Hunger Strike: The Anorectic's Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age

In her examination of the anorectic's struggle, Susie Orbach sees women's eating problems as symbolizing the battle for autonomy in which every woman is engaged by identifying the first and most important arena of contention, a woman's body. As the author demonstrates, a woman's obsessive monitoring, severe reduction in food intake and the accompanying bingeing are a reflection of society's demands that she does not take up too much space, that she looks a certain way in order to be acceptable and that she curtails her needs in general. Yet anorexia also expresses a rebellion againts such ideas. It is, at another level, a cry of protest, a hunger strike against the contradictory and intolerable demands women face in contemporary society.