Normalized Elites: Rethinking Doping as Abnormal Practice: Rethinking doping as abnormal practice

This chapter examines two cases of problems of the body that have utilized the Internet to promote their views and state their claims; one of the cases is seeking a form of demedicalization while the other is making claims for medicalization. The Internet is truly an interactive marketplace of communication about specific illnesses as well as discussions about health and treatments. Thus the Internet has become a repository of lay knowledge, as well as a medium for promoting alternative and challenging perspectives about particular problems and disorders. Whether these web groups become a significant force and harbinger for change in the medicalization-demedicalization process, or whether they will be relegated to an interesting footnote in social and medical history. Contrasting and challenging medical definitions, so-called pro-ana websites and online communities present a view that rejects the medical perspective and offers an alternative stance on extreme dieting and thinness.