Anorexia Nervosa Analysis

In the article, “ Pictures of Health: Medical Photography and the Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa,” the author, Erin O’Conner, sheds light on the harmful influences that photography had during the emergence of anorexia nervosa in the late 19th century, and the limiting effects it had on studying, understanding, and treating this unfortunate disease. While her piece as a whole presented various strong arguments as to how and why photography negatively affected and influenced the views of anorexia nervosa, what truly stood out to me the most was, by far, the highly overall gendered views that the late 19th century had on not only anorexia nervosa, but also on women’s health as a whole. For me, when I think of an unhealthy woman, I don’t normally …show more content…
Unlike other forms of diseases that are normally treated with immense seriousness, the diagnosis, study, and treatment of anorexia nervosa was often left at the surface-level, leaving no desire to seek further explanation as to why women were self-starving. This idea stood out to me mainly because it speaks volumes as to how little women were valued and how much they were sexualized. Had the lives of women been valued and appreciated more, these physicians would have gone out to investigate the real cause for this disease and not merely settled with an effect of anorexia to be its own cause, as well. As O’Conner beautifully explains, “physicians argued circularly that the anorexic body was emaciated because it was anorexic, and strenuously resisted the notion that this body might be anorexic because of something else” (557). Clearly, as can be noted through her quote, physicians were not fully educated on the disease and, yet, they continued to resist other possible explanations for anorexia. Without a doubt, the lack of necessity to further investigate led to the superficial level of treatment that, many would argue, mirrors the superficial level of diagnosis and examination. Instead