Intersectional Perspectives of Eating Disorders

The conference will aim to provide both clients and therapists support to better collaborate relationally, and equip the reflexive practitioner with culturally competent skills to enhance clinical practice.

Forty years on from the iconic ‘Fat Is a Feminist Issue’ by Dr Susie Orbach, and the grounding breaking 2021 tome, Black Women with Eating Disorders: A Clinicians guide by Dr Charlynn Small and Dr Mazella Fuller, the stage is set for an exploration into the symbiotic relationship between eating disorders and its competing rhetoric on the body image of white, black, brown, and indigenous, people of colour. We will consider notions of what is considered to be normal regarding acceptable body types, and colourism, often characterised by media, research, therapeutic treatment, and through the client’s own lived experience. This essentially posits the question, whose body matters in the treatment of eating disorders?

The origins of fat phobia; historical impact of feminism from a black and white perspective is unpacked in research, and storytelling, often unearthing fetishizing of women, amplified through the clients racialised and lived experiences before, during and throughout the treatment process.