From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls

The History of Self-Starvation

Author: W. Vandereycken
Secondary Author: Ron Van Deth
ISBN: 0814787843

With waiflike models dominating the advertising world and a new wave of feminists waging war on societal pressure to be thin, eating disorders have, it seems, attained the status of a modern crisis. Although anorexia nervosa was not identified as such until the nineteenth century, the compulsion to be thin at the price of starvation has a long history in western society. Long before talk shows took over the air waves and Cosmopolitan hit the stands, obsession with body and fasting rituals plagued girls and women. But is anorexia as we know it today new? In an engaging and thorough account of the history of self starvation in the western world, Walter Vandereycken and Ron Van Deth explore this question. Drawing on a myriad of intriguing examples, the authors show how self-inflicted starvation has changed its tone over the centuries and is inextricably enmeshed in socio-cultural contexts. Consider how drastically the meaning of fasting has mutated in the Christian western world: that in

Publisher: NYU Press
Publish Date: 1994-07-01

Subjects: Psychology / History

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Body image)