Table Of ContentCritical Bodies
Representations, Identities and Practices
of Weight and Body Management
Edited by
Sarah Riley, Maree Burns, Hannah Frith,
Sally Wiggins and Pirkko Markula
Critical Bodies
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Critical Bodies
Representations, Identities and Practices of
Weight and Body Management
Edited by
Sarah Riley, Maree Burns, Hannah Frith, Sally Wiggins
and Pirkko Markula
© Sarah Riley,Maree Burns,Hannah Frith,Sally Wiggins and
Pirkko Markula 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-51773-8
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work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Introducing Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and
Practices of Weight and Body Management 1
Pirkko Markula, Maree Burns and Sarah Riley
Section I Representations and Constructions of
Body Weight and Body Management 23
Sally Wiggins
1 Deconstructing Un/Healthy Body-weight and
Weight Management 27
Helen Malson
2 ‘I Feel Ridiculous about Having Had It’ – Critical Readings of
Lived and Mediated Stories on Eating Disorders 43
Paula Saukko
3 Learning to Be Healthy, Dying to Be Thin:
The Representation of Weight via Body Perfection
Codes in Schools 60
Emma Rich and John Evans
Section II Constructing Embodied Identities 77
Hannah Frith
4 Starving in Cyberspace: The Construction of Identity on
‘Pro-eating-disorder’ Websites 81
Katy Day and Tammy Keys
5 Body Talk: Negotiating Body Image and Masculinity 101
Rosalind Gill
6 Feminist Object Relations Theory and Eating
‘Disorders’ 117
Colleen Heenan
v
vi Contents
Section III Meanings of Body Management Practices:
Women’s Experiences 135
Pirkko Markula
7 Dis/Orders of Weight Control: Bulimic and/or
‘Healthy Weight’ Practices 139
Maree Burns and Nicola Gavey
8 Sustaining Imbalance – Evidence of Neglect in the Pursuit of
Nutritional Health 155
Lucy Aphramor and Jacqui Gingras
9 Older and Younger Women’s Experiences of
Commercial Weight Loss 175
Debra Gimlin
Conclusion
Critical Bodies: Discourses of Health, Gender and Consumption 193
Sarah Riley, Hannah Frith, Sally Wiggins, Pirkko Markula
and Maree Burns
Index 204
List of Figures
Figure 8.1 ‘Size Matters’ Leaflet (BDA, 2004) 161
vii
Notes on Contributors
Lucy Aphramor, RD, is a Senior Health-promotion Specialist in diet and car-
diovascular health. She is also a senior research assistant at the Applied
Research Centre – Health and Lifestyle Interventions, Coventry University,
UK. Her current research looks at the impact of size-discrimination on
policy, research directions and on people’s health and health-seeking
behaviour.
Maree Burns is the coordinator of the Eating Difficulties Education
Network in Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests include exam-
ining discourses and representations of disordered eating, obesity and
weight/body management, and their constitutive impacts on subjectivity
and practice. She has published several articles on the social construction
of bulimia, bulimic practices and issues of subjectivity/embodiment.
Maree is currently co-editing a book with Helen Malson entitled Critical
Feminist Perspectives on Eating Dis/Orders (Psychology Press, forthcoming).
Katy Day is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Metropolitan
University, where she is a founding member of the Feminism & Health
Research Group. Her research interests centre on the social construction
of femininity, and include women and alcohol; women’s aggression and
violence; and the body, food and eating.
John Evansis Professor of Sociology of Education and Physical Education
in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University.
His publications include Teaching in Transition: The Challenge of Mixed
Ability Grouping (Open University Press, 1985); Politics, Policy and Practice
in Physical Education (with Dawn Penney, F&FH Spon, 1999); Educational
Policy and Social Reproduction (with John Fitz and Brian Davies, Routledge,
2005); PE, Sport and Schooling: Studies in the Sociology of PE (1986);
Teachers, Teaching and Control (1988); Equality, Education and Physical
Education (1993); and Knowledge and Control: Studies in the Sociology of
Physical Education and Health (Routledge, 2004). He is editor of a special
edition of the Curriculum Journal, International Perspectives on Physical
Education, and founding editor of the international journal Sport, Education
and Society. He has published widely in the sociology of education and
physical education. Currently, his research with Dr Emma Rich centres
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
on the relationships between obesity discourse, formal education and
the development of eating disorders. Dr Rich and Prof. Evans lead an
ESRC-funded research investigation entitled The Impact of Health
Imperatives on Schools.
Hannah Frith is a Lecturer in Research with the Bristol Doctorate in
Clinical Psychology at the University of Plymouth, UK. Her research
explores the intersection between identity processes and physical
appearance and embodiment. Her recent projects include a photo-
graphic study of women’s experiences of chemotherapy, a photographic
account of adolescents’ experience of cancer treatment, and an explo-
ration of girls’ use of clothing in their identity projects using video,
photographs and interviews.
Rosalind Gillis Professor of Social Psychology and Cultural Theory at the
Open University, UK. Her work is centrally concerned with gender iden-
tities and complex inequalities. She is the co-author of The Gender
Technology Relation (with Keith Grint) and the author of Gender and the
Media (Polity Press, 2007). She is currently writing a book about narra-
tive analysis and co-editing (with Roisin Ryan Flood) a collection on
Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process(Routledge, forthcoming).
Debra Gimlinlectures in sociology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Her
first book, Body Work: Beauty and Self-image in American Culture (University
of California Press, 2002) examined the linguistic identity work per-
formed by women in various sites of body management. Debra’s current
research, which is funded by the British Academy, focuses on cross-
national differences in women’s narratives of embodiment.
Jacqui Gingras, Ph.D., RD, is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University’s
School of Nutrition in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her research programme
involves identifying and acknowledging the social, cultural and political
determinants of body-weight and health. She has an interest in how food-
and-nutrition knowledge is constituted, legitimised and communicated
through power and discourse in anticipation of individual/population
behaviour change. Her current research engages autoethnographic, phe-
nomenological and arts-informed methods as a means for situated and
particular understandings of dietetic theory, education and practice.
Colleen Heenan is a Psychotherapist and University Lecturer. She has
worked therapeutically in the field of women’s ‘eating disorders’ since
