Celebrity Anorexics and Fasting Girls: Purveyors of the Victorian “Culture of Anorexia”

Abstract

This Master’s thesis explores the historical continuity between Victorian fasting girls and 20th and 21st century anorexic celebrities. Both of these groups contributed to the spread of the Victorian “culture of anorexia”. The three main pathways of parallelisms between Victorian fasting girls and anorexic celebrities are seen through their embodying of aesthetic perfection (i.e., most significantly in the extremes of the sick role and waifhood), self-mastery and/or spirituality, and their isolation from normative society. Another major aspect of this Master’s thesis is the exploration of “pro-ana” online communities, and how these online spaces disseminate the culture of anorexia through Victorian fasting girls and anorexic celebrities. Case studies and examples of Victorian fasting girls and anorexic celebrities will be analyzed. I have employed a text analysis when looking at different posts and interactions between users on “pro-ana” online communities, namely Eating Disorder Support Forum (EDSF). The first part of this thesis is concerned with the historical background of anorexia nervosa and anorexia mirabilis, as well as defining “pro-ana”. Next, Victorian fasting girls Sarah Jacob and Mollie Fancher are analyzed and their biographies are compared. The ways in which they portray the “sick role” and become arbiters of Victorian spirituality is studied. The methods in which they were stigmatized by medical professionals and othered by mainstream society are explored. The second part of this thesis looks at the case studies of Karen Carpenter and Kate Moss and their contributions as anorexic celebrities. I provide a disclaimer that Kate Moss has never been confirmed to have anorexia; rather she is accused of this in the media. I explore the ways they embody the “waif” role and how they have been constructed as masters of self-discipline through popular media discourse. The third part of the Master’s thesis builds on the case studies of Victorian fasting girls and anorexic celebrities, and looks at their influence in the spread of the Victorian “culture of anorexia” within “pro-ana” online communities. Search queries and anorexia-related search terms have been entered into the engine of EDSF. Smaller sample sizes from these results have been textually analyzed and their individual meanings are explored in the closing chapters of the thesis. This thesis contributes to the existing research on the Victorian history of anorexia nervosa as well as its historical relevance within the “pro-ana” online sphere.