The goal of this research was to attempt to understand why white women are more prone to develop eating disorders than black women. Using self-reports, we found that white women chose a significantly thinner ideal body size than did black women, and expressed more concern than black women with weight and dieting. White women also experienced greater social pressure to be thin than did black women. White men indicated less desire than black men to date a woman with a heavier than ideal body size, and white men felt they would more likely be ridiculed than did black men if they did date a woman who was larger than the ideal. The results suggest that black women experience eating disorders less than white women at least in part because they experience less pressure to be thin. 0 7995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The ideal woman's body size in the United States has become considerably thinner over the past 30 years. Many white women currently feel they must be very thin to be attractive to men (Rozin & Fallon, 1985). Indeed, Cohn and Adler (1992) suggested a well-established norm of thinness exists for women, one so extreme that many white women resort to eating disorders in an attempt to match it . In support of this relationship, a number of studies have found that white women with eating disorders report a greater discrepancy between their actual body size and their perception of their body size than white women without eating disorders (Bell, Kirkpatrick, & Rinn, 1986; Fraenkel & Leichner, 1989).
In contrast to white women in the United States, few black women seem to have eating disorders (Dolan, 1991; Root, 1990). found a significantly lower rate of bulimia, and less emphasis on eating and weight in general among black college students compared to white students. They, along with others (Bhadri-