The Political Economy of Bulimia Nervosa

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The Political Economy of Bulimia 

Nervosa 

Iain Pirie a 

a Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, 

Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom 

Version of record first published: 15 Jan 2011 

To cite this article: Iain Pirie (2011): The Political Economy of Bulimia Nervosa, New Political 

Economy, 16:3, 323-346 

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New Political Economy, Vol. 16, No. 3, July 2011 

The Political Economy of Bulimia 

Nervosa 

IAIN PIRIE 

Downloaded by [School of Oriental and African Studies] at 04:36 30 June 2012 

Bulimia Nervosa constitutes a major social problem. There have, however, been 

few, if any, attempts to understand the distinctive features of this disorder from 

within the social sciences. Rather, the increasing prevalence of all forms of 

eating disorders are understood as a product of how the concepts of ‘femininity’ 

and the ‘controlled body’ are constructed within contemporary society. Bulimia 

and anorexia are ultimately seen to have their roots in the same social phenomena. 

While recognising the insights that the existing literature offers, we argue that in 

order to fully understand the rise of bulimia we must focus on the food system. 

More precisely, we must examine how the commercialisation of food preparation 

has led to a partial breakdown in meal structures and the rise of ‘everyday’ 

bingeing. The rise of extreme forms of disordered consumption associated with 

bulimia can be related to broader changes in the eating regime. 

Keywords: gender; eating disorders; food systems 

Introduction 

In 1996 Ben Fine published a paper in Appetite on the political economy of 

anorexia nervosa. 1 The arguments of this initial paper were presented in a more 

developed form in his 1998 monograph The Political Economy of Diet, Health 

and Food Policy. Unfortunately these publications have not had the effect of 

encouraging other critical political economists to turn their attention to eating 

disorders and Fine’s work remains one of the few explicit attempts to develop a 

political economy of eating disorders focused on the food industry itself (see 

also Guthman and DuPuis 2006). In many respects this is surprising given that 

eating disorders are one of the most set of significant social problems facing 

advanced capitalist societies today. 

This article seeks to build upon Fine’s initial work through a more focused study of 

how the organisation of food provisioning systems in contemporary capitalism has 

created a generalised disorder in patterns of food consumption. This disorder can, 

Iain Pirie, Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United 

Kingdom. E-mail: i.j.pirie@warwick.ac.uk 

ISSN 1356-3467 print; ISSN 1469-9923 online/11/030323-24 # 2011 Taylor & Francis 

DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.519020

Iain Pirie 


we would argue, be related to the rise of bulimia since the mid 1970s. In attempting to 

do so the article does not pretend to offer a comprehensive analysis of bulimia. Rather, 

it seeks to draw attention to how a focus on food systems can enrich existing sociological 

analysis of the growth of eating disorders, which tend to focus on the nature of 

femininity and the media, in advanced capitalist societies. 

Existing sociological accounts have focused far more closely on anorexia rather 

than bulimia (see for example Nagel and Jones 1992; MacSween 1993; Germov 

and Williams 1996; Bordo 2003). While the linkages between the two conditions 

are highly complex, with many former anorexics later becoming bulimic, their 

exists important differences between these conditions. In physiological terms an 

obvious major difference between the two conditions relates to levels of food 

intake. While a large minority of anorexics may engage in binge/purge behaviour, 

there exists a marked difference in overall levels of food intake between those 

individuals categorised as being bulimic and anorexic. In order to be classified 

as bulimic by a medical professional it is necessary to maintain a relatively 

normal weight, otherwise the individual will simply be defined as binge/purge 

anorexic (Palmer 2003). This physiological difference reflects the fact that 

bulimics will exercise less control over consumption (simply eat more) than 

both binge/purge and pure restricting anorexics. Second, as we argue in the 

next section of the article, bulimia only emerged as a major social problem in 

the 1970s whereas anorexia has a far longer and more complex history. 

Analysis of the social conditions that gave rise to the rapid growth of anorexia in 

the post-war era has a great deal to tell us about bulimia. The omnipresent concern 

with the female body that dominates much of the contemporary media and the 

complex contradictory pressures that young women face, the two major leitmotifs 

with the literature, are equally relevant considerations when analysing bulimia 

(Fallon et al. 1994; Hesse-Biber 1996; Bordo 2003; Wykes and Gunter 2005). 

However, this work cannot be understood as offering an entirely adequate analysis 

of bulimia. This literature cannot explain why anxieties surrounding food, body 

image and the broader set of contradictory pressures that individuals (particularly 

young women) face have resulted in increasing levels of bulimia (and binge 

eating disorder, BED) rather than anorexia since the 1970s. 

The central argument of this article is that it is only possible to develop a satisfactory 

analysis of the rise of bulimia as a social phenomena by synthesising a 

focus on the social (particularly media) construction of the body and gender 

with an analysis of changes in the food provisioning system. The rise of bingebased 

eating disorders must be related to changes in the temporal patterns of 

food consumption and the size of eating events generated by the commercialisation 

of food preparation. At the same time, we need to remain conscious that 

women are disproportionally represented among anorexics, bulimics and sufferers 

from BED and that an overly developed concern with body image is a common 

trait among all three conditions (Cargill 1999). It is important, therefore, to pay 

attention to gender relations and the centrality of the body in the contemporary 

media in explaining these disorders. 

In the absence of particular socially constructed norms surrounding the control 

of the body or wider gendered divisions within society, changes in food systems 

may lead to particular individuals engaging in fairly regular binge eating but they 

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The Political Economy of Bulimia Nervosa 


are unlikely to lead to the emergence of a new set of fully fledged eating disorders. 

Equally, the compensatory behaviours associated with bulimia cannot be satisfactorily 

explained by a focus on the food system itself, and the question’ ‘why 

purge?’ can only be fully answered by reference to more long-standing analytical 

concerns (concerning gender and the body). However, the question never presents 

itself if the initial drive to binge is absent. It is this drive that can be at least 

partially explained with reference to the food provisioning system. The creation 

of a disordered regime cannot explain why certain population groups have 

proven more vulnerable to bingebased eating disorders. Nevertheless, the creation 

of a food regime, in which both the temporal structure of meals and size of eating 

events are in a flux, constituted a necessary condition for the development of largescale 

bingebased eating disorders 

The structure of the article reflects its central argument that a focus on food 

systems is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of 

bulimia. It is divided into three main sections. The first seeks to address a series 

of questions regarding the categorisation (as medical disorders/social phenomena), 

definition and measurement of the prevalence of eating disorders among different 

population groups. The second offers a critical overview of what we would identify 

as the key themes in the existing social science literature on eating disorders. The 

purpose of this review is twofold. First, this section introduces the literature to 

general readers of the journal with no specialist knowledge of eating disorders. 

Second, it seeks to highlight the explanatory power and limitations of this literature 

with particular reference to bulimia. Against this context the final section of the 

article focuses directly on the food system itself. In the early part of this section 

we outline the existing work on eating disorders and the food system. The majority 

of this section concerned with how we could expand upon this analysis to draw linkages 

between changes in food provisioning systems and bulimia. 

Eating disorders: the nature and scale of the problem 

The construction of eating disorders as medical conditions has been the object of 

sustained scrutiny by Foucauldian scholars (Malson 1998; Hepworth 1999). 

