Reducing the Rise of Anorexia Nervosa: Tony Blair and the Media in the millennial history of eating disorders
Content warning: Discussion of eating disorders.
By Katie Light, Third-Year History
In 2022, hospital admissions for those with eating disorders rose by 84% over five years (NHS, 2022). This continues to this day and was made worse by COVID-19, as NHS figures showed 24,268 admissions for eating disorders in 2020/2021, which rose from 13,219 in 2015/16.
Due to this rise, Britain’s leading eating disorder charity, Beat, is calling for the government to make changes concerning social media, prevention and current government policies. This is especially as the government abandoned the prospect of creating a 10-year cross-Governmental Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan for England in January 2023.
Yet, that is only the tip of the iceberg. In 2020, the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee published their report, that acted to limit excessive advertising of ‘unhealthy’ food and place pressure on the food industry to reduce salt, sugar and ‘unhealthy’ fats. This also saw the introduction of calories on menus, as of April 6th, 2022, which has had a detrimental impact on those with eating disorders. Additionally, in 2019, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Chair, Bernard Jenkin, found ‘serious failings’ in the NHS for those with eating disorders, as doctors had little training. Doctors still focus on Body Mass Index (BMI), as a sign of eating disorders, despite the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommending avoiding this.
Social Media also plays a large role in this, especially TikTok and Instagram, which has seen a re-emergence of ‘heroin chic’. This was a style from the 1990s, that promoted dark circles, pointy bodily features and pale skin. Social media spread eating disorder recipes and encourages people to lose weight. A study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate in 2022, found that TikTok shows eating disorder-related content to teens within 8 minutes of them registering with the social media platform. In turn, a recent study of 1,000 adolescents’ social media use, found that nearly 52% of girls and 45% of boys had an eating disorder. Despite this, the Government’s Online Safety Bill is not strict enough, as the Bill only applies to those under 18, which ignores adults.
The rise of eating disorders is not anything new for the UK, as there were increases in the 1990s and 2000s. Studies by Josephine Holland et al, a Mental Health Specialist, looked at trends in hospital admission rates for anorexia nervosa in Oxford between 1968 and 2011, as well as in England between 1990 and 2011. Their research evidenced that anorexia nervosa occurred at a greater rate, as admission rates increased substantially. This is further shown in Nadia Micali et al’s study that concluded that there was a ‘significant increase’ in eating disorders between 2000-2009.
What makes this occurrence so important is that it can be used to explain the contemporary rise in eating disorders. To do this, government policy and the media are vital points to explore.
Government Policy: Tony Blair and ‘healthy living’
Tony Blair, the Labour leader between 1997-2007, left a legacy on the NHS, but this was not a highly beneficial one. Health journalists, such as Hannah Brown, wrote in 2007, how he was hasty and created a period of instability, as New Labour decreased clinicians’ ability to care for patients.
Blair, most notably, produced a ‘healthy living’ speech in 2006. He primarily focused on obesity in this speech, which he saw as ‘rising rapidly’. To supposedly help this, Blair acted to ban poor meat, fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate in school meals from September 2006. He wanted schoolchildren to eat good meat, fish and poultry, as well as two vegetables and fruit in every meal. The Education Bill (2004) was part of this, as it banned the selling of junk food and fizzy drinks in vending machines. Blair further claimed that he formed ‘very effective partnerships’ with the NHS, as he had 1,200 health trainers in place to advise people in making good lifestyles, as well as increasing the number of qualified dieticians by 50% since 1997.
However, Blair’s policy had adverse effects, as there was a dramatic rise in eating disorders after 2006. This reflects how damaging this ruling is between what is ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, as well as the lack of preventions that Blair put in place. Academic specialists on eating disorders, such as Janet Treasure and David Collier (2004), have noted how the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food is a catalyst for anorexia nervosa, as it impacts their perception of themselves in a damaging way. If one does not eat in a ‘healthy’ way, they force shame on themselves and force themselves to exercise, to feel better about themselves. To avoid being ‘unhealthy’, people become dangerously selective of the food they eat, and the quantity. Thus, presenting that Blair’s idea of ‘healthy living’ was not so healthy after all.
The Media and Social Discourses of Fatphobia
The rise of anorexia nervosa in the 2000s was greatly influenced by the media, as it spread ideals focusing on appearance. There was also a millennial rhetoric of ‘fatphobia’, meaning the stigmatisation of obesity, which focused on ‘heroin chic’, that had grown through the 1990s. Within this, phrases such as “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” or “when you think you feel hungry, you’re actually thirsty” became casual rhetoric. Additionally, bodies were scrutinised as undesirable, such as Kate Winslet or the fictional Bridget Jones.
Notably, these vernaculars became central to media, which influenced the increase in eating disorders. A very dangerous example of this was ‘Pro-ana’ websites, which shared information, encouraging those with an eating disorder. Additionally, magazine covers focused on thin models, such as Kate Moss, which promoted the need to be skinny. Professor of Psychiatry and Specialist in eating disorders at King’s College London, Janet Treasure, targeted magazine covers for being ‘toxic’ and exerting a ‘size-zero culture’, as it formed eating disorders because it created a hyper fixation on body image. A search on the Daily Mirror’s archive returns a result of nearly 800 images of extremely thin women, between 1995 and 2005 (Dyhouse, 2013). This speaks to the sheer volume of images of women, that were spread through the media. These images exerted themselves onto impressionable adolescents and led to an obsession with how their bodies looked, thus contributing to the rise in eating disorders.
Conclusion
Government policy and the media were thoroughly at play between 1995-2009 and arguably led to a substantial rise in eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa. However, these factors are still at play today. This is primarily seen in the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Report (2020), which has striking similarities to Tony Blair’s ‘Healthy Living’ Speech (2006). Both aim to tackle obesity, control the food industry and the idea of ‘healthy’. More importantly, both have had adverse effects, as they have created a rise in eating disorders.
Discourses around bodies, such as heroin chic, have re-emerged in the media, in the same way, that they did in the early 2000s. We are also plagued by TikTok, where bodily shame is further generated and upheld, in a similar vein to Pro-Ana websites.
Therefore, this research serves to convey how the government should remove calories on menus and should form campaigns that create positive behaviour changes, rather than ones that cause obsession. Furthermore, the government needs to recognise the dangers of the media and take more stringent measures to control it. This does not mean banning images of size-zero models, as a cultural historian, Dyhouse suggests but means understanding the dangers of media and having an effective Online Safety Bill to combat it.
Essentially, the 1990s and early 2000s are not a world away, meaning that the government need to become more aware of mental health disorders and the pressures put on society.