Imperial College London;
South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK
Journal of Eating Disorders 2014, 2:138
doi:10.1186/s40337-014-0036-9
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.jeatdisord.com/content/2/1/138
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.jeatdisord.com/content/2/1/138
| Received: | 18 July 2014 |
| Accepted: | 13 December 2014 |
| Published: | 31 December 2014 |
© 2015 Zhang; licensee BioMed Central.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Abstract
The eating disorders literature has focussed on females and little is known of the
male experience. The overall image this has generated suggests a young woman in conflict
with socio-cultural pressures which associate thinness with beauty. Historical studies
have examined anorexia nervosa from an entirely female focus while ignoring how diagnostic
categories have shaped approaches to the male body. This paper will track the case
of the male with anorexia nervosa through changing theories of causation and treatment
approaches, from when the condition first emerged in 1873 to the present. In doing
so, we gain a valuable new insight into how anorexia nervosa has been historically
gendered and the far-reaching implications this has had for diagnosis and treatment
of the male sufferer.
Similarities between the sexes helped to establish male anorexia as a distinct category.
However, this shifted focus away from important differences, which have yet unexplored
implications in the assessment, diagnosis and management of disordered eating. Throughout
history, there has been constant pressure to give a precise definition to anorexia
nervosa, despite being fraught with medical uncertainties. This has resulted in inevitably
harmful generalisations rooted in the dominant epidemiology. This paper reveals that
anorexia nervosa is a truly global phenomenon which cannot be adequately constructed
through exclusive studies of the female. There is consequently a pressing need to
address the dearth of research examining eating disorders in males.