Hepworth argues that female self-starvation was effectively constructed as a 

medical condition in the 19th century with the ‘discovery’ of anorexia. Prior to 

this female self-starvation had existed but had been understood as being linked 

with religious observance. The terms on which medicalisation took place is 

understood to have been determined by prevailing gender structures and to have 

reflected the dominance of the ‘male gaze’. Medicalisation is understood as 

being problematic for two main reasons. Firstly, it defined ‘anorexics’ as 

passive malfunctioning subjects to be managed. The anorexic was denied any 

agency and the complex ‘codes’ and meanings attached to self-starvation were 

ignored. Secondly, the definition of anorexia as an illness led to the individualisation 

of the condition. Medicalisation led to a discourse that attempted to explain 

anorexia largely in terms of the pathologies of individual young women and the 

relationships between young women and their mothers within the family structure. 

By way of contrast feminist scholars, both post-structuralist and Marxist, argue 

that any analysis of anorexia must foreground the oppressive manner in which 

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Iain Pirie 


the concept of femininity operates in contemporary society (Bartky 1990; Malson 

1998; Hepworth 1999; Bordo 2003). 

It is important to recognise mainstream psychologists have themselves abandoned 

‘strong’ versions of the individual pathology thesis that dominated early 

work from within the medical establishment. Julie Hepworth’s (1999) interviews 

with mental health professionals give the overwhelming impression that this group 

admits that eating disorders are a complex multicausal condition within which 

broader social conditions (the fashion industry and media images) play a role. 

Anyone who cares to glance at a collection of essays written by eating disorder 

professionals will be struck by the range of issues the medical establishment are 

now willing to consider when seeking to explain vulnerabilities to eating disorders 

(see for example Treasure et al. 2003; Thompson 2004). Indeed, rather than make 

any arrogant claim to possess a monopoly of knowledge the medical profession 

collectively admit the limitations of their understanding of the causes of eating 

disorders. 

While the medical establishment may not ignore the social dimension of eating 

disorders for Hepworth the problem remains that they employ an inside/outside 

framework. So contemporary psychologists may accept that the social is important 

but would still look to analyse how the broader social environment interacted with 

the internal characteristics of the patient. For Hepworth this is folly as the 

‘internal’ psychological makeup of individual women is itself a product of the 

social construction of femininity. The division, therefore, has no meaning. 

This article aims to be sensitive to the concerns raised by these scholars. In 

particular we would stress the need to understand eating disorders as social 

phenomena rather than individual pathologies. Indeed, the central thesis of the 

article is that the development of extreme forms of disordered eating associated 

with bulimia must be related to a broader movement towards societywide disordered 

eating that can be dated to the 1970s. A major difference of emphasis 

between Hepworth (1999) and ourselves lies in the role that material changes in 

levels of self-destructive eating in the nineteenth century played in the construction 

of the disease of ‘anorexia nervosa’. Many scholars sympathetic to Hepworth’s 

analysis of medical establishment would maintain that their was a sharp 

increase in levels of self-starvation in the nineteenth century (see for example 

Vanderycken and von Deth 1994; Brumberg 2000). Understood against this 

context, the medical profession did not so much create ‘anorexia’ as colonise 

and define an emerging social problem within its area of expertise. Equally significantly, 

we remain open to the idea that there may be certain biological factors that 

render certain individuals more vulnerable to eating disorders than others. A complete 

rejection of an internal/external framework of analysis effectively renders a 

consideration of these factors impossible. 

There are also practical issues in terms of how we engage with the medical literature. 

While rejecting medically based understandings of eating disorders, 

Helen Malson (1998) employs statistics taken from the medical literature on the 

prevalence of eating disorders in framing her study. This is not a criticism. Any 

social analysis of eating disorders must concern itself with questions of epidemiology. 

Major funded epidemiological studies have been conducted under the supervision 

of medical scientists. Claims that eating disorders constitute a major social 

326



pathology unavoidably rest upon an analysis of data drawn up using standard 

medical definitions of these conditions. In a sense, even when seeking to criticise 

standard medical definitions of disordered eating, we are trapped within these 

definitions. 

A willingness to use medical statistics does not, however, resolve the problem 

of measurement. Statistics on the epidemiology of eating disorders are highly 

unreliable. However, some sense of the scale of the problem can be gained 

from Daphne Van Hoeken et al. (2003) overview of the available empirical 

studies. Van Hoeken et al. (2003: 14) estimate that approximately 0.3 per cent 

of young women in North America and Western Europe suffer from full-scale 

clinical anorexia. Bulimia is more prevalent with 1 per cent of the same population 

group suffering from clinicallevel bulimia and up to 7 per cent displaying sub-clinicallevel 

symptoms. It has also been suggested that appropriately 3 per cent of all 

Americans suffer from BED (Hudson et al. 2007). These figures reflect ‘the 

medical gaze’ in terms of how they defined eating disorders but they are based 

on large-scale surveys and provide a reasonable working base for analysis. 

In order to make sense of these numbers it is necessary to understand how 

eating disorders are defined. Importantly, anorexia is the default definition. 

If an individual enters the medical system and they are seriously underweight 

as a result of psychological rather than physical problems, they will be classified 

as anorexic. Individuals who engage in binge and purge behaviour and are 

seriously underweight cannot be classified as bulimic, as an initial definition of 

anorexia excludes this. In order to be defined as suffering from clinicallevel 

bulimia it is necessary to binge/purge consistently whilst maintaining a relatively 

normal weight (Palmer 2003). 

It is quite normal for a bulimic to engage in 13 or more binges a week in which 

they will on average consume approximately 52000 calories 2 in addition to 

calories consumed in normal meals (Cooper 2003: 26–7). The structure of 

consumption is transformed from a logical cyclical one in which consumption 

is alternated with substantive periods of abstention – in which the use value 

(calorific content) of food is exhausted 2 to one based on sporadic consumption 

binges unrelated to physical need. The entire process of consumption is accelerated. 

Food is consumed quickly (as many as 4000 calories in half a hour) and 

the point at which consumption may begin again (at which the physical properties 

of food are exhausted) is accelerated through purging (Ibid: 2528). Binge eating 

(whether linked to bulimia or not) necessarily represents the antithesis of a temporally 

well-defined eating regime based upon ritualised social events (meals) 

linked to biological need. 

Bulimia was only formalised as a distinct condition in the mid to late 1970s 

(Boskind-Lodahl 1976; Russell 1979). This formalisation reflected the increasing 

prevalence of bulimic behaviours in the core capitalist world from the late 1970s 

onwards. Before this point there was a substantial population of anorexics who 

binged/purged but these practices seem to been relatively uncommon in individuals 

of a normal weight, to have involved the consumption of non-foods and have 

been confined to those who had suffered from severe psychological trauma 

(e.g. infant refugees from Nazi Germany) (Blinder and Chao 1994). The issue 

of BED is a difficult one. BED is currently defined as a research category rather 

327

Iain Pirie 


than a distinct condition and academic research is still at a nascent stage. Similar 

patterns of consumption are found in individuals suffering from bulimia and BED. 

However, rather than engage in compensatory activities (vomiting), these individuals 

frequently become obese. Individuals suffering from BED are differentiated 

from standard overeaters through the psychological distress associated with the 

binge and the frequency of these events (Engel 2009). While BED is not explicitly 

dealt with in our analysis of food systems it is easy to see how the same arguments 

concerning the temporal restructuring of consumption and the normalisation of 

binge could apply to an analysis of this condition. 

As we have already suggested, an overdeveloped concern with body image is 

commonly understood to lie at the heart of all three conditions (Goldschmidt 

2009). It is also true that many former anorexics suffer from subsequent problems 

related to bulimia. It is necessary to analyse both the general conditions that lie at 

the heart of all eating disorders and the social changes that underpin changes in the 

relative significance of different disorders. The conditions are not reducible to 

each other but possess strong ‘family resemblances’. 

