Expressions of Mind/Body Dualism in Thinspiration
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MIND OVER MATTER: EXPRESSIONS OF MIND/BODY DUALISM IN THINSPIRATION Annamarie O’Brien A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2013 Committee: Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Dr. Rebecca Kinney Dr. Jeremy Wallach © 2013 Annamarie O’Brien All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Thinspiration images, meant to inspire weight-loss, proliferate online through platforms that encourage the circulation of user-generated content. Despite numerous alarmist critiques in mass media about thinspiration and various academic studies investigating ‘pro-anorexia’ sites, surprisingly little attention has been given to the processes of creation and the symbolic potential of thinspiration. This thesis analyzes the formal hybridity of thinspiration, and its use as an expressive medium. The particularities of thinspiration (including its visual characteristics, creative processes, and exhibition) may be considered carefully constructed instances of self- representation, hinging on the expression of beliefs regarding the mind and body. While these beliefs are deeply entrenched in popular body management discourse, they also tend to rely on traditional dualist ideologies. Rather than simply emphasizing slenderness or reiterating standard assumptions about beauty, thinspiration often evokes pain and sadness, and employs truisms about the transcendence of flesh and rebellion against social constraints. By harnessing individualist discourse and the values of mind/body dualism, thinspiration becomes a space in which people struggling with disordered eating and body image issues may cast themselves as active agents—contrary to the image of eating disorders proffered by popular and medical discourse. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Dr. Marilyn Motz, for all of her patience and guidance throughout the past two years, and in the thesis writing process. I would also like to thank Dr. Jeremy Wallach for always encouraging me to expand my work and offering new perspectives, and Dr. Rebecca Kinney for her great advice on both my thesis and everything that comes after-thesis. Each of my committee members provided essential and thoughtful assistance that helped me truly believe in my project (and get it finished). I would also like to thank my past professors and teachers from University of Michigan and the Residential College, as well as Toledo School for the Arts. Without these educational experiences, which encouraged me to pursue my weird interdisciplinary interests, this project would certainly not exist. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and company. Gaby, Tim, Tim, cohort, and friends: thank you for the camaraderie, conversations, emotional support, and occasional necessary distraction. Mom, Dad, Aaron, and Liam: you are the best. I am so grateful for all of your insight, humor, strength, and dependability. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. CONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION OF MIND AND BODY IN THE STUDY OF EATING DISORDERS ........................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER II. READING THE BODY: VISUAL AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THINSPIRATION ....................................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER III. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH SELF-DESTRUCTION .......................... 71 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 97 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 105 vi LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES Figure/Table Page 1.1 Table Summary of Mind/Body Dichotomy ............................................................... 20 1.2 "Eat for energy, not for comfort” ............................................................................... 21 1.3 “Good girls don’t swallow” ....................................................................................... 23 1.4 Somatic Identity ......................................................................................................... 27 1.5 “Your body doesn’t control you” ............................................................................... 28 2.1 Tumblr vs. Blog Content Sharing Interface .............................................................. 38 2.2 Thinspiration Tags ..................................................................................................... 40 2.3 Typical and Extreme Thinspiration Accounts ........................................................... 41 2.4 Model/Fashion Thinspiration ..................................................................................... 46 2.5 Real Girl Thinspiration .............................................................................................. 46 2.6 Text-Image Thinspiration .......................................................................................... 47 2.7 Fitspiration Images ..................................................................................................... 47 2.8 Text Content of Thinspiration Accounts .................................................................... 49 2.9 Archives of Thinspiration .......................................................................................... 50 2.10 "Your body is a blank canvas" ................................................................................... 56 2.11 “I wish I could just cut all the fat off” ....................................................................... 57 2.12 “Dear Self, Don’t eat!” .............................................................................................. 59 2.13 “Mind over Matter” .................................................................................................... 61 2.14 “You are not a slave to your body” ............................................................................ 61 2.15 “I’ll starve myself until I fade away” ......................................................................... 63 2.16 “I just want that thigh gap” ........................................................................................ 63 vii 2.17 “Petite, tiny, small, delicate” ...................................................................................... 69 3.1 Examples of Account Layouts ................................................................................... 75 3.2 Cropping and Alteration of Found Images ................................................................ 82 3.3 Self-Portrait Style Thinspiration ................................................................................ 85 3.4 Depictions of Interior and Corporeal Pain ................................................................. 89 3.5 “It’s not society’s idea of beauty” .............................................................................. 93 4.1 “Hair in Bowl” ........................................................................................................... 101 4.2 "Keep Calm and Love Your Dark Skin” ................................................................... 101 4.3 Male Thinspiration Image .......................................................................................... 102 viii “Just as the experience of cognitive dissonance is disturbing, so the experience of consonance in layer after layer of experience and context after context is satisfying. I have argued before that there are pressures to create consonance between the perception of social and physiological levels of experience […]. Some of my friends still find it unconvincing. I hope to bring them round by going much further….” —Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 74. 1 INTRODUCTION “Only in the metaphor of the body can the concept of pure spirit be grasped at all, and is at the same time cancelled. In their reification the spirits are already negated.” —Theodor Adorno1 According to many cultural theorists, the dualistic construction of the human mind and body, explicated by René Descartes with Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots,2 has shaped dominant discourses about health and morality in the United States and Western Europe. In Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Elizabeth Grosz suggests that current understandings of the body are a legacy of mind/body dualism, or the assumption that “there are two distinct, mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive substances, mind and body, each of which inhabits its own self-contained sphere.”3 The dualistic model of mind and body often figures the mind as an immaterial entity distinct from, and in charge of, the body. Critics of this conception of mind and body find that the duality creates a binary in which the body is denigrated because of its capacity for material degradation, weakness and temptation. Deconstruction of the discourse of mind/body dualism has been central in various critiques of contemporary body management practices, and this discourse has even been suggested to be a cause of disordered eating. The body, as text upon which culture is inscribed, may be shaped in both use and form by this dominant framework. Contemporary conceptions of health and body-shape