Beautiful bodies, moral bodies, functional bodies. An analysis of self-alteration in an Italian Residential Centre for Eating Disorders.
Gisella Orsini
It was only in the twentieth century, especially since the 1960s, that the slender body slowly replaced other concepts of female beauty in the West. At that time, the new aesthetic ideal of the thin woman was supported by feminism that saw in it a powerful and symbolic way to express a rebellion against patriarchy. Paradoxically, however, the pursuit of slenderness soon became an obsession for women rather than a statement of freedom.
It is therefore not surprising that popular understanding and representations of eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa, often associate such conditions with the obsessive quest for thinness. However, it would be misleading to equate the transformative processes undertaken by people with an eating disorder to be simply the result of a pursuit of the beauty ideal as such.
As I will argue, within the Italian context, eating disorders can be considered the result of a moral self-transformative process where control over hunger, pleasure and bodily needs are core values, and in which the body becomes the physical symbol of such self-alteration.
This perspective arises from the analysis of the narratives of nineteen women diagnosed with eating disorders and residing at an Italian treatment Centre where I conducted fieldwork in 2012. It relies on the idea that narrative and self can be considered as inseparable entities, since humans make sense of their own experiences and lives, as well as of themselves, through narration. The cognitive process through which narratives are produced, has the merit of giving coherence to people’s lives, by linking in a meaningful way past and present events.
The biographies of my informants are characterised by a moment of ‘self-awareness’, a turning point in their life, when they felt “not good enough” in the performance of their gendered social roles. It is precisely this severe negative self-perception that leads them to redefine their sense of self and adopt new values and behaviours.
Although the dominant biomedical model defines eating disorders as mental disorders, the narratives of my informants cannot be understood as illness narrative. In fact, while illness narratives tell of a self-transformation process “imposed” by the disease, my informants narrate of a chosen self-alteration that leads to a medical condition, manifesting a strong sense of agency. I therefore analyse the narratives of the women involved in this study as narrative of moral conversion, since they all entail a moment of (negative) self-awareness, followed by the adoption of views and behaviours considered as “morally better than those held previous to the change” (Mac Laughlin, 2008: 1).
Therefore, this process of self-alteration is characterised by experiences of reflexivity, self-awareness, and choice, whilst driven by specific life events and interaction with others. It is also important to notice that the idea that women can morally improve themselves by negating their bodily needs reflects the cultural understanding of womanhood in Italy. In this sense, this process of self-alteration is culturally defined.