Eating Disorders Among Elite Athletes

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Addiction is a key component in the lives of elite athletes, both male and female. The common perception is that participants in sports that emphasize appearance and a lean body shape are at higher risk for developing an eating disorder than are those involved in sports that require muscle mass and bulk. (ANRED, 1998) However, this no longer seems to be the case. Through the exploration of the factors contributing to this phenomenon, the initial problem of poor body image translates into serious addictive behaviors that force a number of athletes to suffer painful consequences and face the possibility of death in their pursuit of success. Although the initial stimulus is similar, the ways in which individual athletes deal with the nature of their addictions manifests itself in a distinct set of behaviors specific to their gender and their sport of choice. For female athletes, gymnastics seems to have the most profound effect on young women in terms of developing anorexia, and male athletes experience the most problems in bodybuilding as it is proven to have the opposite effect and cause a great deal of harm in terms of such body image disorders commonly referred to as bigorexia.Male and Female Athletes: Gendered DifferencesHalf of the women in the 18 to 25 year old age category surveyed in the United States would rather be dead than fat, as women continue to idolize waifish supermodels like Kate Moss, while men attempt to emulate Solo flex models and buffed male stars. (Powers, 2002) Although the pressure to be thin is great on the average individual, it can be overwhelming for athletes, due to the fact that the sporting environment frequently precipitates the onset of these problems. In addition, the competitive nature of sports reinforces defining characteristics such as perfectionism and obsessive behavior where athletes often set goals for themselves on a much higher level than the average individual. (Powers, 2002) It comes as no surprise that popular culture demands that women are encouraged to diet and be thin. Men, on the other hand, are not only expected to be strong and powerful, but have become conditioned to build their bodies and make them larger and more muscular. (ANRED, 2002) Magazines catering primarily to females ages 18-24 included greater content aimed at weight reduction, whereas those targeted at men contained more ads and articles on weightlifting and bodybuilding. Commonly, the qualities of a muscular build, overt physical aggression, competitiveness, and independence generally are regarded as desirable for males, whereas dependency, passivity, and inhibition of physical aggression are seen as more appropriate for females. (Shilts, 2002)
Female Athletes in Gymnastics

Eating disorders are prevalent in all sports, but athletes participating in activities that emphasize leanness for performance and appearance are at a significantly greater risk. (Powers, 2002) The female athlete is doubly at risk for the development of an eating disorder. Not only is she subject to the constant social pressure to be thin that affects all females in Westernized countries, but she also finds herself in an industry that overvalues performance, low body fat, an unrealistic body shape, size and weight. Constant exposure to the demands of the athletic subculture added to those bombarding women daily in the media, on TV, in movies, magazines, and transmitted by peers, making them especially vulnerable to the lures of weight loss and the ways in which she is expected to achieve them. (ANRED, 1998)

The tragedy of Christy Heinrich was precipitated by the nature of sport itself as the incidence of eating disorders occurs far greater percentage in gymnastics for women than any other. (Plummer, 1994) Christy was 22 years old and one of the nation’s top gymnasts during the late 1980’s, who suffered terribly from bulimia and anorexia nervosa. She wasn’t the only one, a slew of other famous gymnasts as Kathy Johnson and Nadia Comaneci have admitted to struggling with eating disorders. Cathy Rigby, the 1972 Olympian who battled anorexia and bulimia for 12 years and twice went into cardiac arrest because of it, burst into tears at the news of Henrich's death. ''I felt frustrated and angry,'' says Rigby, 40, who met Henrich as a TV commentator. ''The sport is fertile ground for anorexia.'' Gymnastics, it seems, is a sport designed for the disease. (Plummer, 1994)

Anorexia often strikes female athletes who try to postpone the process of becoming a woman, by using excessive measures to maintain a thin and girlish figure, is the exact description of what young gymnasts must accomplish to remain competitive at its highest levels. For these athletes, the onset of womanhood is their biggest fear because normal female development would certainly hinder their performance. Thus, starving themselves offers the most convenient solution to their problem. (Cintado, 1999)

Another contributing factor for gymnasts' greater drive for thinness and body dissatisfaction is the subjectivity of their judging system. Judging a gymnastics routine is not objective, as each judge assigns a score according to his or her own beliefs and the appearance of the performer actually influences and ultimately affects their final decision. A tragic example of the judges' power over these athletes is an incident with Christy Heinrich as mentioned above. At a meet in Budapest, a U.S. judge commented that Christy would have to lose weight if she wanted to make the Olympic team. Upon returning home to the US, her mother recalls the first words out of her daughter's mouth were that she “was fat and would have to lose weight as it was the only way that she would reach her dreams.” (Cintado, 1999)