Comparative analysis of the prevalence of eating disorders is virtually impossible. 

There are numerous nationally based non-comparable (due to differences in 

population groups studied and method of data collection) studies on the prevalence 

of eating disorders that yield wildly varying results (see van Hoeken et al. 

2003). The task of comparing historical data ascertained from within a single 

state is very difficult. For example, in their attempt to assess comparative levels 

of eating disorders in western states, Makino et al. (2008) include surveys conducted 

between two supposedly representative groups of young women in the 

US in 1990 and 1992 that indicate rates of Bulimia of 1.3 and 5.1 per cent respectively. 

Nobody seriously believes that the prevalence of Bulimia increased by 

almost 400 per cent over a two-year period. Rather, these changes obviously 

reflect inconsistencies in data collection. 2 

In terms of gender composition, there is broad agreement that both anorexia and 

bulimia are overwhelmingly female conditions. While there is no agreement 

concerning the exact gender balance, it is frequently claimed that approximately 

96 per cent of all bulimics and 90 per cent of all anorexics are women (van 

Hoeken et al. 2003). Hepworth (1999) suggests that because these conditions 

have been normalised as female, many men who meet the criteria are not in 

fact classified as suffering from an eating disorder. This is a reasonable argument 

and it is plausible that these conditions are more common in men than the medical 

literature would suggest. Equally, bulimia is in many respects easier to conceal 

that anorexia. Given the greater taboo associated with male eating disorders, the 

higher female to male gender ratio among bulimics than anorexics may simply 

reflect the decisions of men to conceal their disordered eating. Despite these distortions 

it is clear women are far more vulnerable to both anorexia and bulimia 

than men. Women are also disproportionally represented in the BED population. 

However, the gender imbalance is less severe with men constituting approximately 

30 per cent of suffers (De Zwaan 2001). 

There have been efforts to determine how class and race affects vulnerability to 

eating disorders. The results of these studies are disputed. There is a reasonable set 

of evidence to suggest that bulimia is more common in poorer social groups. 

328



However, this has been contested and it is impossible to say with confidence what 

(if any) relationship exists between eating disorders and social class (van Hoeken 

et al. 2003). Equally, while there was an early assumption that white women were 

more vulnerable to eating disorders than ethnic minority women, recent research 

has cast any simple correlation between eating disorders and race into doubt. It is 

likely that eating disorders are less common in black women than their white 

counterparts, but it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty (Root 1990; 

Striegel-Moore 2003). 

Based purely on data from the UK, there does appear to be a broad consensus 

that incidence rates of anorexia stabilised in the 1970s and that incidence of 

bulimia ceased to increase at some point prior to 1996 (van Hoeken et al. 2003; 

Currin et al. 2005). Clearly Britain has not simply been in state of osmosis for 

the last 14 years. If we understand eating disorders as being purely a result of 

social pressures, it would be difficult to explain this relatively long-term stability. 

These statistics may suggest that we need to be open to the idea that eating 

disorders have a biological component. There is a large scientific literature on 

the ‘multifactoral’ nature of eating disorders and the importance of biological 

factors in predisposing certain individuals to problems (see Treasure et al. 

2003). Malson (1998) rightly highlights the failure of this literature, when assessed 

in its own terms, to offer conclusive proof of the existence of a clear biological 

foundation to eating disorders. Her point is well taken and we are not arguing 

that such a foundation definitely exists. Rather we would simply suggest that 

we should remain open to the possibility. Equally, should such a foundation 

exist it should not negate the importance of the social. Without social stimuli an 

individual’s biological predisposition will remain dormant. Therefore, it may be 

the case that men have as strong a potential to suffer from eating disorders as 

women, but the way that masculinity has been constructed renders them less 

vulnerable. 

The purpose of this section has been to briefly consider how we ought to define 

eating disorders, and assess their prevalence and the importance of gender in 

accounting for individuals’ vulnerabilities to these conditions. To clarify the position 

of the article, it is that eating disorders must be primarily understood as 

social phenomena for which an explanation ought to be sought at a macro level. 

In a sense it is contemporary society, not simply the individual bulimic or anorexic, 

who requires treatment. Nevertheless, we remain open to idea that these conditions 

have an important biological component and for practical reasons employ standard 

medical definitions of these conditions in order to assess their prevalence. 

The opening section has performed the necessary task of establishing the foundations 

upon which we will construct our analysis. We shall now turn our attention 

to attempts of major feminist scholars to understand the problems of eating disorders. 

This forms a necessary part of any analysis of bulimia but does offer a 

complete answer as to why bulimia has emerged as a major social problem. 

Femininity, media and the post-1945 anorexia crisis 

The last three decades have seen the development of a vast social science literature 

on eating disorders – primarily anorexia (Nagel and Jones 1992; MacSween 1993; 

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Iain Pirie 


Germov and Williams 1996; Bordo 2003). While there is considerable nuance 

within this literature, different scholars continually return to the same three key 

analytical points. It is upon these points of consensus that we wish to focus. 

First, the majority of the literature (implicitly or explicitly) treats ‘modern’ anorexia 

as a post-1945 phenomena (Bordo 2003; Fine 1998). In so doing, the literature 

does not attempt to deny that female self-starvation has a long history. As has 

been well documented, in the pre-modern era there existed a number of ‘fasting 

saints’ (Vandereycken von Deth 1994). These women were celebrated for starving 

themselves in order to demonstrate their indifference to the pleasures and pains of 

the sensual world and their commitment to God. To post a direct link between 

these religious anorexics and women who are currently experiencing eating disorders 

is unsustainable, given the profound differences in their lives and 

motivations. 3 

The relationship between the modern and the nineteenth-century experiences of 

anorexia is more complex. Although it is difficult to assess whether the rising 

prevalence of any psychological disorder reflects improved recording techniques 

or genuine increases, it does appear that anorexia emerged as an important social 

disorder among young upper middle class women in the Victorian era. The causes 

of the increased prevalence of anorexia have been located within the practices of 

the bourgeois family. As family size declined and the income of the bourgeoisie 

grew, children were transformed from being little adults to special creatures 

requiring protection. Middle class women were not expected to marry until at 

least 20 and could expect a long period under the ‘protection’ of their families. 

This period was filled with a set of disciplines and anxieties principally centred 

upon the need to secure an appropriate matrimonial match. Food played a key 

role in the entire child/parent relationship as it was through food that parents 

expressed love and exercised control by limiting consumption of deviant foods 

(vegetables before cakes) and denying consumptive rights to disobedient children 

(go to bed without your tea). The anorexic subverted parental control by refusing 

to eat (Brumberg 2000). 

While the exact nature of the pressures that contemporary and Victorian 

families place on young women may be very different, the pressures that young 

women face during the transition from childhood to adulthood continues to be 

recognised as a significant factor in contemporary anorexia. Equally problematic 

for those wishing to draw a clear distinction between nineteenth-century and 

modern anorexia, there is evidence that concerns with body image played a significant 

role in nineteenth-century eating disorders. The rise of Victorian anorexia 

needs to be understood within the context of changing ideas of physical attractiveness. 

For the middle class to be overweight shifted from a symbol of success to one 

of a lack of self-control (Vandereycken and von Deth 1994). 

Despite the existence of certain similarities between nineteenth-century and 

contemporary anorexia we would argue that the distinction posted within the literature 

between pre and post 1945 eating disorders remains useful provided it is 

treated flexibly. There is a broad consensus, across both the social science and 

medical literature, that the scale of contemporary eating disorders is quite different 

from anything seen before (Fallon 1994; Fine 1998; Bordo 2003; Treasure et al. 

