Jeremy Truelove's inspiration for writing on the subject of eating disorders was a close friend who had recently revealed to him that she had been suffering from eating disorders for a number of years but had just overcome the dangerous behaviors. The idea to base his paper on the subject of sex composition of the schools (whether they are co-educational or single-sex) came from a paper written on the subject that he found particularly surprising. The paper revealed that, contrary to his own beliefs, co-educational school settings fostered fewer eating disorder occurrences than single-sex schools. After being surprised by this result, he decided to research the topic and write this paper.

Intense body dissatisfaction and the eating disorders that often follow them continue to devastate females in American society, especially in women thirteen to twenty-two years of age. An increasingly large number of young women today are dissatisfied with their bodies and perceive their figures as larger than ideal (Tiggemann 242), a critical precursor to eating disorders. The fact that the occurrence of such behavior tends to concentrate in this age group, whose main social interactions occur in the classroom, may provoke the assumption that schooling is related to the problem. The far greater occurrence of eating disorders in females below the age of twenty-two than in older females indicates the obvious influences of schooling on the behaviors characterized by eating disorders. But what aspects of schooling most affect the occurrence of eating disorders in young women? One factor, which I will refer to as the schools’ sex composition, is whether the school is coeducational or single-sex. Recent studies (Dyer and Tiggemann 127-128) have shown that, contrary to popular belief, single-sex schools are more likely to have students with eating disorders than are coeducational schools. The focus of this paper will not be on whether single-sex schools or coeducational schools are more likely to have students with eating disorders, for research has already given us the answer. Instead, the major issue is why single-sex institutions have greater amounts of eating disorders.

Common opinion on whether single-sex girls’ schools or coeducational schools foster greater occurrence of eating disorders is that coeducational schools would cultivate far greater amounts of eating disorder episodes. The common reason attributed to this is that the presence of males causes greater insecurity about physical appearance in young women. In actuality, however, recent studies (Dyer and Tiggemann 127-138) have shown that women in single-sex schools are far more likely to be afflicted by eating disorders. Why is this true and why do so many people think the opposite? How can knowing this information help us?

To give a little more background on the subject of eating disorders, I will first review why teenage students are most affected by eating disorders. Following the background information, I will address the dissenting opinion of those people who believe coeducational schooling is more likely to foster eating disorders and related behavior. I will summarize their opinion and show that it is understandable, and then display the contexts in which their position is valid. Finally, I will present and explain my position on the issue:Iincreased stress level is the main factor that makes eating disorders in women more likely at single-sex institutions than their coeducational counterparts.

Teenage women are far more commonly affected by eating disorders than any other age or gender group. Much of this can be attributed to changes triggered by puberty. One potentially problematic aspect of puberty is rapid change in body shape. These sudden changes caused by puberty (like widening of the hips and growth of pubic hair) bring awareness and attention to the body. This new emphasis on body shape can cause a woman to think negatively and to disrespect her body. Additionally, increases in hormone levels sometimes cause sexual feelings for the first time. These changes are often hard to handle emotionally and sometimes scare teenage women to the point that they try to regain control of these changes the only way they know how: by starving themselves.

Social pressures to “look good” seem to bear down hardest on women in their teens. The intense drive to improve their looks all too often leads these women to go to such lengths as starving themselves to become thin. Much of this emphasis on the body can be attributed to the psychological maturity level of the teenage student. They have surpassed the “tomboy” age of younger girls and have learned to value superficial attributes of femininity such as appearance, popularity, and other related qualities. Teenage girls tend to be in a phase in which superficial aspects of life and people are regarded as extremely important. This is because this stage of life is when they first begin to meet new people on their own. For the first time, these women give major significance to the way they compare to peers and what the opposite sex thinks about them. The importance of first impressions and physical appearances leads them to think that if they don’t look good, they won’t be successful in cultivating new, meaningful relationships. This doesn’t last forever, though. Some time around college, many women seem to learn that looks are not the first thing new acquaintances notice, nor are they the most important. In addition, older women have become accustomed to the pressures associated with puberty and have had more experience with the opposite sex and the stress commonly linked to relationships with them.

