Eating Disorder

Eating Disorder Definition

Eating disorder is a general term for conditions such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, in which an individual becomes progressively unable to maintain a normal, healthy diet as a result of psychological rather than medical causes. In anorexia nervosa the sufferer severely restricts food intake; in bulimia, episodes of binge eating are followed by purging. Both involve a distorted relationship with food, eating, and body image that can become life-threatening.

Who Is Affected

Eating disorders mainly affect girls and young women, and are commonly understood as a response to low self-esteem combined with the desire to achieve a “model” figure. More recently, doctors have reported a rise in the number of boys and young men suffering from anorexia nervosa, suggesting that the pressures once concentrated on young women are extending across gender lines.

Sociological Perspectives

Although eating disorders are treated clinically as psychological conditions, sociologists emphasize how profoundly social their causes are. Their historical rise and concentration in affluent Western societies — where food is abundant yet slenderness is prized — point to cultural rather than purely individual origins. Feminist analyses in particular link them to the cultural idealization of the thin female body, relentlessly circulated by advertising, fashion, and the media, which makes body dissatisfaction an almost normal feature of young womanhood. The disorders can then be read as extreme conformity to prevailing beauty norms rather than simple pathology, and sometimes as an attempt to exercise control over the body when other areas of life feel uncontrollable. The topic accordingly connects with the sociology of the body, of health and illness, and of gender, and with debates over the media’s “drip effect” on self-image.