The Origins of Anorexia

In Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s essay, “The Origins of Anorexia Nervosa”, the reader is educated concerning how anorexia was first discovered and the reasons it appeared. Young girls first refused to eat simply because of the marital pressures placed on them at an early age or simply to gain attention. Anorexia was a polite way to be defiant to ones parents. Food was so associated with love and caring in the Victorian era that a refusal to eat was seen as a refusal to accept love. Love was then poured on the young woman to somehow reverse how she obviously felt.


In our modern era, I think that the association between love and food has diminished to almost no connection at all. We see the showing of love with the giving of food in older generations but the younger generations show no trace of such affection associated with food. We see food as an indulgence, not as something that brings us together and shows our affection for one another.


Young girls now associate food with being overweight, not with affection. The reasons for Anorexia have shifted. Young girls refuse to eat now because food is seen as a bad thing that will make you fat. It is seen as a bad thing, not a good thing. However, the same rings true through the history of Anorexia. Young women manipulate their food intake to get what they want. In the Victorian era, young women wanted to be lavished with attention and they refused to eat to obtain that. Now, young women want to be known as having a “perfect” body, to be as slim as possible. They achieve this by refusing to eat.