With this in mind, it seems quite obvious that the relationships with men and the social concerns of looks would be more likely to occur in a coeducational atmosphere. After all, the single-sex schools have nearly eliminated all need to impress members of the opposite sex. With this perspective that single-sex schools have eliminated the pressures of being around the opposite sex, it is easy to understand why this position is far more common than the one supported by the research. After all, before seeing the report myself, I believed that the social stress of interacting with and impressing of the opposite sex that transpires in coeducational school environments would lead to greater incidence of eating disorders. Marika Tiggemann, a researcher of schools and their effect on body dissatisfaction, explains that most of society sides with the sociocultural (peer pressure) model (Tiggemann 239). This model, which states that society connects beauty to thinness and that women are affected by this association, is the foundation for the common assumption that coeducational schools are more likely to harbor young girls with eating disorders.

Many parents who choose to have their daughters study at a single-sex institution rather than a coeducational school do so to allow them to escape the social pressures caused by interaction with the opposite sex. This way, in theory, they can gain confidence in the absence of social pressures by male students. With larger amounts of people siding with the opinion that coeducation is more likely to foster eating disorders, it is highly understandable that one might take this side simply because the connection between social concerns and the opposite sex is so obvious.

This assumption is correct except for one forgotten factor. Under the context that stress is not a factor, the opposition’s assumption that coeducational schooling causes more eating disorders than does single-sex education (and the reasoning behind it) would most likely be true. Stress, however, is a factor and is the reason many people don’t understand that single-sex schools have more girls with eating disorders.

Stress is the oft-overlooked third main reason (the first two being rapid change in body shape and social pressures to be beautiful) teenage women often exhibit eating disorder symptoms. Teenage girls exhibit far greater amounts of stress than girls of younger age groups and don’t have much transition time to adjust to their new roles of greater responsibility. They transition from the carefree world of an elementary school playground to the socially critical junior high school cafeteria with only a summer in between. Teens go from comparing each other’s bikes and toys to examining bodies, hairstyles, and makeup. They experience a major change in the amount of homework assigned as well. By the time these girls reach high school, social critique, homework, and expectations have increased, and seemingly the only thing to decrease is free time. Combined with worries about what they are going to do with their lives, these factors can make this period the most stressful time of young girls’ lives. This stress, this loss of control over their lives, can cause young women to control the only thing they know how—their physical appearance.

One might argue that stress is not a major factor in eating disorders because males experience many of the same stresses that females do, yet they don’t have nearly the same tendencies to starve themselves. This argument is wrong for two reasons: because males don’t have the same ideologies of the “perfect” body and because males deal with stress differently. First, while the ideal body of a woman is intertwined with thinness, the ideal male body is typically connected to such qualities as strength and mass. If a male were to become anorexic or bulimic, these disorders would only hinder the man’s struggle for the ideal male body, Additionally, males are more socially autonomous than females and don’t have the same emotional interdependence that leads women to indulge in comparisons to peers that may lead to body dissatisfaction and subsequent eating disorders. Thus, because men don’t have the same ideal body type and because they are more autonomous, the stresses that sometimes cause women to have eating disorders do not affect men in the same way.

Stress level is the essence of why single-sex schooling is more likely to produce female students afflicted by eating disorders. The quiet effectiveness of this mysterious “missing link” is why many, including myself, have incorrectly assumed that coeducational schooling is more in danger of high levels of eating
disorder occurrence than is single-sex schooling.

What types of stress unique to single-sex schooling are so potent and influential that they could provoke a teenage woman to starve herself? No single cause can sway the statistics to outweigh the social pressures at coed schools, but combined, the stresses of single-sex schools can be absolutely overwhelming. Some causes of eating problems, in addition to the expected one of social stress from thin ideal body standards, are the unrelenting pursuit of achievement and the experience of nontraditional sex role aspirations (Silverstein and Perdue 101-106). Others include conflicting gender roles (Mensinger), higher expectations of academic and professional achievement, and pressure from the family. Together, these stress factors make single-sex schools far more conducive to eating disorders than do the social pressure factors of coeducational schooling.

The pressure to achieve at single-sex schools is greater than at coeducational schools. Along with higher job placement rates come higher academic expectations, as well as heightened competition among students. Studies have shown that girls educated in single-sex environments receive academic benefits such as superior math achievement (Dederick et al.). Because single-sex schools are generally regarded as having
better college placement records, students often feel that if they are not on track to make it into a great college or university, they are failing. To feel that she is failing to meet the standards set forth by her parents can be a great stressor for a young woman.

