Statement of purpose: I want to finish my damn PhD

Within the past decade, popular media has begun to pay attention to the websites of young men and women with eating disorders. One of the most sensational type of these websites is the pro-anorexia or pro-bulimia (“pro-ana” and “pro-mia,” respectively) site. These sites function to either encourage those with eating disorders to continue to starve themselves, or they function to tout anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa not as diseases, but as lifestyle choices. Traditionally, eating disorders are the territory of psychologists. Psychologists studying eating disorders focus on the environment in which the disorder develops and exists, but this usually refers to the nuclear family or the visual media that they contend spawns this bodily deviance. I plan to use symbolic interaction to study anorexia and bulimia in a sociological context, first examining how one becomes diagnosed with an eating disorder, then to examine the recovery movement within eating disorders.

From there, I plan to examine how communities of those with eating disorders function, particularly in the use of electronic media. While media studies and journalism have examined the impact of general media on the wider community, I am particularly concerned with recovery and pro-ana/mia websites, web logs/online diaries, and message boards and how they function to help or hinder recovery. In order to assess how these web groups function, I will invite people who have eating disorder websites (either pro-anorexia/bulimia or pro-recovery) to complete an online self-assessment of their eating behaviors, onset of behavior, time spent online visiting other pro-anorexia/bulimia or pro-recovery sites, and other questions to assess how they think the online community has impacted their eating disorder. I will offer an option to complete a further interview via telephone, for further assessment.

In my MA thesis, which focused on eugenics decisions in the US from 1880 to 1920, I argued that shifting social mores created an environment where a woman’s deviant behavior of any kind could have her labeled as incompetent and sterilized against her will. I used symbolic interaction, labeling theory, and social psychology to explain that sterilization was a punishment meted out by parents to control their daughter’s bodily deviance. While that project focused on deviance of a sexual nature, my proposed dissertation project will focus on extreme weight control as a form of bodily deviance, and the pro-recovery and pro-eating disorder communities as filters through which this deviance is processed.

I am especially interested in this subject area because of my experience with eating disorders, both personally and professionally. While an undergraduate at Purdue University, I assisted in writing a handbook about eating disorders that was targeted toward the gay and lesbian community.

The University of Maryland appeals to me because of the work of Professor Melissa Milkie on pervasive beauty images and their effect on girls, and Professor John Robinson’s work on the social implications of the internet.