Black Young Adult Superwomen in the Face of Gendered Racial Microaggressions: Contextualizing Challenges With Acceptance and Avoidance and Emotional Eating.

Background: Black young adult women (ages 18-35) are at disproportionate risk for obesity and emotional eating. Emotional eating interventions target psychological flexibility, such as reducing experiential avoidance and increasing acceptance of food-related thoughts. Yet Black women face gendered racism, and some endorse roles that reduce psychological flexibility, such as the superwoman schema role. Culturally centered stress and coping has often been overlooked, leading to an incomplete understanding of processes that engender emotional eating and the implications for appropriate and effective interventions for Black young adult women.

Purpose: We investigated direct and indirect pathways of associations between stress from gendered racial microaggressions to emotional eating through the endorsement of superwoman schema and two aspects of psychological flexibility.

Methods: Black young adult women (N = 504; Mage = 24.72; 75.2% African American; 98.4% cisgender) participated in an online survey wherein they reported demographics, stress from gendered racial microaggressions, superwoman schema, experiential avoidance, acceptance of food-related thoughts, and emotional eating. Path analysis was conducted to examine direct and indirect effects.

Results: Results provided evidence for indirect associations between more stress from gendered racial microaggressions and more emotional eating. More stress was associated with greater endorsement of the superwoman schema which was associated with more experiential avoidance and less acceptance of food-related thoughts, which were each associated with more emotional eating.

Conclusions: Endorsement of superwoman schema and concomitant avoidance and less acceptance may be one way that gendered racial stress propels emotional eating. Future research could test intervention components that disrupt this path.