From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls The History of Self-Starvation

With waiflike models dominating the advertising world and a new wave of feminists waging war on social pressure to be thin, eating disorders have attained the status of a modern crisis. Although anorexia nervosa was not identified as such until the 19th cent., the compulsion to be thin at the price of starvation has a long history in western society. But is anorexia as we know it today new? This thorough account of the history of self starvation in the western world explores this question. Drawing on a myriad of intriguing examples, Vandereycken show how self-inflicted starvation has changed its tone over the centuries and is inextricably enmeshed in socio-cultural contexts. Covers Europe and the U.S. and spans the early cent. of Christianity to the present.Vandereycken, Walter is the author of 'From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls The History of Self-Starvation' with ISBN 9780756762780 and ISBN 0756762782.