The Banality of Disordered Eating: The Ethical Implications of Social Media Trends and Disordered Eating
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Normalizing harmful disordered eating behaviors via social media trends has the capacity to trivialize and even glamorize practices in disordered eating. Influencers engaging and posting content related to disordered eating habits is a reoccurring phenomenon on social platforms and within online communities. Disordered eating under the guise of social media trends leads to further desensitization and moral disengagement which can allow such behavior to be overlooked as being unoriginal and innocuous. This project utilizes the concept of the “banality of evil” from Hannah Arendt (1963/2006) as a lens for exploring modern phenomena on social media as it relates to disordered eating masked as innocent and popular social media trends. The aim of this project is to not necessarily cast blame or shame on influencers/content creators for their perpetration of disordered eating but instead highlight the danger of unreflective communicative engagement with social media phenomena. This work discusses trends such as “girl diner,” mukbangs, the high protein craze, clean eating, as well as “ingredient households.”
