In the last twenty years scientific, medical, and public health interest in obesity has skyrocketed. Increasingly the term "epidemic" is being used in the media, medical journals, and public health policy literature to describe the current prevalence of fatness in the U.S. Using social scientific literature on epidemics, social problems, and feminist theories of the body, this paper traces the historical emergence of the "obesity epidemic" through an analysis of 751 articles on obesity published in The New York Times between 1990 and 2001. Through the identification and analysis of three discursive pairings I argue that the "obesity epidemic" is a part of a new breed of what I call "post-modern epidemics," epidemics in which unevenly medicalized phenomena lacking a clear pathological basis get cast in the language and moral panic of "traditional" epidemics. I show how this moral panic together with the location of the problem within the individual precludes a more macro level approach to health and health care delivery at a time when health care services are being dismantled or severely cut back.

This article details the making of community and bodies in online environments, specifically the online pro-anorexia community. Building community among members of these groups is particularly fraught because tensions over claims to authenticity permeate these groups. Because these are embodied practices and online spaces are presumably disembodied, participants constantly grapple with authenticity, largely through the threat of the 'wannarexic'. Participants manage these tensions through engaging in group rituals and deploying individual tools that attempt to make the body evident online. This article documents the way in which tensions around authenticity and embodied practices are managed through treatment of the wannarexic.

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