Focusing on Women Body: Physicians, Sociologists and Female Internet Communities about «Eating Disorders»

Abstract

Over the last few decades there has been much amplification in the amount of discussions connected to the phenomenon of the human body, with special attention to the female body. The body is not only the object of biological study; sociologists also look to trace how it is evolving as a social and cultural phenomenon and how it is being constructed in public space. On the one hand there is a more specialised debate involving physicians and social researchers on this question. On the other hand, there is a non-professional audience that has entered the debate what occurs with female body and to discuss what it should and can be. The Internet has became an important space for the emergence of such discussions, where thematic forums have allowed the point of view of a large number of participants, mainly young women, on given questions on the body. This article focuses on eating disorders as one aspect of the body, one that is more often interpreted as a medical problem. Acting in the manner of communities of anonymous adherents and «support groups», Female Internet-communities, united by attention to anorexia and bulimia, have became capable of opening new avenues of a broader problem of how the social construction of the female body and female diseases is achieved. The data of these Internet communities is analysed with reference to Foucault in the construction of illness in a variety of social, cultural and authority discourses. What emerges is a ‘medicalization’ of how people view their own bodies and an increasing sense that there is a seeking for control of the body as an external object, with eating disorders being seen as one strategy to achieve this. The Internet discussions show an increasing understanding of medical terms as a result of the medicalization of the ‘everyday consciousness’.