Within the Frame: Self-Starvation and the Making of Culture

Abstract

In an essay on the spread of anorexia nervosa, Joan Jacobs Brumberg recognizes that the shift of the condition, from a relatively obscure and isolated disorder to pre-eminence as what may be metaphorically termed a ‘communicable disease’, is ‘a complex problem in psychiatric epidemiology warranting the attention of behavioural scientists, educators, and physicians, as well as social and cultural historians’.¹ The phrase ‘communicable disease’ refers to a disorder whose spread may be associated with interpersonal communication, especially among peer groups, and with the dissemination of information on anorexia. The biological, psychological, and social roots of eating disorders interact with an array of cultural factors — from the current emphasis on exercise, thinness and dieting as signs of health, to gender issues — but also with the narratives through which such disorders are constructed. As Brumberg observes, in the past decade the popularization of eating disorders through the media, the informative medical material often circulated among groups at risk, and the celebrity stories of anorexia and bulimia, have helped to transform anorexia nervosa ‘from an enigmatic and rare condition into a recognisable and accessible disorder’.²