During the last two decades, the image of the world-class gymnast as a super-thin prepubescent girl has become even more exaggerated and the trend reveals that elite gymnasts have become significantly smaller in terms of body size and weight. At the 1964 Olympics, the all-around title was given to 26-year-old Vera Caslavska who at 5'3", 121 pounds would be considered a "geriatric giant by today's standards" (Pope, 1994). In 1968, however, she was soon upstaged by 13-year-old Olga Korbut who at 4'11", 85 pounds changed the history of gymnastics forever. Even more alarming is the all-around gold medallist of the 1993 world championships: 16-year-old Shannon Miller who at the time was only 4'10", 79 pounds. (Cintado, 1999) The same cannot be said for their male counterparts, who are encouraged to develop strong, muscular physiques to prepare them for their competitive gymnastic careers. Unfortunately, the women face severe consequences that affect both their performance and overall health. These include fatigue, nutrient inadequacies, impaired growth, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis later on in life. Finally, as in the most extreme cases such as Christy Heinrich, eating disorders can also end in tragic death. (Cintado, 1999)

Male Athletes in Bodybuilding

Men are also being sold the beauty myth, but the male version isn't thin - it's big. The image of the modern day muscleman isn't confined to the pages of a few publications aimed at the health-conscious, either. He is everywhere; as a movie star, action toy, model, pop star, and TV presenter. (Q-online, 2001) This idea has previously always been a female concern. It was women alone whom society defined by the way they looked, but men now feel required to achieve the so-called perfect body, being granted the right to feel what women have been dealing with for years. Having squeezed the female market to saturation point, the beauty industry has turned to the untapped male sector. (Q-online, 2001) In The Adonis Complex, women may feel more under pressure to attain the vital statistics of a toothpick, but it is a preoccupation with not being big enough that is causing men to obsess about their own structural failings. “Bigorexia” has been coined as the flip side to dieting where its victims are hell-bent to beef up like a hulk and deal with the consequences later. (Pope,1994)

While anorexics starve themselves to skin and bone but still think they look fat, bodybuilders who exhibit reverse anorexia strive constantly to gain more lean body mass, but even when successful persist in believing their size is inadequate. (Hitt, 1999) A surprising number of men have body image disorders and, despite their massive muscularity, perceive themselves as small. It is estimated that around 10% of the men in any hard-core gym have bigorexia, ranging from mild to crippling. (Wells, 2000)

This belief affects their daily lives in a myriad of ways. Some bodybuilders wear heavy clothing, even in the summer, to hide their inadequate size. Some even skip important events such as class reunions, weddings, or other social events, so no one will see their bodies and snicker at their (self-perceived) skinniness. (Wells, 2000) In fact, the shame can be so widespread in men that it becomes an all-consuming quest that blots out fulfilling responsibilities to family and work, passing up higher-paying jobs or the chance to cultivate relationships with seemingly ideal mates because those things could interfere with their workouts. (Wells, 2000) They ignore injuries like pulled muscles or torn ligaments, and continue lifting the weights they know will make them huge using anabolic steroids in such frightening amounts, normal body function is impaired in order to pursue the extreme size they so desire. (Wells, 2000) The media idealizes the large muscular body form for men just as it endorses the waif-like appearance for women. The fear of being too small leads to a high degree of body dissatisfaction among bodybuilders, who have greater body dissatisfaction and exhibited greater bulimic tendencies compared to other male athletes. (Wells, 2000)

