The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

The Meaning of Food 71

century even saw the development of “hunger artists,” who, as Gordon (2000)
noted, “had no moral or religious agenda...their food refusal was a sheer
act of will and self-control for its own sake” (p. 195). Similarly, Crisp (1984)
compared the anorexic to the ascetic in terms of her “discipline, frugality,
abstinence and stifling of the passions” (p. 210), and Bruch described the
anorexic as having an “aura of special power and super human discipline”
(1974). Ogden (1997, 2002) argued that over the past few decades, diet has
become the perfect vehicle for self-control. Following an examination of
psychological and sociological texts over the twentieth century, Ogden
(1997, 2002) suggested a shift in their model of the individual from a
passive responder, to an interactive individual, to a late-twentieth-century
self who was reflexive and intra-active. Such an individual is characterized
by self-control; it is argued that this focus on self-control is epitomized
by the interest in eating behavior as diet becomes the vehicle for this con-
trol and the anorexic reflects the ultimate self-controlling intra-active
individual.
In summary, food communicates aspects of the self in terms of sexual-
ity, conflicts between guilt and pleasure, and eating and denial, and is a
statement of self-control.

Figure 4.4 Food as self-control. (Source: Advertising Archives.)

Image not available in the electronic edition