ABSTRACT
The first of two contextual chapters, ‘Medicine, maladies and anorexia Nervosa’ explores how the female body has been discursively produced by Western medicine, and the impact this has had on the ubiquity of disordered eating. The medical gaze, which emerged during the European Enlightenment period, set the stage for the ousting of women from the medical profession and the accompanying objectification of the female body. In the nineteenth century, physicians began diagnosing women with specifically female maladies, of which anorexia nervosa was one – this would lead to the establishment of feminine norms. Hence, the creation of anorexia as a medical category during this period was to have a profound effect on understandings of what constitutes a healthy female body. However, given that anorexia has been read as both protest against and compliance with the constraints of normative femininity, this chapter considers possibilities for resistance under the medical gaze and begins to interrogate pro-anorexia online spaces as a form of reverse discourse.
