A 1984 international conference on the subject disclosed that the number of adolescents with anorexia nervosa and bulimia, eating disorders characterized by starvation or binge eating and purging, had increased dramatically in the past 15 years. In the USA, for example, a third of female high school and college students show tendencies toward anorexia or bulimia, or both.
Men who suffer from eating disorders have higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders and alcohol abuse than their peers. These men are also more likely to report problems in their marriage and feel dissatisfied with life in general. However, it is not clear whether these findings reflect factors that predispose a person to an eating disorder or are consequences of anorexia and bulimia.
In other findings, eating disorders appeared to be clinically similar in both sexes.
However, eating disorders and excessive dieting are 10 times more common in women than in men. Karen Carpenter, a famous American singer, died of heart strain due to anorexia nervosa, and in 1985 Jane Fonda, American actress, author, and activist, disclosed that she had been bulimic during her late teens and early twenties.
Eating disorders are a response to society's pressures to look right, the biological drive to reproduce and family problems. Women tend to internalize their anxiety and distress, and experience it via their bodies. Starving and stuffing also acts on the body's biochemistry in a way that temporarily relieves emotional stress. Eating disorders are seen as a disorder of women, but they are a cultural sickness. Men are much more likely to overwork, abuse alcohol or behave violently. Bulimics are ambitious, but they become trapped in a private world of self-hatred, guilt and degradation. They may present an image of self-assurance, but their private feelings are crippling inferiority, turmoil, and isolation. Anorexics, on the other hand, tend to be obsessional and perfectionist. They are high achievers who are emotionally dependent on their parent. They are terrified of being out of control and feel they succeed through controlling their body weight.
According to psychiatrists, men are starting to resemble women in their problematic relationship to food and eating disorders. The traditional explanation of women's eating disorders is that they are an expression of powerlessness, combined with an adolescent fear of sexuality. Further, they are a result of paranoia about body-image, encouraged by a society in which images of thin women are prevalent. According to this argument, men are feeling confused and powerless because their traditional role models have been discredited. The reality is that men have always used food as a source of emotional comfort, so have always been at risk of eating disorders, which until recently have gone undiagnosed.
The rate of eating disorders parallels the rate of dieting in the population.