wordcrush

I'd like to touch on a topic from the "I shouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole" department. This Globe and Mail article discusses pro-ana and pro-mia websites and the effect they're having on the medical profession (and vice versa). The article says of the sites' supporters that "they view these eating disorders as lifestyle choices rather than diseases."

A few years ago in one of my grad seminars we discussed the impetus behind medical treatment in general and we got onto this topic. As a class we arrived at the conclusion that there is an unexamined cultural bias towards healthiness. This bias makes sense in part because of the enormous amount of money that goes into treatment when it's asked for or required, but it doesn't really question its rationale beyond that. So why is health better than sickness? Is this just another one of our comfy North American ways to avoid the topic of death? Doesn't the fear of sickness in others in some ways reflect an effort to distance ourselves from our own ailments and fragility? Maybe young people are such a good target for "cures" simply because they are relatively disempowered. One last question: how come we haven't pathologized workaholism or alchoholism -- relatively adult diseases -- to the same extent as these young, largely gendered ones? Here's the challenge: answer these and stay fahsionable.

Beyond these questions, I've noticed that there are some surprising parallels between the original 70s punk movement and pro-ana/pro-mia culture -- both embrace "sickness" as a means to resist obsessively hygenic bourgeoise culture. If you'd like to read more on this topic, I can suggest Catherine Creswell's "'Touch me I'm sick': contagion as critique in punk and performance art" (sadly, you'll have to hit the library to get it). This also partly reminds me of Hikikomori, which I was discussing awhile back.

# posted by Lintropy @ 1:24 PM