"But how can a cultural analysis account for the fact that only “some” girls and women develop full-blown eating disorders, despite the fact that we are all subject to the same sociocultural pressures? Don’t you require the postulation of a distinctive underlying pathology (familial or psychological) to explain why some individuals are more vulnerable than others? The first of these questions is frequently presented by medical professionals as though it dealt a decisive blow to the cultural argument, and it is extraordinary how often it is indeed accepted as a devastating critique. It is based, however, on an important and common misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of the feminist position as involving the positing of an “identical” cultural situation for all “women” rather than the description of ideological and institutional parameters governing the construction of “gender” in our culture. The difference is crucial, yet even such a sophisticated thinker as Joan Brumberg misses it completely. “Current cultural models,” Brumberg argues, “fail to explain why so many individuals “do not” develop the disease, even though they have been exposed to the same cultural environment.” But of course we are “not” all exposed to “the same cultural environment.” What we “are” all exposed to, rather, are homogenizing and normalizing images and ideologies concerning “femininity” and female beauty. Those images and ideology press for conformity to dominant cultural norms. But people’s identities are not formed “only” through interaction with such images, powerful as they are. The unique configurations (of ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, religion, genetics, education, family, age, and so forth) that make up each person’s life will determine how each “actual” woman is affected by our culture. The search for distinctive patterns, profiles, and abnormalities underlying anorexia nervosa and bulimia is thus not, as man researchers claim, “conceptually” demanded; a myriad of heterogeneous factors, “family resemblances” rather than essential features, unpredictable combinations of elements, may be at work in determining who turns out to be most susceptible. It may be, too, that patterns and profiles could one be assembled but are now breaking apart under the pressure of an increasingly coercive mass culture with its compelling, fabricated images of beauty and success."