Syömisestä häiriintynyt kulttuuri : kulttuurisia tapoja tulkita syömishäiriöitä, syömistä ja syömättömyyttä

Abstract

This Pro-gradu thesis is a research about eating disorders and more widely about binging and dieting in our current Western culture. Eating disorders and the problematic relationship between women and food has become more common in our culture. Nowadays media is filled with food programs and commercials where women are shown to have certain obsessive relation with food.

The base of this study is in cultural sciences but the discovery of the subject itself is multidisciplinary. Culture itself is viewed as something which defines, re-defines and shapes our understanding about food, accepted and idealized representations of female body and healthy ways of living. The meanings of wanted or non-wanted female bodies are viewed as symbolic and being linked to culture and time. Eating disorders, binging and dieting in this study are understood as a part of our culture; they are linked deep to our western cultural heritage. Binging and dieting exist more widely than just inside the disordered medical point of view. They are also accepted ways of being and acting in our context of everyday life.

The data of this study is based on multidiscliplinal literature and different discourses linked to female body, eating disorders and eating. Discourses under examination vary from medical science and psychology to philosophy and women´s studies. All these interpretations have something to give to wider cultural analysis about women´s eating and dieting but in themselves they always leave something in darkness. These discources also manage to produce certain ways to deal with and react to womens problematic eating.

There is a need of redefining female body outside the cultural disordered food/body discourse. Female body is also sentient and open to other definitions which are not so deeply connected to food, health and beauty.