Abstract
As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, current concerns about the health risks of obesity (e.g., Aronne, 2001; Visscher & Seidell, 2001) are regularly translated into a more generalised anxiety about ‘overweight’ bodies, and the risks they pose for health. In response to this threat, public health strategies in Westernised countries have been encouraging their populations to maintain a ‘healthy weight’, and this impetus has been enthusiastically capitalised on by the food, fitness, fashion, weight loss and cosmetic industries and in popular media. Within this healthy weight discourse a healthy weight is medically defined in terms of body mass index (BMI [weight to height ratio]) and is portrayed as the effect of a well-calibrated balance between food intake and energy expenditure. To suggest a relationship between this ubiquitous promotion of healthy weight and the eating disorder ‘bulimia’ (bulimia nervosa) makes little sense at face value. In this chapter, however, we argue that ‘bulimia’ can be understood with reference to such broader cultural emphasis on, and particular representations of, health. In this context, we suggest bulimic practices have a logic that is continuous with the contemporary conflation of health with the slender, female body.
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© 2008 Sarah Riley, Maree Burns, Hannah Frith, Sally Wiggins and Pirkko Markula
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Burns, M., Gavey, N. (2008). Dis/Orders of Weight Control: Bulimic and/or ‘Healthy Weight’ Practices. In: Riley, S., Burns, M., Frith, H., Wiggins, S., Markula, P. (eds) Critical Bodies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591141_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591141_8
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