Social organization of eating disorders : two women's stories of resisting oppression
Date
1994
Authors
Hammond, Carolyn Joyce
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Abstract
This thesis explores two women's experiences of developing , living with, and overcoming an 'eating disorder'. This research questions the 'self-evident' nature of 'eating disorders' as diseases, narrowly defined by medical and psychiatric language and technology. What I argue from analyzing the women's stories is that the seemingly 'crazy' behaviour of individuals with 'eating disorders', and the often inconsistent, ineffective and damaging treatment which individuals often endure when seeking 'help', occurs not by chance or accident, but as an effect of how 'help', and concomitantly, resistance to that 'help' is organized. 'Help' is more of the same kind of oppression that occurs in the daily lives of girls and women--objectification, domination, silencing, and expectations to conform to authority. Their resistance to oppression, while seemingly adhering to feminine conformity (through thinness, hunger, compliancy, self-sacrifice), is a force that keeps them caught in 'eating disorder' behaviour. Yet, paradoxically, their resistance to oppression and conformity is also the source of strength that eventually helps them move beyond the destruction.
I constructed the women's stories from taped interviews and notes constituting their accounts with seeking 'help' for anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa using a social organization of knowledge paradigm. While these women's stories are not universal, they are not idiosyncratic. The stories they told, particularly of medical and psychiatric 'help', in which I was most interested, illuminated general features of so-called 'helping' relationships. The women's interactions with family, peers and medical or psychiatric practitioners provide an entry point for analysis of social relations implicit in their narratives. I work to understand the women's stories from their standpoint, making explicit that which organizes and directs their care, concerns and abuses. This analysis goes beyond personal characteristics, family dynamics, practitioner incompetencies and inadequate knowledge to explicating how experiences are organized by relations of gender, age, status, and medical and psychiatric practices.
What comes into view in my feminist analysis is the disconnection and oppression in relationships with caregivers, and how power is used to effectively silence, dominate and objectify these women. I show connections between their 'imprisonment' in anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and the 'help' they received, which is organized in such a way that it appears to exacerbate the distress and prolongs the 'eating disorder'. There is a benefit to seeing how societal perspectives and professional practices take shape from notions of femininity, desire and resistance, and how these ideas and practices socially organize the lives of girls and women with 'eating disorders', particularly when seeking treatment.
Girls and women with 'eating disorders' resist oppressive relationships and social pressures and norms through their bodies. Bodily changes caused the women in this study to experience physiological, emotional , intellectual and relational troubles during adolescence and adulthood , which located these individuals under the care of doctors and psychiatrists. The treatment they received further objectified , silenced and dominated them, so they resisted this oppression even harder. While this was understood by professionals as failure to comply with 'expert' advice, and further evidence of mental illness, these women were trying to make their own sense of what was happening to them, and transformed that resistance into a way out of their misery. They eventually left traditional treatment behind . These women did , however, retain tremendous strength throughout their troubles, strength which was hidden for a time by oppressive treatment, yet strength which resurfaced to help them recover and become stronger individuals. People caring for girls and women with 'eating disorders' must see this resistance differently, not as misbehaving or craziness or depression, but as strength. Working with this strength is the challenge of all affected by 'eating disorders'.