NORMAL EATING IS

COUNTER-CULTURAL

Exploring Young Women's Lived, Embodied

Experience of Eating Disorder Recovery

Andrea LaMarre, MSc.

Vanier Doctoral Scholar

PhD Student

Department of Family

Relations & Applied Nutrition

University of Guelph

Dr. Carla Rice

Canada Research Chair, Tier II-

Care, Gender & Relationships

Department of Family Relations &

Applied Nutrition

University of Guelph

@andrealala89

BACKGROUND

Eating disorder recovery: a complex &

multifaceted experience

Physical

Psychological

Affective?

What assumptions underlie the term

“recovery”?

BACKGROUND

Eating disorder treatment outcomes:

Nutrition and/or weight restoration, restoration of

“normal eating” (Bardone-Cone et al., 2010; Gremillion, 2003; Rance, Clarke & Moller, 2014)

“Recovery”?

Recognition that recovery is more than

weight restoration- but what comprises

“more”?

BACKGROUND

Moralized bodies in contemporary Western

societies:

“Healthy-thin” bodies seen as morally, medically,

aesthetically desirable (Saguay & Ward, 2011)

Moral panic & fear around “obesity epidemic”

Bodies under surveillance:

Bodies are political spaces

Body management taken up as social affair

BACKGROUND

Biopedagogies: “assemblages” of

information, instructions, directives (Leahy, 2009)

How to live

How to be embodied

What “health” is

How to be healthy & happy (e.g. Harwood, 2010)

How to avoid risk (Fullagar, 2009, p. 124)

How to achieve recovery, wellness (LaMarre, Rice & Bear)

BACKGROUND

Do these broader societal messages

(biopedagogies) impact possibility of

achieving or imagining eating disorder

recovery?

METHODOLOGY

Narrative interviews (10) (Riessman, 2007)

Digital stories (3)

Participatory, arts-based methods

Centralizing participants’ voices

Narrative thematic analysis on both sources

of data for common themes & particularities

PARTICIPANTS

10 women, 20-31 (average age: 25)

All university educated

Diagnoses (not mutually exclusive):

8 anorexia nervosa

3 bulimia nervosa

2 non-diagnosed (1 identified BN, 1 ED-NOS)

Complicating categories of race, ethnicity,

and sexuality

RESULTS

Biopedagogy of recovery

Materiality of Eating Disorders & Recovery

Beyond Biometrics

Embodying Counter-Culture

Authenticity and Invisibility

Recovery is an (Embodied) Place

DISCUSSION

State/label of “recovered”: potentially

problematic expectations & standards

“Overwhelmingness” of full recovery

Lack of space for vulnerability

Prescriptions for recovery helpful to a certain

extent; then may contravene dominant

biopedagogies

DISCUSSION

Recovery biopedagogies may be read as

counter-cultural

Especially post weight-gain, participants

encountered ambiguous prescriptions for health

“Readings” of participants’ bodies & behaviours

differed based on others’ knowledge of their

histories

IMPLICATIONS

Working closely with participants:

Co-creating art

Delving deeply into recovery stories

Uncovering complexity

“Recovery” as potentially alienating

Not settling for less; envisioning differently

IMPLICATIONS

Making space for multiple perspectives on

recovery, multiple routes to recovery

Not assuming all patients will identify with

the language of recovery

Understanding the counter-cultural quality of

recovery in a society that moralizes bodies

REFERENCES

Bardone-Cone, A., Harney, M.B., Maldonado, C.R., Lawson, M.A., Robinson, P., Smith, R. & Tosh, A. (2010). Defining recovery from an eating disorder: Conceptualization, validation, and examination of psychosocial functioning and psychiatric comorbidity. Behavioural Research and Therapy, 48,194-202.

Fullagar, S. (2009). Governing healthy family lifestyles through discourses of risk and responsibility. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the “obesity epidemic”: Governing bodies (pp. 108–126). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gremillion, H. (2003). Feeding anorexia: Gender and power at a treatment centre. Durham: Duke University Press.

Harwood, V. (2010). Mobile asylums: Psychopathologisation as a personal, portable psychiatric prison. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(4), 437-451.

LaMarre, A., Rice, C. & Bear, M. (Forthcoming) Unrecoverable? Prescriptions and possibilities for eating disorder recovery. In Khanlou, N. & Pilkington, B. (eds). Women's mental health: International perspectives on resistance and resilience in community and society.

Leahy, D. (2009). Disgusting pedagogies. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the “obesity epidemic”: Governing bodies (pp. 172–182). New York, NY: Routledge.

Rance, N.M., Clarke, V. & Moller, N.P. (2014). “If I see somebody… I’ll immediately scope them out”: Anorexia nervosa clients’ perceptions of their therapists’ body. Eating Disorders, 22, 111-120.

Riessman, C.K. (2007) Narrative methods for the human sciences. Newbury Park, CA, Sage.

Saguy, A.C. & Ward, A. (2011). Coming out as fat: Rethinking stigma. Social Psychology Quarterly, 74(1), 53.