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of emotion and anger (Hydén 1997). After demonstrating the groups’ feminist potential, I will
argue that participants do not collectively identify as women but rather on the basis of a shared
disorder. As a result, illness acts as the basis for participants’ feminist achievements, effectively
creating a disincentive for recovery. Participants must continue to identify as eating disordered
in order to assert themselves and their anger. I then highlight two processes that enable
participants’ continued identification as disordered: frame extension and disease extension.
Together, frame extension and disease extension reinforce the eating disorder as participants’
primary identity.
No Expert Needed: Developing a Fortified Sense of Self
Through support group participation, sufferers learn to recognize and label their eating
disorders. Participants come to the group requiring external validation in order to recognize their
“disorder.” Such validation typically comes from a parent, doctor, or medical emergency. The
most dramatic example is that of Lindsay. In introducing herself to the group, Lindsay explained
that although she had likely been dealing with her eating disorder for 15 years, it was not until
recently, when she required the installation of a pace maker as a result of extensive purging, that
she was able to admit it to herself. It required a near death experience for Lindsay to be able to
admit that she had an eating disorder. Although she implicitly acknowledges that she knew she
had a problem previously, she would not label it as such without medical validation. In a similar
vain, Alice commented that she just had blood work done and was waiting for the results. She
further explained that the lab results will likely come back normal and that would be her reason
not to seek treatment. Her decision to undergo the tests indicates that she recognizes that she
does in fact have a problem. However, one’s own recognition that one has a problem is not
adequate cause to seek treatment.
In contrast, veteran participants express frustration that others do not recognize their
“problem,” often because participants’ have stabilized physically. Despite the absence of eating
disorder behaviors, and external validation, veteran participants are able to declare confidently
that they continue to struggle. For example, one participant expressed frustration that her family
no longer recognized her as “sick” because she had gained weight. In her words, “I look a lot
better now, but the sickness is still there.” One woman bemoaned her mother, who refused to
recognize that her daughter had a “problem” because her weight was not low enough.
Convention