Bodies Beyond Conformity: The Market’s Role in Shaping Eating Disorders

In this presentation I delve into the sociology of the deviant body and more specifically those to whom the idiom of an “eating disorder” could be attached. Ultimately, the study of the disordered or transgressive body reveals such bodies as existing, not just at the margins, but as the locus of social and political critique concerning the construction, regulation and control of difference and non-conformity. The body in modernity is not the free subjective agent suggested by Giddens (1990); it is a product subjected to intense commercial, digital and medical scrutiny (Boero & Mason, 2021; Shilling, 2012), and often to acts of violence. Within the neoliberal capitalist marketplace, specific body forms- such as the ultra thin body, and now the ultra muscular body- are both valorised and medicalised.The push to medicalise the body involves the erasure of the patient's individual differences and personal history, replacing it with a clinical examination focused on anatomical and biological features. For individuals with eating disorders, this has led to increasing emphasis on specific diagnostic categories, BMI measurements, blood and urine tests, and potential genetic screening. In commercial settings, bodies are subject to acts of micro violence, which through the acceptance of unseen exploitation, defy regulation. As illustrated in our own IPA study of models and the “selling of skinny”, the fashion industry's fixation on youthful, slim figures means that girls and women were subjected to constant scrutiny concerning their weight, amounting to a form of micro-violence. Rules about maintaining a low body weight through dieting are instilled at a formative age, with judgements and “soft” punishments inflicted on those who gained weight, indicating a strong industrial component to the construction of eating disorders.