This feminist cultural perspective challenges the line drawn by the language of pathology between “normal” and “disordered” bodies and argues that culture doesn’t just contribute to eating disorders, but has a productive role. “Whose Body Is This? Feminism, Medicine, and the Conceptualization of Eating Disorders”–Looks at the history of the medical model of eating disorders, as well as the challenges issued by a feminist cultural perspective.The book is divided into three sections: “Discourses and Conceptions of the Body,” “The Slender Body and Other Cultural Forms,” and “Postmodern Bodies.” Rather than attempt a linear philosophical or cultural explanation of eating disorders, Bordo uses the book to create a Foucauldian “polyhedron of intelligibility” in which she takes on a variety topics/angles related to eating disorders and female embodiment ranging from historical views on the body. She also uses her analysis to argue that our bodies are not a tabula rasa or purely biological but are always understood (by us and by others) through the lens of culture, meaning that our bodies reflect something important about the culture in which we live and are an important site through which power circulates. In this book, Bordo brings a feminist cultural critique to bear on images of the female body in Western culture to argue that these images increasingly homogenize and normalize female embodiment, placing a deep emphasis on slimness and bodily control. Summary: Bordo is responding at once to the mind/body dualism in the history of philosophy that treats the body as a trap or prison for the mind, while also associating women with the passive body, but she is also challenging the medical model that treats eating disorders in the terms of pathology and resists cultural analyses of eating disorders that might have important consequences for the way we understand eating disorders. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.
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