All the better to see you with my dear : the discursive production of body image in psychological and popular texts

Abstract

Experimental psychology's 'body image' research is based on a fundamental split between mind and body, individual and society. Reproducing dominant assumptions about language, meaning and subjectivity, body image researchers name, describe and classify women who experience distress and anxiety with food, eating and body size as evidencing individual pathology - 'body image disturbance' or 'body image dissatisfaction'. Over the past five years, experimental psychology's discourse of body image has become popularised within women's magazines providing women with a psychological explanation for their experiences of embodiment. Psychological experts provide 'facts' about women's 'body image problems' offering advice and psychological treatments for these problems. This thesis provides a critique of experimental psychology's body image research, from a critical feminist perspective. From a perspective of the body as a social product, it offers an analysis of how women's bodies are produced within psychological and popular magazine texts. The possible effects of 'body image' discourse on women are discussed.