The Body Politic: Normal Female Adolescent Development and the Development of Eating Disorders

Until recently, research concerning the etiological origins of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders has focused almost entirely in one of three areas of investigation; psychodynamic, family systems, and organic theories. Yet none of these theories can explain the increase of eating disorders at this time in history or why it initially almost exclusively affected middle and upper class (primarily Caucasian) women and is now spreading into broader class and ethnic groups. The inability of the predominant etiological theories to explain the current epidemic has led researchers to conclude that there may be sociocultural influences that make today's young females vulnerable to problems related to dieting and eating at this stage in the life cycle. Historians have shown that in the 19th century, hysterical behavior in women and girls was oftentimes related to that era's cultural imperative and to physicians' notions of what constituted normative female behavior. It is equally possible that there are repressive cultural forces in the later 20th century which are developmentally disabling to young females and, along with individual and familial experiences, are producing the current eating-disordered symptomatology. In other words, it may be that certain sociocultural influences make anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and anorexic-like behavior a seemingly adaptive response to the developmental demands of growing up female in certain populations at this time in history.

If one compares recent research on normal female adolescent development and research concerning the psychodynamics of eating disorders, a curious and striking paradox occurs: What is put forward in