Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Body Image, Obesity, and Eating Disorders
Young people, teenagers in particular, focus increasingly on their appearance and physical attraction, body dissatisfaction being common and predicting poor physical and psychological health. Although many young people who are deemed overweight or obese try hard to fight their extra kilos, they may suffer discrimination, prejudice and humiliation whereas anorexia and the other ED young patients are often marginalized, bullied as weak, their condition going on unnoticed, undiagnosed, and thus untreated, although these conditions are associated with high comorbidity and serious health consequences.
A diachronic and synchronic perspective
The current book fills in a gap of knowledge in the approach of obesity and EDs in young people. It proposes a novel synchronic (European) and diachronic (historical) perspective that is interdisciplinary: the medical approach (reports by local physicians) is enriched by the contribution of the humanities (reports based on reviews and case studies).
What exactly is the situation in the European countries regarding young people with obesity and EDs?
The research questions for this study are:
- How is thinness/fatness defined and portrayed, and how has that changed over time? (historical perspective)
- What are the media advertising and social media portrayals and messages in terms of fatness, slenderness, dieting, healthy/unhealthy eating? What are the risk factors for obesity (food advertising), anorexia (perceived pressure to be thin, thin-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, and negative affect) in the local media advertising and social media, music video clips in the participating countries. (socio-human dimension)
- What are the current international/local guidelines and initiatives to raise awareness and prevent obesity and EDs at European level? (medical perspective)
To conclude, The Handbook on Body Image, Obesity, and Eating Disorders, therefore, intends to achieve an in-depth understanding of obesity, EDs, their stigma and harm from grassroots levels (historical, social, personal perspective), deconstructing current narratives in the public discourses of advertising and social media messages (fatness versus slenderness) and aims at creating a new narrative that will contribute to the reduction of body-shape stigma and bias.