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Sex Roles, Vol. 51, Nos. 7/8, October 2004 ( C 2004)Book ReviewFeeding Anorexia: Gender and Power at a Treatment Center. Helen Gremillion, London, UK,
Duke University Press; 2003 246 pp. $21.95.Hellen Gremillion assembled this text that will
broaden practitioners perspectives on treating eating disorders with therapeutic modalities that apply
theories of gender and power. Gremillion is an assistant professor at the University of Indiana Bloomington in the Department of Gender Studies; her areas of expertise are (1) medicine, culture, and the
body; (2) gender, power, and therapeutic practice;(3) feminist ethnographies; (4) popular culture and
consumerism; and (5) gender and identity formation
in the contemporary United States. She developed
this book from her ethnographic study of a psychiatric facility in North America that specializes in the
treatment of anorexia nervosa (AN). Geared primarily toward anthropologists, this book would be of interest to other mental health professionals involved
in the biopsychosocial treatment of eating disorders,
especially therapists who employ feminist/object relations theory.This book follows a standard format with chapters focused on crafting resourceful bodies and
achieving identities (i.e., the fit body is an icon
for achieving individualism in this culture), minimal
mothering, gender in the treatment team, and atypical patient profiles. At the end of each chapter is a
case study that exemplifies the chapters theme and
documents the authors observations with inpatients
at the facility.The first chapter, Crafting Resourceful Bodies
and Achieving Identities, describes Gremillions
theory about AN that suggests that the disorder results from an inadequate sense of self that functions to substitute for an overrigid, highly controlled
pseudo-autonomy. On the one hand, a hospital is
very meticulous in calculating how many calories
these girls consume, and, on the other hand, the patients are spending their meals adding the numbers
as a form of resistance. Gremillion argues that in
this approach resistance to treatment is often seen as
a sign of healthy independence and is encouraged;