2003). Furthermore, while concern with body image is not necessarily new, the 

330



overwhelming dominance of such concerns in contemporary eating disorders is 

distinct. Yet even here we must urge caution. There is evidence that a minority 

of contemporary anorexics display a relative disinterest in body image and that 

their behaviour often simply represents a visceral reaction to previous psychological 

trauma (Lee et al. 2001). 

The second critical aspect of contemporary anorexia that the literature highlights 

is the importance of the dual (or even triple) set of pressures that young 

women face in explaining this particular population group’s vulnerability to this 

disorder (Bordo 2003). The increasing integration of women into the professions 

has demanded that women compete in the public sphere. However, as they reach 

adulthood women are simultaneously confronted with intense pressures to 

conform to more traditional roles as nurturing figures and objects of sexual 

desire. The far greater vulnerability of young women to eating disorders is seen 

as a result of the unique myriad of pressures that they face (Fallon et al. 1994; 

Fine 1998; Bordo 2003; Treasure et al. 2003). 

The study of these pressures is linked to a more overarching analysis of the alienating 

and oppressive nature of contemporary concepts of femininity (Chapkis 

1986; Bartky 1990; Bordo 2003). At the risk of gross oversimplification the argument 

is that the concept of ‘femininity’ has been constructed from without by a 

male dominated culture, in a similar manner to how the meaning of ‘blackness’ 

has been constructed and is maintained by prominently white Eurocentric 

culture. Importantly, however for women, in contrast to ethnic minorities, there 

is no native culture, or myth of a native culture, to draw from in seeking to 

construct alternative meanings. Hence the scale of the problem that the feminist 

movement faces in seeking to create an ideational environment in which 

women possess the autonomy to define for themselves what it actually means to 

be female. Equally, for Sandra Lee Bartky (1990) being a woman involves alienation 

from ones own body and sexuality. The female body is socially constructed 

as something to be admired by the male gaze rather than something for itself. 

The idea of beauty itself is understood as a mode of social control. Naomi Wolf 

(1990) argues that the concept of beauty acts as an impediment to female solidarity, 

diverting women’s attention from challenging gender inequalities and competing 

fully as economic actors. The concept of beauty is seen as forcing women into competition 

with one another (as competing beauties) and hindering the development of 

collective political organisations. Equally, because ideals of beauty are ultimately 

unachievable (or least difficult to achieve), their pursuit involves both immense 

effort and failure. This failure is seen as having important implications for the collective 

self-confidence of women. The idea of difficulty is important to the marketing 

of beauty. It is important that beauty requires extensive financial outlays if it is to 

support a significant arena of capitalist accumulation. If beauty was delinked from 

fetishisation of the image of youth and embraced the marginally overweight, then 

we may find that standard lifestyles in late capitalist societies allowed us to effortlessly 

achieve this without the need for specialist products. 

Within this literature there are important differences between those accounts 

that seek to integrate gender within a broader radical critique of contemporary 

capitalism and accounts that large abandon Marxism and traditional socialism. 

In the former, how these practices relate to the broader structures of late capitalism 

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Iain Pirie 


is more clearly drawn out (Bartky 1990; Kilbourne 1999). Furthermore, gender is 

not understood as an axis of social division that can be properly understood outside 

the context of class based racist society. Certain texts that entirely abandon 

Marxism, for example Wolf (1990), fall into trap of fetishising gender. As we 

read it, in Wolf’s work gender is frequently treated as the social division in contemporary 

society rather than a critical division in society. Following on from this 

Wolf frequently refers to the use of beauty to protect the ‘power structure’. To my 

mind, this is a vague term and the logics that govern the actions of these ill-defined 

power elites seem simply to be to preserve the power of men over women. This 

seems somewhat conspiratorial and unconvincing. Socialist feminists who highlight 

how oppressive notions are functional (even necessary) for the functioning 

of capitalism offer a stronger analysis of contemporary society. 

The third key theme within the literature on eating disorders, which clearly 

follows from more general theories concerning the nature of femininity, relates 

to the importance of media representations of the female body. In different 

places the argument takes slightly different forms. In its most basic form the analysis 

suggests that we are increasingly surrounded by images of the slender body that 

are positively associated with other socially desirable traits (Hesse-Bider 1996; 

Wykes and Gunter 2005). Women (and to a lesser extent men) come under 

pressure to emulate these images and this is the primary source of our society’s 

anxieties towards food. The behaviour of anorexics is simply a more extreme 

form of the anxieties that the majority of us experience. 

Textual analysis has been strengthened through interview-based studies that 

seek to question individuals in order to explore how they are affected by the 

images they consume. Two of the key studies that have sought to this, Dawn 

Currie (1999) and Melissa Milkie (1999), have focused upon the impact of adolescent 

girls’ magazines on their readers. These studies confirm that magazines have 

a clear influence on the behaviour of their readers but that readers have complex 

and contradictory relationships with these magazines. Currie argues that they 

recognise clear gaps between their own lives and the modes of life and particularly 

the (unachievable) body images portrayed in these forums. In other words, readers 

are influenced by magazines while simultaneously acknowledging that they represent 

a fantasy. The gap between the reality of readers’ lives and the modes of 

life (based upon traditional femininity) portrayed within magazines creates a 

potential for a partial or complete rejection of these media. How individuals ultimately 

come to view (and be affected by) any image will depend on a myriad of 

factors relating to the details of their everyday life (their circle of friends, family 

etc). Milkie argues that black girls’ self-image tends to be less affected by girls 

magazines and that they suffer from fewer media-induced concerns about body 

image. These results are clearly consistent with the wider argument that suggests 

that black women generally enjoy high levels of body esteem than their white 

counterparts (Molloy 1998; Abrams and Stormer 2002). It is important to note, 

however, that this argument is disputed and that we need to be careful in 

making judgements about race and self-esteem lest we repeat the mistakes of 

early literature on eating disorders (Shaw 2004). 

Analysis of the impact of images on viewers has also increasingly focused on 

young men (Labre 2002; Agliata and Tantleff-Dunww 2004; Hargreaves and 

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Tiggemann 2004; Field et al. 2005). The results of this research are somewhat 

ambiguous. It is possible to find studies that suggest that overall levels of body 

dissatisfaction among young men are lower than of young women and studies 

that demonstrate relatively little difference (Labre 2002; Agliata and Tantleff- 

Dunww 2004). Equally, there are scientific papers which argue that exposure to 

an ‘ideal’ set of body images has a significantly less negative effect on men’s perception 

of their own bodies than women’s, and others that suggest a more uniform 

impact (Hargreaves and Tiggemann 2004; Field et al. 2005). Historically men 

have been shielded from pressures relating to body image by the less forceful compulsion 

to be beautiful and their lack of alienation from their own bodies. 

However, there is evidence that these conditions may be changing. 

Male body dissatisfaction is more focused upon a desire to develop greater 

lean muscle than a desire to achieve greater slenderness. While this could lead 

to conventional eating disorders, it may be more likely that young men will 

develop a set of pathological activities centred upon exercise. Indeed, Frances 

Connan (1998) argues that there are linkages between female bulimics sufferers 

and male bodybuilders. Both groups share an obsessional interest in body shape 

and organise their life around the achievement of a particular body image. 

Equally, competitive bodybuilders will engage in cycles of bulking (binging) in 

order to gain size, in which they may consume over 9000 calories a day, and 

abstention in which they seek to reduce body fat to unhealthy levels. The question 

of male exercise/eating disorders is an important one but beyond the scope of this 

study. 

