ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the influence of discursive construction of self-management on women's body talk. It explores how powerful emotional threads are interwoven in the self-surveillance, self-management, and normalization processes of the self. Women with anorexia often desire to achieve total control in one area of their lives, while feeling out of control in other respects. Women with anorexia often desire to achieve total control in one area of their lives, while feeling out of control in other respects. This control paradox is mirrored in everyday weight preoccupation. Narrative therapy can unpack the tensions between social resistance and compliance in women's body talk. Feminist narrative therapy involves deconstructing or unpacking privileged or dominant stories that have become unhelpful or harmful in women's lives and re-authoring or creating preferred counter-stories. The chapter explains how women's body talk conveys the yet to be spoken while both reproducing and resisting dominant social scripts.
