Eating Attitudes of Women Living With a Vision Impairment

Abstract

Internalization of cultural standards of attractiveness and subscription to gender-based discourses are significant predictors of disordered eating attitudes in fully sighted women. Yet, whether these variables predict the disordered eating attitudes of women who are legally blind is underexplored. In the current study, we examined how internalization of White European cultural standards of attractiveness and subscription to gender-based discourses (body surveillance and self-silencing) and body shame predicted the disordered eating attitudes of 80, primarily White, heterosexual, Australian women who are legally blind. Participants completed an online survey comprising existing validated measures of all variables. A path analysis was performed using the Hayes PROCESS approach. As predicted, in women living with vision impairment, body surveillance, self-silencing, and shame fully mediated the relation between internalization of cultural standards of attractiveness and disordered eating attitudes. Results showed that in much the same way as sighted women, women living with vision impairment are susceptible to internalizing harmful messages related to socio-cultural standards of attractiveness. We provide further support for including subscription to gender-based discourses in research on women’s body-image disturbances. Data will be available for other researchers from the author via email. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index