An issue with the study of the impact of media representations of the body 

relates to the scope of its analysis. Many studies focusing on the effects of 

visual images draw upon a clearly delineated set of images from a limited 

range of media (Currie 1999; Kilbourne 1999; Milkie 1999; Bordo 2003). The 

impact of the content of teenage girls’ magazines and print advertising have 

proven to be relatively popular themes. This approach is productive and avoids 

the serious methodological problems that would be associated with any attempt 

to draw out the impact of the full galaxy of images that individuals consume. 

However, it is important to recognise that the ideal body types presented in different 

media are likely to differ and so is their impact. For example, the highest-paid 

female singer and most heavily sponsored sportswomen at the time of writing 

were Beyonce Knowles and Serena Williams. It is reasonable to believe that 

many readers of teenage magazines, within which slender white models dominate, 

will also have an interest in either sport or music. The most high-profile female 

participants in these arenas clearly differ from the dominant figures in girls’ magazines 

not simply in terms of race but in terms of weight, representing ‘middle’ and 

heavily muscled body types. Systematic wide-ranging analysis of images in print 

and television tend to confirm the under-representation of the overweight 

(especially overweight women) far more clearly than the dominance of a particularly 

slender image (see Wykes and Gunter 2007: 100). A focus on fashionoriented 

forums within which very slender bodies dominate may exaggerate the 

social significance of this particular aesthetic ideal. 

A more productive approach than focusing on the slender body is offered by the 

concept of multiple aesthetics and the controlled body. Susan Bordo (2003) argues 

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that it is no longer necessary for individuals to achieve radical slenderness in order 

to demonstrate their dominance over their own bodies. Rather, it is perfectly acceptable 

for individuals to be somewhat heavier provided that this is ‘controlled’ 

weight. One may cultivate a very slender body or alternatively one may seek to 

achieve a somewhat more substantial body that is toned and devoid of excessive 

body fat. What both bodies demonstrate is a capacity to maintain a strict regime 

of bodily control. In the first instance a regime is based around not eating, and 

the second around moderate consumption and a strict exercise regime. While 

these bodies may be different in a purely physiological sense they both represent 

examples of the controlled body; both are products of ideology of beauty. 

O. Wayne Wooley (1994) presents an interesting variation on the theme of multiple 

aesthetics. Wooley argues that the post-war era witnessed both a geomantic 

increase in pornography/erotica and the emergence of a class of independent 

female workers/consumers. The ‘normal’ (middle) body came to be colonised 

by erotica in its various forms. At the same time, it became necessary to construct 

a different body disassociated with erotica in those media that sought to service the 

new independent female consumer. Long-standing taboos concerning ‘fat’ effectively 

ensured that a larger alternative to the ‘normal body’ of erotica could not be 

constructed and made it inevitable that the dominant image in women’s magazines 

would be that of the slender body. 

Wooley’s analysis is interesting but suffers from certain empirical limitations 

and theoretical shortcomings. Despite the explosion of academic interest in the 

growth of pornography and the eroticisation of everyday life, there have been 

no real concrete empirical of the effects of pornography/erotica on body image 

(see O’Toole 1998; McNair 2002). Given the sheer volume of pornography that 

is consumed in advanced capitalist states, it is certainly reasonable to argue that 

it has an impact. However, it is impossible to say with any confidence what that 

impact actually this. One feature of contemporary pornography that Laura 

Kipnis (1999) highlights, which complicates Wooley’s conception of the middle 

body, is the existence of substantial subgenres of pornography focused on 

extreme bodies. A more serious problem with Wooley’s analysis lies with his conception 

of how pornography is produced and consumed. Wooley argues that pornography 

is simply a male construct from which independent women must retreat 

and differentiate themselves. However, a key theme of recent studies of pornography 

has been the complexity of women’s relationship with the pornographic and 

the gendered relations that govern its production and consumption (Juffer 1998; 

Kipnis 1999 Gibson 2004; Williams 2004). 

In particular this work has been keen to highlight how some forms of erotica 

have been defined as female (textually based material) and others as male. 

For Jane Juffer (1998) pornography does not possess a static meaning but is 

being consistently redefined as gendered terms of access to the genre, for both consumers 

and potential producers, is transformed. Juffer stresses the need to analyse 

the potential for the entry of pornography directly into home (through cable television 

and the internet) to reconfigure gendered terms of access. The importance 

of this work lies not in a rejection of the concept of repulsion that informs 

Wooley’s work, but rather the need to develop a more sophisticated theory than 

the idea of a complete retreat from the entire genre. 

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The importance of the various debates on the dominance of the slender body or 

multiple dominant aesthetics can easily be overstated. The significance of the 

particular images that are produced in contemporary society is secondary to 

issues generated by the volume of attention that is devoted to the gendered body 

in the contemporary media. Leaving aside the overtly erotic, we see how media primarily 

targeted at women demonstrate an obsession with monitoring the body 

shapes of the famous and continuously floods readers with advice about controlling 

their own bodies. For example, Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunter (2005) argue that 

large sections of the Daily Mail, the British newspaper with the proportionally 

highest female readership (Mail Classified 2009), are consistently devoted to ‘disciplining’ 

celebrity bodies and highlighting any weight gain. 

The focus of the existing literature on the significance of media images and the 

nature of contemporary femininity is critical to any analysis of eating disorders. We 

accept the basic argument concerning the oppressive aspects of mainstream femininity 

and the importance of media images in generating insecurities relating to 

the body. Looking beyond the impact of print adverts and women’s magazines in 

general could strengthen analysis of the importance of media images. Clearly 

these are highly significant arenas. Nevertheless, there are other media that are 

potentially as significant whose impact has been under-analysed. In particular we 

would stress the potential benefits that could be gained through an analysis of 

erotica. There is a considerable literature that deals with the exponential growth 

of this media since the 1970s (O’Toole 1998; McNair 2002; Hardy 2008). It is certainly 

worth investigating the importance of this genre in constructing notions of 

femininity/masculinity and influencing how individuals perceive their own bodies. 

A focus on the conditions that create widespread anxieties concerning the 

female body cannot explain why we have seen a shift in the relative levels of 

bulimia and anorexia. In order to explain this shift it is necessary to focus on 

the food system itself. It is necessary to combine an analysis of the social construction 

of femininity and the media portrayal of the ‘disciplined’ body with a study of 

the rise of society-wide patterns of disordered eating related to the commercialisation 

of food systems. In the absence of either a fetishisation of managed body/the 

ideology of beauty or the restructuring of the food consumption regime, it seems 

unlikely that bulimia could have developed on the scale that it has. 

The late capitalist food regime and bulimia nervosa 

There exists a limited number of studies that focus on the role of the food system 

itself in generating patterns of disordered eating (Fine 1998; Guthman and DuPuis 

2008). In addition, to these studies there is a feminist literature that seeks to draw 

attention to the way in which food is marketed to women (Kilbourne 1999; Bordo 

2003). A theme that Fine (1998) and Jean Kilbourne (1999) both develop, from 

different theoretical perspectives, is the importance of the functional commercial 

relationship between the diet and broader food industries. Kilbourne argues that 

food marketing directed towards women encourages them to develop an emotional 

relationship with products. Food is marketed as a method through which you may 

compensate for the failings in the human relationships that structure life and even 

improve these relationships through provision of food to husbands and children. 

