The dramatic increase of cases of eating disorders over the past century means that it is now necessary to explore possible reasons for this rise in instances. In this dissertation, I will discuss how complicit capitalism is in eating disorders in women, as it seems that the increase in cases has coincided with the increasing grip capitalism has on the individual. First, using the work of Karl Marx and Jean Baudrillard I will explore the way that the individual within a capitalist society is made to see their body as an object which must be saleable in order to be useful. Due to the social prestige of a thin body, we see its owner as having more value than the owner of a fat body. Second, I will explore how the impacts of capitalist society on a woman can lead to her developing an eating disorder. Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of the socialisation of the woman shows how a woman is forced to see herself as an object belonging to the male subject. She is left feeling that her body is the only object she has any mastery over and makes it thinner in order to show this mastery. Julia Kristeva’s abjection will be used to show how the woman is forced into ‘choosing’ her status of an object within a capitalist society and that consequently she feels she must be the perfect object of desire. Lastly, I use the work of Massimo Recalcati to explore the direct connections between eating disorders and the capitalist world. Within capitalism we are encouraged to fear the Other, this makes the individual desire to cut them off – which they do through food. Recalcati also suggests that capitalist society makes us see the lack which causes our desire as a void which must be filled, and people with eating disorders do so through food – that being the presence of food or the absence of it. I will explore each of these sections separately before concluding with a synthesis of all of them.