To normal individuals or people who lift weights recreationally, they do not understand why bodybuilders risk their health to look like “freaks” when most people think they look disgusting. Although many bodybuilders, to some extent, may exhibit symptoms of this body dysmorphia, no one represents the extreme version of the freak's freak, more than Gregg Valentino. (Shugart, 2002) (See Figures 1 - 5) Greg is not a liked man by any means; in fact, he's quite possibly the most despised man in bodybuilding. To most athletes, he has destroyed his body and is a laughingstock and an embarrassment to the sport that gives bodybuilding a bad name. Now in his 40’s, he’s been in jail and suffered a myriad of problems relating to his quest to have the biggest arms on the planet. “The minute I started I fell in love with it because my body responded incredibly. Within the first month I smacked an inch on my arms. Then I just went hog wild…I just kept going with it.” He got frustrated when he saw a lot of guys passing him in the gym who had just started out lifting weights, while he was training slowly, making gains over the years. He also felt like I'd earned it. Gregg admits only in trying to be a freak and a steady mob of fans that still go nuts wanting his pictures, although he claims to be embarrassed by all the attention he receives. (Shugart, 2002) His motivation lies in the fact that he’s got small man (Napoleon) complex. With 27-inch arms, at 5'5" with a 27-inch waist, he knows he looks ridiculous, but if he can't grow taller, then “I'm going to be the biggest freak I can be.” (Shugart, 2002) Greg still believes that he is not “muscle bound” at all and his goals for the future include having 30-inch arms and, hopefully, still being alive. It should be known that although Gregg identifies himself as a bodybuilder, he is in no way representative of bodybuilders in general as he does not compete, nor does he strive for symmetry or balance. He is truly a man who represents an extreme form of this disorder and something that obviously went terribly wrong somewhere along the way. (Shugart, 2002) Gregg’s appearance though extreme even for bodybuilders represents a shift that has illuminated the striking influence of sports on body image satisfaction in men. This may be because the standards for male beauty are changing, in the same way the ascent of the super-thin fashion model has been followed by decades of rise in eating disorders among U.S. women. (Wells, 2000) The importance of a fit physique has grown increasingly salient to men in modem society as indicated by the rise of hyper masculine action heroes such as Arnold Schwartzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. (Hitt, 1999) The bodybuilders' obsessional behavior resembles anorexia nervosa with remarkable similarity except that the drive for enormous muscles replaces the drive for thinness. The muscle-bound action heroes of today rival the gorgeous supermodels as cultural icons in today’s society. These images prey on skinny adolescent boys around the world teased by school bullies who resolve to fight back. They begin in a frenzy of weightlifting seeking to attain size above all else forsaking family and fiends in their quest. (Hitt, 1999) Action toys, for years, have been aimed at young men to start them off on the road to wanting. Whether it was "Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots" in the 60’s or "X-Men" today, the message is the same: Being mortal just isn’t enough. Having super power and super strength is where it’s at. Even the waist, chest, and biceps measurements of GI Joe and 'Star Wars' male action figures marketed over the past 30 years have grown more muscular and developed increasingly sharp muscular definition. The 1998 "GI Joe Extreme" dwarfs the earlier "Joes" with much greater musculature. (Wells, 2000) (See Figure 6) It is important to examine the relationship between these types of cultural messages and the incidence of body disorders in both sexes. We’re all exposed daily to often unnaturally muscular male images and atypically thin women. But more often, men who are bigorexics and women who are anorexics are suffering inside from a legitimate disorder, and the images in the media just exacerbate what is happening within. (Wells, 2000)

Female Gymnasts as Bodybuilders

The Adonis Complex argues that if women do have a role in all this, it is in the context of threatened masculinity. Stripped of other means by which to establish maleness, men are drawn to the gym as a final frontier, as an arena in which women will never be able to exceed or even match male accomplishments. Muscularity, in this context, is important because it is so intimately tied to cultural views of masculinity; it represents an assertion of discipline and command at a time when those qualities are no longer exclusive only to men. (Q-online, 2001)

However, male bodybuilders may have to start stroking their egos somewhere else. While some men seem to be responding to this supposes sense of threatened masculinity, a number of women seem intent on determining their own experiences with building muscularity through weight training. A number of former gymnasts and female athletes alike are rejecting the naturally feminine plight of their sisters of the past. More and more, these women are venturing into the world traditionally seen as male domain and excelling beyond their wildest dreams, due primarily to their strong athletic backgrounds. They have discovered that increasing their muscle content will improve their performance more so than just reducing their body fat. Peggy Schoolcraft, a former gymnast, turned IFBB Professional Bodybuilder, has succeeded in stepping outside of her past experiences as a female gymnast and into a future filled with strength, power and positive reinforcement for the women of her generation and beyond. The 1997 IFBB World and Team Universe Champion, is not alone, a number of other bodybuilding and fitness professionals have followed her lead into this athletic arena. So while the men may be having problems adjusting to their personal success in the gym, some of them had better figure a way to deal with this new version of “femininity” and the women determined to stake their own claim in the world of competitive bodybuilding.

It’s become evident that addiction is a key component in the lives of elite athletes, both male and female. Although the factors contributing to this phenomenon are very similar, the ways in which each gender deals with the nature of their addictions is distinct, exhibiting a set of behaviors specific to both their gender and their sport of choice. Hopefully, more women will begin to see their beauty lies more in their strength than in their weakness and men will find solace in their ability to use their power in a more positive and productive way.

Written by Lisa Bavington (IFBB Pro)