Social Constructionism and Eating Disorders: Relinquishing Labels and Embracing Personal Stories

Women's Mental Health

“…Stories about BN are often obscured in discussions about EDs, and the bulimic body, with its more normal appearance, is interpreted differently than the anorexic body (Burns, 2004 ). When it is told, the "story of the bulimic" typically presented features an Anglo, upper-to middle-class woman of college age who lives in a Westernized society and suffers from low self-esteem, anxiety, self-doubt, and hopelessness (Duran, Cashion, Gerber, & Mendez-Ybanez, 2000 ).…”

The Social Construction of a Concept—Orthorexia Nervosa: Morality Narratives and Psycho-Politics

“…Those with other EDs, women, adolescents, and sportspeople are considered at higher risk of developing ON ( Bartrina, 2007 ; Håman et al, 2017 ; Koven & Wabry, 2015 ). Although qualitative studies of obsessive healthy eating practices do exist ( Musolino et al, 2015 ), studies of orthorexia have largely been aimed at refining individual clinical symptom pictures, often neglecting the role played by social elements such as culture, family, peer groups, and practitioners in this process ( Duran et al, 2016 ). The social constructionist approach on the other hand takes a broad perspective of a dynamic society, regarding both the labels and meanings that individuals and institutions use for things as subject to constant reconstitution ( Gergen, 1985 ).…”

An Existential-Phenomenological Investigation of Women’s Experience of Becoming Less Obsessed with their Bodily Appearance

“…In medieval times, excessive fasting was recognized as a spiritual endeavour (Duran, Cashion, Gerber, & Mendez-Ybanez, 2000). In the 1940s, voluptuous pin-up girls were regarded as representing the ideal woman.…”