Pressure from parents in particular increases for students in single-sex educational environments. Along with higher tuition costs comes higher expectations to succeed from those who normally pay for the education: parents. These parents often are elitists and perfectionists (Mensinger), and not only expect perfection and superiority in themselves, but in their children as well. Many times they have had considerable professional and academic successes and expect the same or greater success from their children. A common ideology of these parents is “Only the best for my children,” but when they give this child the “chance to grow” in a single-sex institution, a more demanding ideology surfaces: “Only the best from my children.”

Another stress type that should be rather obvious but is often overlooked is the absence of the opposite sex. Without males to whom they can release their tensions, without members of the opposite sex with whom to interact, women in single-sex institutions can feel “constrained” or “on a leash.” Female students at all girls’ schools are often found to be searching for males far more urgently than their coed counterparts, for the girls at single-sex schools don’t have time to interact with males while in school and their time to socialize with the opposite sex is limited. This inexperience with males causes heightened stress when in situations involving interaction with males simply because they have fewer of them. This heightened stress causes many to act awkwardly, even desperately, when around male students and gives the students at all-girls schools a distinctive behavior. Additionally, without a male present in whom to seek help with “guy problems,” without a male at which they can gawk in the middle of a boring lecture, these girls are missing a valuable stress-reducing tool that students of coeducation have. Lacking the critical piece of the puzzle that would otherwise be a complete family-like relationship, single-sex schools are to coed schools as single-parent households are to two-parent households. No one disputes that single parent households tend to have more turmoil, and in the same way, the absence of men creates emotional turmoil for women at single-sex institutions.

An underlying, but problematic, cause of stress in women of single-sex institutions is conflicting gender roles that the women at single-sex institutions are asked to play (Mensinger). At times, girls at single-sex schools are expected to act extremely “ladylike.” They are asked to be clean, well groomed, and “pretty.” Oftentimes, single-sex junior high and senior high school students are forced to wear skirts and are expected to be more obedient (typical of the more subservient female) than at other institutions. They are expected to exhibit the “proper” manners of a woman and be “ladylike,” but at the same time, these women are asked to also take on many roles that are typically reserved for men. At single-sex institutions, competitiveness, often associated with male testosterone, is a quality expected in and out of the classroom, and young women are expected to exhibit the drive for success typical of males. Independence and leadership, atypical of the stereotypical subservient woman, are taught in an attempt to prepare the students for the future. Even their uniforms have a masculine quality about them, effectively hiding any feminine curves. Through contradictions like the stereotypical single-sex girls’ school uniform that consists of a moderately revealing skirt just below a conservative blouse that seems to place shame on feminine sexuality, women at single-sex schools become lost in the perplexing situation of filling both a “male” and a “female” role at the same time. Mensinger quotes Naomi Wolf as such:

Young women have been doubly weakened: Raised to compete like men in rigid male-model institutions, they must also maintain to the last detail an impeccable femininity. Gender roles … did not harmonize so much as double: Young women today are expected to act like “real men” and look like “real women.” Fathers transferred to daughters the expectations of achievement once reserved for sons: but the burden to be a beauty, inherited from the mothers, was not lightened in response.

How better can the mixed messages received by women in single-sex schools be phrased? This paradox of what is expected of women at single-sex schools causes the students to be confused and overly stressed, all too often leading to eating disorders.

Single-sex schools are far more likely to produce female students with eating disorders because students at single-sex schools endure greater stress levels caused by such factors as pressure to succeed, pressure from the family, absence of the opposite sex, and gender role confusion. Although the majority of people today believe otherwise, if people consider the stress factor, they can understand why students at single-sex schools are more likely to have eating disorders. Once we understand that the problems associated with eating disorders are not so much in the coeducational school systems but in the single-sex environment, we can address the causes of the stressful situations that females at single-sex schools encounter.

Works Cited

Dederick, W. E., J. G. Dederick, S. R. Zalk. Interpersonal Values of Intellectually Gifted Adolescent Females:
	Single Sex or Coeducation? Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. 1997.
Mensinger, Janell. “Conflicting Gender Role Prescriptions and Disordered Eating in Single Sex and
	Coeducational School Environments.” 108th Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association. APA, Washington, DC. 4-8 August 2000.