Anorexia nervosa and bulimia: The development of deviant identities

Past research on eating disorders has concentrated on medical and psychological facets. Neglected in the literature are the social processes which antedate and maintain anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Women, the primary targets of eating disorders, respond to their visual objectification by society through striving for thinness and, in the extreme, through starving or binging/purging. Utilizing informal interviews as well as a two‐year participant observation of an eating disorders self‐help group, this study explores the meanings respondents attach to their eating anomalies. In their development of deviant identities, anorexics and bulimics proceed through the sequence of conforming behavior, primary deviance, and secondary deviance. Within a framework of labeling theory, the perpetuation of eating disorders is elucidated.