Anexoria nervosa & Women

Notice that we said "of a woman." Anexoria nervosa and its cousin, bulimia, are overwhelming conditions that afflict women. If a man appears unhealthfully thin, we do not think in terms of anorexia; we merely think of him as thin. If he fits the appropriate stereotypes, we may suspect drugs such as speed or cocaine. Yet we do not make the same presumptions about a woman; we suspect anexoria, or at any rate we use "anexoric" as a generic term for unhealthfully thin women.

Not only is anorexia associated almost exclusively with women (not only in the popular culture, but in medical practice); it is a condition found largely among women of a certain class and age. It is in America predominantly a condition of young white women of the middle class and upwards, and has appeared among their counterparts in other Western countries and in Japan. Cult

. . .
modelling world between the "supermodels" and the thinner "waifs," exemplified by Kate Moss. The former also adorn the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; the latter, one suspects, are unlikely to. Although the ultimate origins of the thinness obsession may be in male objectification of the female body, it is an obsession that, as Naomi Wolf (1991, p. 287) women also impose competitively upon one another. Sex appeal and male objectification, in the narrow sense, are unlikely to be the causes of this phenomenon. Indeed, concerns with food intake (if not specifically weight) have a long cultural history, associated primarily with women. In the Middle Ages, saints like Catherine of Siena were distinguished by their near-abstinance from food (Brumberg, 1988, pp. 41ff). Right into the nineteenth century--up, indeed, until the time that anorexia nervosa was first identified as a medical condition--semistarvation in girls had religious connotations (Brumberg, 1988, p. 75). In the Middle Ages, the self-starving female saint also mortified herself in other ways. Notably, however, while male saints of the ascetic type might participate in the other varieties of self-mortification, food-refusal was a distinctly female form of escaping
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Naomi Wolf, Middle Ages, Japan Culturally, , Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Siena, Soloflex NordicTrac, Sports Illustrated, William Hurt, brumberg 1988, bordo date, wolf 1991, anexoria nervosa, Kate Moss, middle ages, popular culture, women popular culture, male objectification, demonstrate power, western culture, nervosa identified medical, naomi wolf, bordo date 154, wolf 1991 pp, naomi wolf 1991,
Approximate Word count = 1450
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)