Lightness and Eating Disorders
Lightness and Eating Disorders
This chapter draws on literary and artistic sources (Kundera, Dickinson, Giacometti, Modigliani, Sartre) to explain the value of lightness. It shows that the pursuit of lightness is not a contemporary phenomenon, contrary to what many people believe. Victorian literature is replete with slim and aerial heroines. Slimness and lightness symbolize values that are part of Western morality. It argues that the value of lightness is moral in nature, and that the pursuit of thinness is not the result of an aesthetic choice, but reveals adhesion to a cluster of moral values.
Keywords: lightness, fear, intrusions, slimness, literature, arts
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