Starving in silence: food refusal as social protest in Western culture

Abstract

Focus of this paper is anorexia nervosa. Anorexics follow a pattern of food refusal so rigid that it can lead to death if untreated. Ninety percent of people diagnosed with anorexia are women. Author believes that this condition is a way of communicating deeper lying problems for women in Western culture. This hypothesis is supported by the increasing evidence that the occurrences of eating disorders in women rise as images and values of Western culture are spread throughout the globe, even in cultures that were previously immune to fear of obesity.