Eating Disorders: A Feminist Issue Essay -- Health Bulimia Anorexia Fe

Eating Disorders A Feminist Issue What is a womens rightist approach to understanding eating disorders? Not all feminists have the equivalent understanding of eating disorders. There are many different theories that are prevalent in feminist literature today. This web page will seek some of the different feminist perspectives most the cause of eating disorders in our culture. Power Control and obedience In her book Unbearable Weight, Susan Bordo (1993) makes the argument that the veneration of womens fat is actually a fear of womens power. Thus, as women gain power in society, their bodies dwindle and suffer. She states that female hunger--for public power, for independence, for sexual gratification-- must be contained, and the public home that women be allowed to take up be circumscribed, limited... On the body of the anorexic woman such rules are grimly and deeply etched (Bordo, 171). Naomi Wolf (1991) has a similar explanation of the origin of eating disorders in her bestsell er The Beauty Myth. She states a cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience (Wolf, 187). Women who remain thin are being obedient it is another way for patriarchate to control women. If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community (Wolf, 189). Sexuality Sexuality is another sales outlet that feminist Naomi Wolf explores in an effort to understand the prevalence of eating disorders among women. Fat is sexual in women. . . to ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to lay off their sexuality (Wolf, 193). Women who develop eating disorders, especially anorexia, are denying their sexuality and natural female b... ... disordered attitudes and behaviors. Psvchology of Women Quarteriv. 2-0, 2. Goodman, Ellen. (1996). The skeleton look is in fashion. The Tennessean. June 1 1. Mahowald., Mary Betody. (1995). To be or not to be a woman anorexia nervosa, normati ve gender roles, and feminism. Nagging Questions. Ed. Dana E. Bushnell. Boston Rowman Er Littlefield. Martz, D. M., Handley, K. B. Er Eisler, R. M. (1995). The Relationship between feminine gender role stress, body image, and eating disorders. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 19, 4. Morris, B. J. (1985). The phenomena of anorexia nervosa a feminist perspective. Feminist Issues, 5, 2. Orbach, Susie. (1978) Fat Is A Feminist Issue. New York Berkeley Press. Swartz, L. (1985). Is thin a feminist issue? Womens Studies International Forum, 8. 5. Wolf, Naomi. (1991). The Beauty Myth. NewYork Doubleday.