Reddit reviews Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa

Fasting Girls: the History of Anorexia Nervosa, by Joan Jacobs Blumberg, is an excellent resource on how eating disorders manifested before the 20th century.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375724486/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_72JEybZQGRK7D

Have you ever read Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa? It's really interesting! It's obviously eating disorder focused but it talks about Victorian Munchies like you mentioned.

I read an interesting history of anorexia in women. The parts on the 16th century are the best. It is definitely a disease rooted in the need for power and control.

There is a fantastic and informative book called Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa by Joan Jacobs Brumberg that I would recommend! It goes into anorexia nervosa throughout history and its origin in religion.

See, I think blaming the media is a convenient scapegoat for the problem.

I did a Google search because I wanted to see the history of mental illness associated with body image, such as anorexia. If the media was truly fueling these problems, you'd see a marked increase in the past couple of decades.

But instead I found a government report that documents the earliest incidents of anoxeria to the 1600s, far before the modern media as we know it existed. And there's a highly rated book on the subject which similarly reveals that anorexia has prevailed in many cultures throughout history, without the modern media.

So it looks like these mental illnesses are inherent in any culture that values the attractiveness of women, or every culture that ever existed in human history.