Would eating disorders still exist if diet/skinny culture wasn't a thing?
I'm curious to know your guys' opinion on something. I'm not diagnosed with an ED myself, so I genuinely don't know about this - but I have a deep curiosity about mental disorders.
A lot is said about how the diet culture and skinny standard produces eating disorders on people. Since the skinny type is worshipped, it makes many people develop eating disorders and purging behaviors, sometimes without even noticing it. But my curiosity is: do you guys feel like, if these cultures and beauty standards didn't exist, eating disorders like those would automatically not exist as well? Or would they still exist, maybe to a lesser prevalence, because there is some kind of biological or innate aspect to them? Are they disorders created exclusively because of culture, or not? I was thinking about that when reflecting about how many disorders are for sure worsened by cultural aspects but, in many cases, not entirely caused by it (in my opinion).
Posted Aug 12, 2026, 3:18 AM UTC