Abstract
The pro-anorexia movement (which advocates eating disordered practices as a legitimate lifestyle and identity choice over the internet) has provoked intense public furor since it emerged in the late 1990s. This concern hinges on the status of anorexia as a disease, situating pro-anorexic discourse as not only diseased but dangerous. A critical feminist and Foucauldian reading of this material analyzes the complex negotiations of medical surveillance undertaken by participants in the movement. Disrupting medical knowledge and usurping the medical gaze, participants produce a virtual clinical space that elides medical authority over anorexia and individual anorexic bodies. By intervening in the pattern of medical gaze-diagnosis-treatment in order to teach individuals how to perform a ‘normal’ body, pro-anorexic discourse exposes both the instability of diagnostic criteria and the limits of medical surveillance.
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