Abstract
Eating disorders are serious psychological disorders, which have severe biological and psychosocial ramifications for afflicted individuals. The primary Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) eating disorder diagnoses in adult populations include anorexia nervosa (both binge-purge and restrictive subtypes), bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and other specified feeding and eating disorder (e.g., atypical anorexia, bulimia nervosa of low frequency or duration, night eating syndrome). Despite an uptick in research and public attention on eating disorders over the past few decades, numerous misconceptions about eating disorders persist in the public domain, such as a belief that they are trivial, controllable conditions of vanity that affect only skinny, White, affluent, girls (this mischaracterization of eating disorders is so common that it is referred to as the “SWAG stereotype”). These stereotypes contribute to stigma against individuals with eating disorders, underdiagnosis of eating disorders among individuals whose bodies do not adhere to the SWAG stereotype, and a reluctance for people experiencing eating disorders to seek help.
Given that most people’s primary source of information about eating disorders is media coverage of these conditions, analyzing the ways that information about these disorders is shared, as well as the ways that people with eating disorders depict themselves in public and semi-private spaces (e.g., eating disorder recovery support groups, pro-eating disorder websites and virtual communities) is an important task for researchers. Eating Disorders in Public Discourse: Exploring Media Representations and Lived Experiences provides a unique glance into these media depictions—both popular media and user-created media—of these conditions.
The book—edited by Laura A. Cariola, a lecturer in applied psychology at the University of Edinburgh—provides a new look into the world of eating disorders, media reporting on these disorders, and the lived experiences of people working through and recovering from these conditions. Across the book’s 13 chapters, authors explore various domains in which information about eating disorders is communicated to the public. Section 1 tackles traditional media (e.g., news media, women’s magazines, social media, and the internet), and Section 2 dives into user-generated content and participatory media (e.g., online support groups, fat acceptance blogs). I appreciated the variety of topics represented throughout the book, encouraging an interdisciplinary and multifaceted understanding of these complex conditions. I was also impressed by the populations centered in the chapters (e.g., men’s experiences in Chapter 3 and an analysis of Turkish media in Chapter 5), as well as the various online communities analyzed (e.g., diet and fitness app communities in Chapter 9, parent blogs in Chapter 12, and fat acceptance blogs in Chapter 13). Given the overemphasis on WEIRD populations in eating disorder research, as well as the overemphasis on young women’s experiences, the diversity of perspectives represented is a real strength of the volume.
Another highlight of the volume was the wide variety of qualitative methods employed in the studies presented. Eating disorder research is usually conducted within a quantitative, post-positivist framework, with very few researchers engaging with more critical, constructivist, or interpretivist epistemologies, despite regular calls to engage with more diverse, participant-focused research methods. From critical discursive psychology (Chapter 13) to interpretive phenomenological analysis (Chapter 6) to fantasy theme analysis (Chapter 11), the studies in this volume provide new lenses through which the field can understand and analyze these conditions. I also was happy to see regular conversations about the ethical considerations of using personal-yet-public information about people with eating disorders, as this and other complicated ethics topics rarely get adequate airtime in most academic journal articles.
While the volume has a number of strengths, it is not without its limitations. For example, though the volume explores a wide range of topics, it felt a bit disjointed at times. Rather than chapters building on one another to develop a broad, overarching new narrative about eating disorders, they all stood alone and often repeated information in their introductions. I found myself wishing for an arc or crescendo to the chapters, rather than the same information repackaged. In addition, while the chapters dove into the ethics of sharing participant data (which was a notable strength), I also queried the ethics of sharing specific eating disorder behaviors (p. 271), such as troublingly low “ultimate goal weights” (p. 277) and deeply inadequate calorie counts (e.g., p. 293). Communicating specific disordered eating behaviors felt somewhat personal and could potentially give those susceptible to these conditions a guidebook for engaging with these disorders. Perhaps content warnings would be appropriate for such specific information about these conditions. I also often wondered whether the authors were insiders or outsiders to the experience of eating disorders, which almost certainly would have influenced their research and data analytic strategy. Despite the emphasis on qualitative research (including a whole chapter on doing qualitative research on eating disorders), I was often left desiring more reflexivity by authors. Given the book’s explicit centering and celebrating of qualitative methodology, I hoped to see more grappling with reflexivity and the unique challenges of insider and outsider research on this particular topic in its pages. The short biographies at the beginning of the volume help to orient the reader to general information about the authors, but the process of sitting with the material and reflecting on how biases and assumptions were addressed was largely absent from the chapters.
Overall, I believe that Eating Disorders in Public Discourse: Exploring Media Representations and Lived Experiences will be of interest to eating disorder and qualitative researchers, and of particular interest to those whose work sits at the intersections of the two. The breadth of topics explored, combined with the intricacies of the analyses, opens several doors to new ways of understanding, framing, and potentially even treating eating disorders. The way that eating disorders are discussed in public shapes cultural understandings of these conditions, and the studies presented in this volume provide insight into and reflection on the information communicated to the public through these avenues. I commend the authors for their meaningful contributions to this literature.
