Speaking in Hunger: Gender, Discourse, and Consumption in Clarissa (Cultural Frames, Framing Culture) - Softcover

Frega, Donnalee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570032750 ISBN 13: 9781570032752

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 1999

Synopsis

Donnalee Frega confronts the growing tendency in both popular and scholarly studies to view eating disorders as a secret and private form of negative self-expression "suffered" primarily by women. Drawing on history, clinical studies, and literature, Frega's comprehensive study approaches anorexia not as an illness, but as a dangerous strategy employed by healthy young people of both sexes against unrealistic expectations of perfection. The author considers the broad range of social and cultural factors that have defined "abnormal" eating practices throughout history, and she convincingly argues that when anorexia is viewed as an effective language that is learned and shared through family interaction (rather than as a hopeless attempt to repudiate life), much of its mystery is dispelled.

About this title

About the Author

Donnalee Frega is a visiting scholar in the Department of English at Duke University. She resides in Castle Hayne, North Carolina, with her husband, Alvin, and their three children

Edition details

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1570032750
• ISBN 13: 9781570032752
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180