Feminine Visions: Anorexia and Contagion in Pop Discourse

Abstract

This paper offers a discussion of the relationship between the discursive tropes consumption and contagion as they inform feminist and popular media interpretations of anorexia. It suggests that although consumption has proved a useful, if not limited source of meaning within feminist readings of anorexia, popular discourses utilize the more sensationalist notion of contagion to describe the relationship between female consumers and images of the slender female body. Through analyses of various examples from Australian popular women's media it argues that contagion displaces feminist arguments which locate the “cause” of anorexia in patriarchy and instead constructs women as a danger to each other and to themselves. By comparing some of the theoretical dimensions of the male and female gaze, the paper suggests that the idea of contagion constructs a problematic model of female vision through a sexual, rather than social register. It concludes that contagion operates in pop discourse as a counter-productive force which sustains a range of anxieties about contemporary femininity and enables the commodification of anorexia as a subject of public scrutiny.