Black feminist theory has long recognized the legacies of colonialism and racism in shaping the historical and contemporary representations of the Black female body as simultaneously hypervisible and invisible. Nevertheless, in the literature on "body image" and "disordered eating," Black feminist frameworks, critical research methods, and culturally-responsive intervention development remain underutilized. Conducting a PRISMA-compliant systematic literature review (1986-2022), we critically assessed 61 published studies examining the relationship between body image disturbances and maladaptive eating behaviors in Black women. This review highlights literature that includes debates surrounding the susceptibility of Black women to the "thinness ideal," the reliability and validity of measures of symptomatology associated with eating disorders and body image for Black women, and the recognition that Black women may possess unique sociocultural risk factors that should inform culturally responsive prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. We found a dearth of literature that uses Ecosocial theory to discuss relationships between body image and eating pathology, while also concluding that more development in theoretical models to resist white supremacy on body image research related to Black women is necessary. Notably, we found that structural factors-such as racism, gendered oppression, and socioeconomic inequality-were rarely examined as contributors to disordered eating, despite their centrality in Black feminist and Ecosocial theory. This absence reflects a broader silence in the literature and underscores the need for theoretical models that resist white supremacy and center Black women's experiences. Future research should prioritize development of measures and interventions that reflect the unique sociocultural realities and motivations of Black women.
Washington et al. (Tue,) studied this question.