Introducing Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management

Abstract

Issues of weight, size and body management have become highly salient for those living in Westernised cultures at the beginning of the 21st century. At this time, one of the most powerful ways in which bodies are given meaning is through the sociocultural significance accorded to body weight. Rather than existing merely as 'undesirable' and 'desirable' aesthetic forms, fatness, thinness and emaciation are imbued with potent cultural meanings, and personal characteristics are attributed to individuals based upon their physical dimensions. At the height of the so-called worldwide obesity epidemic, it is now generally inconceivable to consider that someone with a body considered fat is also healthy (in either mind or body). Furthermore, adiposity has become associated with being 'at risk' for the development of associated health problems regardless of the actual health status of fat bodies. Poor health has been added to the collection of negative associations that cohere around large bodies, including laziness, stupidity, unattractiveness, psychopathology, badness and immorality (Campos, 2004; Gard & Wright, 2005; Joannisse & Synnott, 1999). In contrast, and as many commentators have previously discussed, in Westernised societies the (appropriately) slender body continues to be revered as the sign of a well-regulated life reflective of a multiplicity of individual achievements including, among others, health, normality, sex appeal, success, beauty and control (e.g., Bordo, 1993; Burns, 2004; Lupton, 1996; Malson, 1998).