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Dis/Orders of Weight Control: Bulimic and/or ‘Healthy Weight’ Practices

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Critical Bodies

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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Authors
  1. Maree Burns
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  2. Nicola Gavey
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bath, UK

    Sarah Riley (Lecturer in Psychology) (Lecturer in Psychology)

  2. Eating Difficulties Education Network, Auckland, New Zealand

    Maree Burns (coordinator) (coordinator)

  3. University of Plymouth, UK

    Hannah Frith (Lecturer in Research with the Bristol Doctorate in Clinical Psychology) (Lecturer in Research with the Bristol Doctorate in Clinical Psychology)

  4. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

    Sally Wiggins (Lecturer in Psychology) (Lecturer in Psychology)

  5. University of Alberta, Canada

    Pirkko Markula (Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation) (Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation)

Copyright information

© 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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