Women's Teams Combat 'Less is More' Attitudes

With the release of a Radcliffe study last year that showed seven percent of Harvard women to have some kind of eating disorder and the founding of a student support group for these disorders, the problems of anorexia and bulemia are being recognized at Harvard. And its effects on those women who have the most reason to be concerned with their health, athletes, are similarly beginning to receive attention from coaches and the Athletic Department.

"It's a real women's problem and doesn't go away in women's sports," says Katherine C. Dietz, varsity lightweight crew coach. "They're interested in preserving an athletic body image, but still have a body image problem," she adds.

Co-founder of Eating Problems Outreach Marsha E. Rorty '85 said that she has seen figures which say that as many as 50 percent of all women engage in some sort of bulemic behavior, and that 10 to 20 percent of female college students have some sort of relatively severe eating disorders.

"It's a difficult problem to have. It's an isolating one," says Rorty.

Coaches differ on the prevalence of eating disorders in Crimson athletics and on the method of educating their teams on diet and nutrition.

Women's soccer coach Robert L. Scalise sees the absence of eating disorders among his players as a "sport-specific luxury," he says. "You need strength and size to play soccer."

Heavyweight crew coach Lisa H. Stone echoes Scalise saying, "Crew might be a stressful enough sport that those who have eating disorders would be sick too much of the time to row."

In addition, Stone says, heavyweight rowers do not have the pressure of daily weigh-ins.

Stone says she has never been approached by a rower concerned about dieting. "It's not something you want to ask someone about," she adds

Members of the women's swim team appear to be free of eating disorders, says coach Maurah Costin '80. Costin, who as an undergraduate had a roommate on the track team who was anorexic, says that the nature of some sports such as track puts more pressure on athletes than others.

"If you feel being very thin in running will make you faster then you get thinner. A lot of coaches that think that way tend to be male and they don't understand what they'd do to a girl if they said she was fat," says Costin.

Costin says she goes over diet at the beginning of the season, treating each athlete individually. According to Costin, the nature of swimming does not emphasize thinness; the percentage of a woman's body fat is more important than her weight.

"Individual athletes associate with the coach, and some coaches don't get a grip on where eating disorders come from," says Costin, who sees bulemia and other eating disorders as part of a larger Harvard problem.

Track coach Frank Haggerty denies that the Harvard track program puts pressure on team members to diet. "We don't concern ourselves with weight. The heart weight indicates fitness. It is a fallacy with respect to this team that thinner is faster."

Haggerty adds that he has no concerns that his runners aren't eating regularly.

"If they are skipping meals it's because of their academic schedule, not weight concerns," he says.

To make coaches more sensitive to eating problems, the Athletic Department has started an ongoing educational program for coaches in the area of nutrition and eating disorders, says Patricia Miller, associate director of athletics. She describes the department as "very concerned" that its athletes have healthy eating habits.

Lightweight Crew, which until recently required a boat average of 125, produced some of the most diet conscious athletes. But Dietz, who has been involved in lightweight crew for eight years and at Radcliffe for two years, helped to change the nature of lightweight weigh-ins on an international, national and collegiate level.

"The previous weight requirement was based on a boat's average weight, not on each rower's maximum weight which meant," says Dietz, "that sometimes one had to pick boats by weight and not by skill." The new system, she adds, "not only allows for people to know in advance what they have to weight but encourages slow and gradual weight loss."

"Diet is going to become a lot less of an issue now they've got rid of the average weight of 125," says Lisa Zuckerman '87, a two year varsity veteran. "If the boat was over average, everyone would need to lose a pound. I remember a lot of people sucking down and getting really skinny."

Zuckerman describes the attitude of the lightweight crew as generally healthy but says. "I can think of one or two people with slightly maybe dangerous attitudes towards the whole idea of being thin."

Nevertheless, female athletes worry less about weight than health, says Zuckerman.

"In general we do have healthier attitudes towards food. Casey tells us that food is fuel for the body versus what a lot women think - that food is the enemy. There is less pressure to conform to what is typically feminine. A lot of women really enjoy being stronger which is not supposed to be feminine," she says.

"As athletes," adds Zuckerman, "we can defend ourselves against it."

Lightweight co-captain Cornelia V. Streeter '85 describes herself as "a prime criminal" when it comes to cutting down on weight.

"I'm the heaviest on the crew. I lose weight properly for as long as I can but then fast as a last ditch measure," says Streeter. When asked if she would advocate her method, she says, "I would advocate doing it only as a last minute measure or you can't row."

After the Eastern Sprints last year. Streeter hyperventilated because of a combination of things, she says, including not eating properly.

"It's the hardest time I've ever had making weight, but I take the sport very seriously and they keep electing me captain," she says.

Sophomore Kathy Aschenbrenner says that one of the reasons she recently quit coxing for the varisty lightweight team was because of "an attitude that pervades the entire boathouse life," she says.

"I think there is fasting but it is kind of hushed up because no one wants to know about it. In general, though, their eating habits are probably better than non athletes," says Aschenbrenner.

Participating in athletics may encourage better eating habits according to Maraquita - Patterson '85, track co-captain, who says, "Women who do sports can rationalize it."

One of the biggest obstacles in over coming eating disorders is simply an individual's recognition of the problem, according to Rosalind J. Carter '86, a counselor at Eating Problems Outreach. Carter said that she gets a lot of calls from concerned roommates.

Dietz agrees, "Most people don't recognize they have a problem. It's like being an alchoholic."