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If everything else in your life is falling apart, it is still possible to have a reciprocal 

loving relationship with ice cream. At the same time, however, women are subjected 

to a contradictory set of advertising messages from the diet industry 

encouraging them to remain relatively slender – although Kilbourne does not 

suggest that the pressure to slim can be reduced to marketing efforts of diet 

firms. Kilbourne (1999: 123) argues ‘that the dieter is the ideal consumer. She 

will spend a lot on food and even more to lose weight – and the cycle never 

stops. Sales of low-fat yogurt soar, but so do sales of high-fat premium ice 

cream.’ The marketing strategies of the two industries (diet and mainstream 

food) imply a mutual dependence. Diet foods can only market themselves as virtuous 

non-foods because of the existence of a wider industry concerned with the 

production of calorific sensuous foods. Equally, it is only possible for high-fat 

foods to market themselves as deviant (‘naughty but nice’) because of the pressure 

to abstain and be virtuous. 

Fine’s arguments are similar but he places greater emphasis on material 

changes in food provisioning systems that have create a hyper-availability of 

food and the broader ‘anti-eating’ complex of which the diet industry is a 

component part. For Fine, as a result of changes in how markets are organised, 

government policy and domestic technologies (freezers, microwaves), even relatively 

poor citizens of core capitalist states are faced with constant opportunities/ 

pressures to consume. At the same time, instead of focusing exclusively on the diet 

industry, Fine employs the concept of the anti-eating complex. In addition to the 

diet industry, this would include other professionals with an interest in managing 

bodies such as the exercise industry (commercial gyms) and public health 

professionals who repeat various mantras concerning the dangers of being overweight. 

Nevertheless, the diet industry is at heart of, and dominates, the antieating 

complex. Where this not the case a commercial tension would develop 

between the eating and non-eating industries, the pressures not to consume 

would affect the profitability of the eating industries. Importantly, Fine argues 

that there is no particular reason why the fashion industry should prefer the 

slender body to alternative forms. The fashion industry cannot, therefore, be 

understood as the dynamic agent in constructing the desirability of the slender 

body. By way of contrast, the prospects for accumulation in the ‘non-eating’ 

industries are critically dependent on the maintenance of the slender body ideal. 

In promoting a slender body image the fashion industry is simply following the 

lead established by the ‘non-eating industries’. 

On this last point we would partially depart from Fine’s analysis. The important 

point regarding the fashion and related cosmetics industries is that, as we have 

already suggested in our analysis of beauty, they are based upon the notion that 

attractiveness is something that must be worked upon. In a sense we consume 

to correct our natural faults. If a full range of actually existing bodies were 

regarded as meeting aesthetic norms, individuals may feel intrinsically attractive 

and sales of cosmetics and clothing may fall. The fashion industry has an interest 

in the maintenance of a gap between standards of the desirable body and the full 

range of actually existing bodies. This is not to deny the importance of pressures 

from the anti-eating industries, but simply to highlight the need to adopt a pluralist 

analysis with regard to this particular issue. 

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From a more Foucauldian perspective, Julie Guthman and Melanie DuPuis 

(2006) argue that neo-liberalism creates a duel imperative on citizens to 

consume and maintain control over their bodies. On the one hand, the neoliberal 

project has witnessed the removal of constraints on the rise of commercialised 

eating (particularly the fast food industry). This industry offered one mode of 

escape from the crisis of over accumulation in the 1970s by creating an arena 

where surplus food could be used and where profits could be made from deregulated, 

highly exploited labour. The state could offset pressures to regulate 

food consumption through an appeal to the notion of consumer sovereignty. On 

the other hand, however, the concept of consumer sovereignty is seen to highlight 

individual responsibility to manage ones own ‘freedom’ responsibly. Food regulation, 

in neoliberal societies, is based upon classification and education rather 

than direct control of the food systems. A new Focauldian form of discipline is 

seen as being exercised by the state through an ideological war against the 

obese – those who do not use their freedom responsibly. Gutham and DuPuis 

argue that the construction of the obese as a deviant group serves as a warning 

for the general population and is unlikely to lead to generalised weight loss. 

Drawing from Foucault’s analysis of sexuality, they argue that detailing deviances 

(obesity) simply highlights their existence and makes these practices more 

common. 

An important point that highlights and reinforces Gutham and DuPuis analysis 

of deviance, self-control and weight is how the concept of being overweight is 

defined by the medical establishment. The evidence concerning the health consequences 

of maintaining a BMI over 25 but under 30 is ambiguous. It cannot be 

decisively demonstrated that you are likely to enjoy a longer healthier life if 

you maintain a BMI of 24 rather than 29. Given the ambiguity of the evidence 

the setting of the threshold for defining overweight at BMI 25 rather than 30 is 

a decision that must be explained in social and political terms, punishing the 

deviant (Flegal et al. 2005). 

Despite its strengths, a weakness of Gutham and DuPuis’ analysis lies in its 

failure to explain why the state needs to create an obese other to warn the 

population at large about their behaviour. Their analysis is stronger in terms of 

providing an analysis of how power is exercised rather than exposing the underlying 

logics of to what ends power is ultimately exercised. Ultimately, Fine and 

Kilbourne provide the more compelling accounts of the role that the food industry 

plays in promoting anxieties surrounding the body. 

This article accepts the key arguments of the literature outlined above concerning 

the hyper-availability of food, the promotion of overeating by the food industry 

itself and the pressures to diet generated by the non-food industries. What is 

critical, however, if we are to understand how changes in food provisioning 

systems relate to the development of bulimia, is that we understand the precise 

forms that the drive to consume has taken. If pressures stemming from the restructuring 

of the food industry had simply led to fairly uniform increases in meal size, 

then they may have led to a greater proportion of the population suffering from 

problems relating to excess weight. However, we are not convinced that such 

developments could explain the rise of binge-based eating disorders. As we 

have already made clear in bulimia, BED and ‘Machismo nervosa’ (Connan 

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1998), the temporal organisation of eating and the size of eating events become 

fundamentally misaligned with both (normal) biological requirements and historically 

defined norms. It is important to analyse the broader breakdown in longstanding, 

relatively stable temporal structures of eating and the normalisation of 

sporadic, very large eating events since the 1970s. The extreme forms of disordered 

eating that we find in bulimics represent an manifestation of a wider 

move towards more chaotic eating. 

Since the 1970s the most important development in Western food systems has 

been the increased commercialisation of food preparation. In 1972, 44 per cent of 

the total cost of food in the US was attributable to farm share. By 1997 this figure 

had fallen to 22 per cent (Cutler et al. 2003: 106). While there exist clear issues 

relating to the market power of major retailers, this shift primarily reflects the 

rise of commercial preparation. Food is increasingly sold in semi-prepared/ 

prepared rather than basic forms. 

This in turn has led to significant changes in the temporal organisation of consumption. 

Two related points can be made in this regard. First, the nature of food 

preparation has been transformed. The average time that a typical American 

spends per day on food preparation fell by more than half between 1965 and 

1995 (Ibid: 101). This decline is even more pronounced when we consider that 

the number of eating events has increased with the rise of snacking over the 

same period, and how the increase in (particularly male) ‘hobby’ cooking has 

led to disproportionate quantities of time being devoted to one or two ‘special’ 

meals each week (Short 2006). Significantly, greater female employment does 

not offer an entirely satisfactory explanation for these changes as time spent preparing 

food has fallen by an approximately equal amount for both working and 

non-working women (Cutler et al. 2003: 106). Instead, these changes must be 

understood primarily in terms of the success of the food industry itself in marketing 

partially prepared food (as modern and quick) and the rising prevalence of 

eating out. 

The decline in food preparation time has transformed general patterns of eating. 

