Performing Unfeminine Femininity: A Performance of Identity Analysis of Bulimic Women's Personal Narratives

This study explores the emergence of the bulimic identity through an analysis of the personal narrative performances of five young women recovering from bulimia nervosa. The bulimic self emerges as the storyteller, narrator, character, and audience within the context of the narrative performances. The participants take on the roles of the authoritative narrator guiding the action and of their own audience, actively engaging in the constitution of their bulimic identities. The ordered self and disordered self emerge simultaneously, both as an explanation for a stigmatized performance of unfeminine femininity and as a response to a sense of failed femininity.