that having to deal with this, may have something to do with the anorexia issue.
Also, I have just discerned that there probably really is some form of emotional abuse in my current long term relationship. It is interesting, of course, that I did not see this, since I help students, and sometimes faculty,
deal with that--in their academic and personal lives--all the time.
I have suspected, but not admitted that
there might be emotional abuse in my relationship for the past two weeks.
During that time, I have had the impression I was gaining weight. This afternoon I finally decided I would just have to admit the abuse hypothesis, and face up to whatever is necessary if it turns out to be correct. And suddenly, the 'weight' I
had felt creeping on, is gone.
And thinking back to when I used to dabble in anorexia, I realize that I was attempting to rid myself of an emotional weight. My father was drinking; we were not admitting that it was a problem; I was feeling the 'weight', and rather than face it, I tried to diet it off. When I moved out of the house, I no longer had to deal with the drinker, and I lost interest in dieting, without really knowing why (and yeah, sure, it's more complicated than that, but this is already long).
My point: I know anorexia is supposed to be about 'control', but I would revise that: it can be about a lot of things.
I'm a physics grad student with a long history of both anorexia and bulimia, both of which are mostly under control compared to what they were in high school and college. But still, it creeps in. (Quals were an intensely rough time for me as well.)
Most the women in my program are refreshingly healthy and reasonable about body image, which is somewhat surprising to me considering that the women in my department also seem to be categorically beautiful (which ironically always seems to be accompanied by major body image issues.) It's really my female friends who aren't in academia that have the biggest problems.
On the other hand, in college and high school, I was also intensely driven and successful (and crazy), and I've mellowed out considerably in grad school, probably much to my advisor's dismay but my therapist's delight. So that probably has a lot to do with my mental state -- I'm much more comfortable with the idea that I don't have to be the best at everything, and so I'm much more comfortable with me generally.
Oh, I also have a hard time seeing it as a "problem," even when I required hospitalization.
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