Eating Disorders in a Capitalist World
Super Woman or a Super Failure?
- 280 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Feminist critique has yet to deconstruct the new 'superwoman' ideal: the modern woman who can and must have everything, but who, in reality, is never good enough. This media myth is fertile ground for harmful practices that focus on a woman's own body and of course for specific consumerist behaviours. Media equalization of success, self-control, and attractiveness with a thin, healthy body frame these achievements as individual responsibility. Thus, in a society where women can now do anything, only the woman herself can be blamed if she does not achieve her full potential.
Combining scientific approach with personal voices, Eating Disorders in a Capitalist World presents a critical analysis of the social context of eating disorders based on in-depth interviews with women suffering from anorexia and bulimia. Employing a variety of influential socio-cultural theories, Jelena Balabani? Mavrovi? closely relates various environmental influences on the development of low self-esteem, poor self-image and body dissatisfaction to the shaping of normative femininity and the experience of gender socialization in Western society. Chapters also provide a detailed review of the socio-historical development of discourses and practices related to anorexia and bulimia, including 'healthism', the war on obesity, and other current trends.
Providing a new perspective on female identity, Eating Disorders in a Capitalist World offers a complete insight into the world of eating disorders in today's society, exposing how new forms of freedom for women have also become new forms of self-surveillance.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Editor
- Title
- Copyright
- Table of Contents
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 In-depth Interviews With Women With Eating Disorders
- Chapter 3 Development of Eating Disorders in the Socio-Historical Context
- Chapter 4 Socio-Cultural Theories of the Development of Eating Disorders (Anorexia and Bulimia)
- Chapter 5 Research on Contemporary Social Changes and Eating Disorders
- Chapter 6 Gender Roles and the Body
- Chapter 7 Thematic Analysis
- Chapter 8 Insecure Femininity
- Chapter 9 The Despised Versus the Idealised Man
- Chapter 10 The Body Is the Fundamental Determinant of a Female Identity
- Chapter 11 Magical Food – The Morality of Food Consumption
- Chapter 12 Independent Meanings of Binge Eating and Vomiting
- Chapter 13 Spontaneous Eating and Using Food Against Internal Chaos
- Chapter 14 A Healthy Diet and Exercising – Disorder or Health?
- Chapter 15 The Context of Growing Up: Confirmation of the Biopsychosocial Model of the Emergence of the Disorder
- Chapter 16 Final Discussion
- Bibliography