Abstract

Although clinical understandings of self-injury, the deliberate mutilation of body tissue, have developed significantly since the phenomenon was first studied, the predominant stereotype of who self-injures is still White, teenage girls.1 White girls as well as White women are, indeed, at risk for SI, and sociocultural explanations appealing to oppressive socialization—particularly the influence of Western beauty norms—have been offered to explain their high rates of SI. Yet evidence exists to challenge this conception that SI is exclusively a White, female issue: Black women, South...