Toward an understanding of resilience to disordered eating and body image dissatisfaction among African American women: An analysis of the roles of ethnic and feminist identities

Although the research on disordered eating and body image dissatisfaction among European American women is burgeoning, knowledge about eating disorder (ED) symptomatology among African American women is still limited. In order to provide effective treatment and prevention programs, it is imperative to investigate risk and protective factors of ED symptomatology among diverse groups of women. Racist and sexist discrimination have been conceptualized by scholars as putative predictors of disordered eating and body image dissatisfaction, whereas positive cultural and gender identities have been postulated as potential protective factors against ED symptomatology and body image dissatisfaction among African American women. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was threefold: (1) to examine the relations between racist discrimination, sexist discrimination, ethnic identity, feminist identity, ED symptomatology and body image dissatisfaction; (2) to investigate whether discrimination predicts ED symptomatology and body image dissatisfaction; and (3) to determine whether ethnic and feminist identities moderate (i.e., buffer) the relations between the proposed predictor and criterion variables within a sample (N = 302) of university-affiliated, African American women. The primary hypotheses were as follows: (1) higher levels of discrimination would predict higher levels of ED symptomatology and body image dissatisfaction; (2) higher levels of ethnic identity and feminist identity would predict lower levels of disordered eating and body image dissatisfaction; and (3) ethnic and feminist identities would individually and collectively moderate the relations between discrimination and ED symptomatology and between discrimination and body image dissatisfaction. As expected, higher levels of ethnogender discrimination significantly predicted higher levels of ED symptomatology. Unexpectedly, higher levels of ethnogender discrimination did not predict higher levels of body image dissatisfaction. As anticipated, higher levels of ethnic identity and feminist identity significantly predicted lower levels of body image dissatisfaction. Unexpectedly, higher levels of ethnic and feminist identity did not predict lower levels of disordered eating. Finally, neither ethnic nor feminist identity was found to moderate the discrimination-ED symptomatology relation or the discrimination-body image dissatisfaction relation. Putative explanations for the aforementioned findings are offered as are implications for research, practice and prevention.