Anorexia Nervosa

Term Paper # 102878

Psychology > Eating Disorders
Women Studies > Culture
Women Studies > Feminism

Anorexia Nervosa

An argument that anorexia nervosa is a social construction that maintains balance in gender relations.

1,822 words () | 5 sources | APA | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how anorexia serves the purpose of ensuring that women remain in their proper position in society, with only limited power. The paper explains the beauty myth and how the female body has been socially manipulated as a means to maintain the current system of power relations between the sexes and profit the weight loss industry. The paper discusses how none of this pursuit would be possible without the mass media which defines the ideal body image and gains by exploiting the image of the anorexic. The paper appends a large amount of source material to the paper.

Outline:
Introduction
The Beauty Myth
The Body as Part of Culture
The Mass Media
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Anorexia nervosa is a condition that affects virtually only women and is also an epidemic which has attained similar proportions to AIDS. Far from being a disease on the personal level, anorexia involves the whole society and its structures. The most effective way to approach anorexia is through the structural functionalist perspective because anorexia serves a purpose in maintaining the status quo for the society. Wolf (1997, p. 187) terms the trend the great weight shift which "must be understood as one of the major historical developments of the century, a direct solution to the dangers posed by the women's movement and economic and reproductive freedom"."

Sample of Sources Used:

Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Chavous, T. (2000). The thin woman. Sex Roles, 42 (5/6), 463-466.
Shildrick, M. (1998). Anorexic bodies: A feminist and sociological perspective on anorexia nervosa. Journal of Gender Studies, 7 (2), 240-241.
Warin, M. (2004). Primitivizing anorexia: The irresistible of not eating. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 15 (1), 95-105.
Wolf, N. (1997). The beauty myth. Toronto: Vintage Canada.