As food can be prepared almost instantly, we have moved from a consumption 

pattern based on clearly defined collective eating events to one based primarily 

on grazing. Virtually the entire increase in food consumption per capita in the 

US since the 1970s has been the result of a 102 per cent increase in snacking 

(Cutler et al. 2003). Nor should this be understood as a purely Anglo-Saxon 

phenomenon. Indeed, while France is frequently understood to possess one of 

the most stable meal structures in Europe, the French Ministry of Health recently 

felt compelled to require firms advertising food to include the warning ‘for your 

health, try and avoid snacking between meals’ on their products (Hercberg 

et al. 2007: 71). In comparison to the majority of developed states, meal patterns 

do appear more resilient in France. However, this is a relative stability. The ‘ritual’ 

of the meal has been undermined with meal preparation time falling by over 30 per 

cent between 1974 and 1998 and the proportion of citizens who cook regularly 

falling continuously over the same period (Warde et al. 2007). The market for 

ready meals in France is worth almost $5 billion per annum – only slightly less 

than the British market of $5.1 billion (Business Insights 2009). We are witnessing 

a slow but constant destructuralisation of meal structures (Poulain 2002). 4 

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Interestingly Clare Pettinger et al.’s (2007) analysis of French meal structures, that 

seeks to highlight the stability of eating patterns in Southern France, reveals that 

approximately 25 per cent of adults eat less than 3 standardised meals on a daily 

basis and that only half cooked meals from raw ingredients most days. The meal 

structures of young French adults are actually less well defined than those of 

mature English adults. At the same time, there exists very clear evidence concerning 

the restructuring of traditional food systems across Mediterranean Europe in 

last two to three decades (Gracia and Miguel 1999; Alexandratosa 2006). The 

snack food industry’s own reports indicate solid medium term growth of over 5 

per cent per annum in all major European markets (Business Insights 2006). 

Emerging consumption patterns where food is an ever-present backdrop to be 

consumed in moments of boredom clearly promote overeating and serve to partially 

divorce consumption from physical need. The important point is not that 

we are witnessing a universal increase in the frequency of eating; particular individuals 

may as a result of weight concerns limit the frequency with which they eat. 

Rather it is that consumption has become chaotic – a calorie-restricting individual 

may skip a traditional breakfast but replace this with a snack taken at some random 

point in the morning. The exact eating patterns proscribed by any given society 

have always reflected the economic and social practices of that society. 

However, on the basis of ethnological research Matty Chiva (1997) identifies 

the existence of ‘regularity and rhythm’ in meal patterns in all agriculture-based 

(post-hunter-gatherer) human societies 2 with some snacking between meals 

being permitted in times of surplus. While the precise nature of meal patterns 

varied markedly, they all possessed clear ordered patterns of consumption 

within which periods of eating were interspersed with periods of relative abstention. 

The food consumption system was a cyclical one within which food was consumed 

and the calorific value of that food was expanded and than the process was 

repeated 2 the process being intimately related to the use value of food. 

The commercialisation of food preparation has not simply enabled a drive 

towards increased snacking but it has afforded major corporations with the 

capacity to actively promote these patterns of eating. We have seen particular 

forms of processed food being explicitly designed for (in terms of portion size) 

and marketed towards snacking. The move towards greater commercial preparation 

allows for the ever closer linking of particular foodstuffs with particular 

eating events (snacking/meals). Branding and the active construction of the 

social meaning of basic foodstuffs through advertising is possible – see for 

example Tate and Lyle’s campaign to promote sugar as a natural and healthy 

ingredient or the marketing of ‘British’ beef (Fine et al. 1996). However, the 

capacity of private capital to market and activity shape the social meanings surrounding 

particular products reaches its full potential with the development of 

pre-prepared branded (Ginsters Pies, Pot Noodle) food products (Gallo 1999). 

It is entirely logical that capital should use this capacity to promote new eating 

patterns based on more frequent and disordered consumption. Indeed, we could 

argue that an important function of advertising in the economy as a whole is to 

accelerate turnover time in consumption; to encourage consumers to replace 

products due to aesthetic or fashion considerations before ‘technical considerations’ 

(the product no longer working) necessitate. 

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As the entire food preparation process has become increasingly commercialised, 

the same logics that apply to other products have increasingly come to structure 

food consumption. A shift is taken place from the cyclical eating regimes that 

have existed for millennia to a rather unstructured system in which their exists no 

clearly defined periods of abstention and consumption. In their attempts to develop 

a Marxist analysis of the ‘post-modern’ condition, David Harvey (1990) and 

Frederic Jameson (1991) both argue that a profound reorganisation (and acceleration) 

of social time has taken place since the 1970s as a result of capital’s attempts 

to manage a prolonged profitability downturn, and that this reordering has had 

potentially significant physiological effects (particularly in relation to schizophrenia) 

as individuals lose any clear sense of temporal rhythm in their lives. 

Whatever conclusions we may reach regarding Harvey’s wider arguments it 

seems plausible to suggest that the displacement of clearly established temporal 

structures and the separation of eating patterns from biological need is generating 

a permissive environment for the growth of binge eating disorders (such as 

bulimia) associated with unstructured consumption patterns. The point is that 

there no longer exists a clear ‘normal’ food consumption pattern. The temporal 

disorientation associated with the binge/purge (in which the entire consumption 

cycle is massively accelerated) needs to be linked to the wider temporal disorientation 

of eating patterns in the same manner as generalised pressures to diet have 

been linked to the extreme set of body image concerns often found among individuals 

suffering from eating disorders. 

A more direct linkage between wider changes in the food provisioning regime 

and bulimia relates to the normalisation of low-level binging. It is difficult to see 

how it is possible to argue that there is no relationship between the growth of bingeing 

throughout society and the growth of binge-based eating disorders. As eating 

patterns have become unstable and partially divorced from biological need, lowlevel 

bingeing has simultaneously come to be integrated into the mainstream 

food consumption regime. In terms of both speed of eating and the quantity of 

calories consumed, a trip to an average fast food establishment resembles a binge 

as much as a traditional meal. According to McDonalds’ own website, a meal consisting 

of a double quarter pounder with cheese, large French fries and an extra large 

chocolate milkshake contains 2400 calories – approximately a day’s recommended 

intake for an adult male. 5 Historically, a ‘normal meal’ has been defined as providing 

420 to 840 calories (de Castro 1993). In addition to being exceptionally large the 

average McDonalds eating event is exceptionally quick. In America the typical 

McDonalds consumer finishes their food within 13 minutes (Rozin et al. 2003: 

253). Equally, the prevalence of unrefined carbohydrates in the majority of fast 

foods results in short and pronounced spikes in blood glucose levels after which 

the consumer is likely to once again feel hungry. Interestingly, fast food portion 

size only became misaligned with historically ‘normal’ meals in the 1970s and 

1980s (Young and Nestle 2002: 246–9). The rise of the fast food binge is almost 

completely synchronised with the rise of bulimia. It is the US, where the market 

is arguably less restrained than Europe, which has seen the greatest acceleration 

of eating times and volume, although the rise of fast food chains has ensured that 

this has become a global phenomena. 

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The most pure form in which the ‘binge’ has come to integrated into the food 

regime is through the increasing prevalence of ‘all you can buffet restaurant’. 

By the mid 1960s these were common in Las Vegas casinos (Pearson 1966). 

Since this point they evolved first into a nationwide US and than a global phenomena. 

