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"I'm a walking eating disorder": Framing and Collective Identity in Eating Disorder Support Groups.
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“I’m a walking eating disorder”:
Gender, Illness, and Identity in Eating Disorder Support Groups
Jessica Powers Koski
Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
January 2008
Abstract
Considered in conjunction with psychological research highlighting the contribution of gender roles in the etiology of eating disorders, recent sociological findings pointing to the mobilization potential of self-help suggest that eating disorder support groups may be effective because they encourage feminist identity development. Participant observation in four different groups over the course of 10 months reveals that eating disorder support groups do possess feminist potential. Participants not only learn to trust in their experience but also to be more assertive in personal relationships and to affirm the value of emotion, particularly anger. However, participants do not identify as women but rather on the narrower basis of a shared disorder. As a result, the eating disorder, not gender, legitimates participants’ feminist achievements. Participants subsequently undergo an identity transformation in which eating disordered becomes participants’ primary identity. Continued identification as eating disordered is necessary for participants’ to enjoy its legitimating power. Two processes enable this transformation: frame extension and disease extension. Such findings carry both practical and theoretical implications. First, the study offers insight into how clinicians might improve support groups. Second, the study suggests a need to reframe the debate centered on self-help’s mobilization potential and to further investigate the role of self-labeling in mental illness. Continued exploration of self-labeling, as well as frame and disease extension, is necessary to fully appreciate the impact of employing illness narratives strategically as a means of achieving desired social ends.
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“I’m a walking eating disorder”:
Gender, Illness, and Identity in Eating Disorder Support Groups
Jessica Powers Koski
Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
January 2008
Abstract
Considered in conjunction with psychological research highlighting the contribution of gender
roles in the etiology of eating disorders, recent sociological findings pointing to the mobilization
potential of self-help suggest that eating disorder support groups may be effective because they
encourage feminist identity development. Participant observation in four different groups over
the course of 10 months reveals that eating disorder support groups do possess feminist potential.
Participants not only learn to trust in their experience but also to be more assertive in personal
relationships and to affirm the value of emotion, particularly anger. However, participants do
not identify as women but rather on the narrower basis of a shared disorder. As a result, the
eating disorder, not gender, legitimates participants’ feminist achievements. Participants
subsequently undergo an identity transformation in which eating disordered becomes
participants’ primary identity. Continued identification as eating disordered is necessary for
participants’ to enjoy its legitimating power. Two processes enable this transformation: frame
extension and disease extension. Such findings carry both practical and theoretical implications.
First, the study offers insight into how clinicians might improve support groups. Second, the
study suggests a need to reframe the debate centered on self-help’s mobilization potential and to
further investigate the role of self-labeling in mental illness. Continued exploration of self-
labeling, as well as frame and disease extension, is necessary to fully appreciate the impact of
employing illness narratives strategically as a means of achieving desired social ends.
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