Deconstructing Disordered Eating: A Feminist Psychological Approach to the Body, Food, and Exercise Relationship in Female Athletes

The relationship between the body, food and exercise is complex and remains poorly understood within the athletic population. Much of what is currently known stems from disordered eating literature grounded in objectivist perspectives. In turn, athletes' eating and body experiences have primarily been conceptualized as pathological and/or linked to individual deficiencies (e. g., low self-esteem, body image distortion). The ways in which food and exercise are negotiated and experienced by athletes in the context of taken-for-granted gendered discourses have not been considered. The current paper highlights how a feminist psychological framework grounded in social constructionism and feminist cultural studies can be used to deconstruct the concept of disordered eating and extend our understanding of female athletes' body experiences beyond objectivist forms of theorizing. Such deconstruction allows for further insight into the social, cultural and historical construction of these experiences.