Unfortunately there are no accurate figures relating to how prevalent these 

establishments are. However, it is clear that a consumer in any reasonably sized 

town in the UK enjoys a choice of several establishments offering such an 

eating experience for very limited cost – often under £5. 6 In 2008 the ‘Pizza 

Hut’ chain became the first nationwide fast-food franchise to introduce an allyou-can-eat 

option. What was once a curiosity is becoming mainstream. In the 

US research has already been conducted on the effects of all-you-can-eat 

buffets on the weight of particular population groups (university students and 

rural communities) and the behaviour of diners within these establishments 

(Levitsky et al. 2004; Casey et al. 2008; Wansink and Payne 2008). Since their 

inception there have been a sense that these establishments were inviting customers 

to ‘take on the house’ 2 to attempt to consume food costing more than 

the price of admission to the buffet. In 2008 the Times felt obliged to offer its 

readers a guide to maximising food consumption at these eating establishments 

(The Times, 2008). The sociology of ‘eating out’ is transformed. The complex 

set of social interactions associated with eating out (see Warde and Martens 

2000) are reduced to an form of competitive consumption. A successful trip is 

not one in which you have eaten a moderate quantity of aesthetically satisfying 

food while enjoying convivial conversation, but rather one in which you leave 

feeling mild discomfort from having overeaten. 7 The purpose of eating is 

simply to eat 2 we consume to consume. 

The significance of the fast food and the buffet industries is not that they introduced 

the binge, the consumption of a vast number of calories in a relatively short 

period of time, to human society. Rather, it is that they have embedded the binge 

into the fabric of everyday life and divorced it from well-defined collective 

TABLE 1 Share of total food expenditure spent on home-prepared food by demographic group 

(per cent) 

1975 1999 

Single elderly women 94.9 86.3 

Single elderly men 84.6 83.1 

Elderly couples 95.3 79.6 

Single-parent families 86.4 73.4 

Couples with children 85.1 68.2 

Single young women 81.9 67.7 

Young childless couples 82.9 65.5 

Single young men 66.6 56.6 

By 2004 the average adult under 30 spent 123 per cent of total home food expenditure outside the 

home. The average adult between 30 and 49 spent 92 per cent total home food expenditure outside 

the home 

Source: United Kingdom Office for National Statistics 2003, 2008 

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Iain Pirie 


celebrations. What would technically be defined as binge eating is not a activity 

confined to the celebration of particular feasts or the preserve of a small elite, 

but a regular mass activity. 

A necessary condition for the institutionalisation of the binge can be understood 

as the move towards the commercialisation of food preparation. Since the mid 

1970s there is evidence of a steady rise in the proportion of food spending that 

takes place outside the home (see table 1 for UK figures). As consumption 

outside the home becomes a routine event for an substantial proportion of the 

population, the social significance of how that consumption is organised 

becomes critical. The data on serving sizes would suggest that a number of 

firms in the low-cost restaurant sector have sought to construct notions of ‘good 

value’ around offering a day’s food in one swift sitting. The move towards offering 

vast portion sizes may be seen as a commercial necessity for outlets operating 

in highly competitive markets and explicitly marketing themselves as providing 

low-cost food within an environment where the real costs of basic food ingredients 

are experiencing long-term declines. 

Developments within the food sector and the changing structure of eating since 

the early 1970s need to be understood against the background of a broader set of 

changes in the organisation of labour markets. While the evidence is not unambiguous, 

and there is a need for a more comprehensive empirical database, research 

within the US suggests that the breakdown in family meal structures appears to 

be most advanced in situations where both the male and female work (Goebel 

and Hennon 1983; Siega-Riz 1998). However, these linkages are complex in that 

higher levels of female employment in many states in continental Europe have 

not had the same severity of impact on meal structures. What is much clearer are 

the linkages between variable working hours, casual employment and meal structures 

(Bohle et al. 2004). Perhaps predictably, employees who work non-standardised 

hours also have irregular eating patterns based upon snacking. While the 

extent of the shift away from standardised working patterns since the 1970s can 

perhaps be exaggerated, the key debates within the literature concern the extent 

of the shift across the developed world, not the reality of that shift (Brewster 

et al. 1994). 

Conclusion 

This article has sought to argue that there are clear logical links between changes 

in the food provisioning regime and the rise of bulimia. However, we do not wish 

to make an unsustainable set of claims for the arguments advanced here regarding 

the relationship between changes in the overall organisation of the food system, 

labour markets and bulimia. Any analysis of bulimia must pay attention to the 

nature of femininity, the influence that the media has on body image and the development 

of generalised patterns of disordered eating. Scholars working on eating 

disorders must, as has already been recognised, seek to develop multi-causal 

explanations of social conditions underpinning the problem. The arguments 

presented here do not constitute an attempt to prove any form of comprehensive 

analysis; rather, they simply seek to make a contribution by focusing on the 

temporal breakdown of food consumption patterns and the rise of commercialised 

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bingeing. We accept that it is impossible to understood eating disorders without 

reference to the broader sociological literature. Nevertheless, any analysis of 

why we have seen a large increase in the relative importance of binge-based 

disorders cannot ignore changes in the organisation of food systems. Bulimia 

required the dominance of a particular conception of femininity and surrounding 

media pressures to reach endemic status. However, it has also required the breakdown 

in temporal structures of eating and the institutionalisation of the binge; the 

generation of a more widespread chaos in the food consumption regime. A key 

policy conclusion that suggest itself from the, albeit incomplete, analysis of 

bulimia presented in this article is that action to address bulimia must be 

focused not only on improving treatment for individuals but also on reforming 

dysfunctional food provisioning systems that are damaging the physical and 

mental health of the populations they are meant to serve. These systems are as 

‘disordered’ as any individual suffering from bulimia. 

Notes 

1. For the sake of convenience Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa will simply be referred to as Anorexia 

and Bulimia. 

2. The poor state of data on eating disorders is itself significant in that it is at least partially a product of an official 

reluctance to fund a proper statistical effort. 

3. Nevertheless, as Bordo (2003) argues, women’s relationship with food continues to be structured by the millennia 

old link in western culture between female appetite and sexuality. For a woman to demonstrate too 

strong a desire for food has long been regarded as evidence of a wider inability to subordinate her bodily 

desires to ‘higher more responsible pursuits’. 

4. Poulain argues that surveys assessing eating patterns are influenced by perceptions of ‘proper food habits’ 

(particular in an environment were national culinary systems are perceived to be threatened). As such they 

partially reflect what people believe ought to be the case rather than what is the case. 

5. Information obtained from McDonalds’ USA Nutrition Facts for Popular Menu Items (http://nutrition. 

mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html). 

6. A telephone survey of 40 Chinese and Indian restaurants taken at random from the Yellow Pages in Central 

London revealed that 34 of these establishments offered buffet service at some point during the week. Two of 

these firms specialised in providing buffets. This is significant as almost half of total UK spending on restaurant 

food is accounted for by Chinese and Indian restaurants (Mintel Oxygen 2008). 

7. Between February and March 2009 the author made 15 visits to all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets in London and 

15 visits to a Chinese restaurant serving from a standard menu to observe the behaviour of customers between 

6–8 PM. Obviously, this is a very limited empirical basis and any observations need to treated as suggestive 

rather than conclusive. Nevertheless, it was interesting to note that average eating time was considerably 

shorter in the former establishment (27 minutes as opposed to a 1 hour 17 minutes). Indeed, there was an 

hour time limit at the buffet. Furthermore, it was far more common for dinners to eat alone (20 per cent as 

opposed 4 per cent). While it is difficult to quantify there was a clear sense in which eaters at the buffet 

spoke less than at the more conventional restaurant – the experience of eating out is transformed into in 

which nothing is allowed to impede physical consumption. 

Notes on Contributor 

Iain Pirie is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. He maintains a diverse set of research interests in 

Korean Political economy, media representations of economic crisis and the political economy of disordered 

eating. 

343

Iain Pirie 

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