ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a contradiction. It is often said that the stigmatization of fatness has led to an epidemic of anorexia. The chapter examines Hilde Bruch's early research on obesity, which she conducted using poor immigrant children in New York City in the thirties and forties. It focuses on the postwar period, when Bruch's clientele became predominantly middle-class and her focus shifted to anorexia. The chapter argues that in both periods Bruch's work was guided by historical anxieties about "freedom" and "democracy". The fat immigrant boys Bruch studied in the postdepression era became symbols of the "authoritarian" and "backward" habits of their foreign families. The docile, middle-class anorexic girls Bruch treated later became reflections of the cold war preoccupation with the seeding of social conformism or communism in the new suburbia. The chapter discusses the potentially suffocating effects of making a body weight that deviates from the contemporary norm stand for a failure to meet the contemporary ideal social persona.
