When Fox asked to interview me about eating disorders, It never occurred to me that I would be used to play right into the eating disorder gender stereotypes that I work so hard to combat. I look at it however, as an opportunity to illustrate how much work there is still to do. When a major news outlet does a story on a male suffering from an eating disorder and uses a female stock eating disorder graphic as the lead in, it highlights how entrenched the female eating disorder stereotype is in the media. Come on Fox, I am not that female in the graphic. I am Brian Cuban, a male who was bulimic for twenty-seven years. Males constitute up to 20 percent of eating disorders sufferers and I believe the number is probably higher because so many sufferers are still in the shadows. It’s time for the media to come into the twenty-first century with regards to eating disorders. If they can’t get it right, why should we expect anyone else to. You can read the Fox interview here. I promise that is not me in the graphic….
