Technologies of the Gendered Body Week 7

The “obesity epidemic”“the millennium disease” (www.itof.org)NAO 2001:

18 million sick days annually£1/2 billion in costs to NHS£2 billion in associated costs

Foresight Report (2007)Tackling Obesity – Future Choices

“By 2050, 60% of men and 40% of women could be clinically obese.”

Additional health costs of £45.5 billion per year

“The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone and demands a societal approach”

“Preventing obesity is a societal challenge, similar to climate change.”

The causes of obesity…Obesogenic environments

Cheap, low quality foodIncreased reliance on motorised transportLess exercise

PovertyGenetics

The war on obesityLifestyleThe “common sense

cure”Individual

responsibility

Ogilvie, D. et al. “Obesity: the elephant in the corner”. BMJ 2005;331:1545-1548

“I feel incredibly happy with my new figure. I don’t need to blame myself any more – fat happened to me like it happens to a lot of people – now I’ve dealt with it!”

(Closer 14-20 Oct, 2006)

Gendering fatnessWomen’s bodies are held to a higher

standard of slimnessWorrying about weight is an element of

normative femininity Weight loss interventions target / appeal

primarily to women (slimming groups / surgery / food programmes)

Women tend to be blamed for the fatness of others

Commercial slimming groupsSlimming industry is worth approximately

£2bn per yearApprox 17million people dieting per year (

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/789620.stm)People join slimming groups multiple times “Meeting members typically enroll to attend

consecutive weekly meetings and have historically demonstrated a consistent re-enrollment pattern across many years” (Weight Watchers website, cited in Heyes,2006: 129)

Producing disciplined bodiesFocusing on minute detailsPanoptic culture“Members are required to write down in a

food journal everything they eat, along with its Points value, and are also expected to check off six glasses of water, two servings of milk products, and five servings of fruit and vegetables per day” (Heyes, 2006: 134)

(semi-) public weigh-ins

Producing disciplined bodiesSelf-surveillance:“This means that you not only need to look

and dress like a thin person, but you have to think like one also. The great this is, you’ve been rehearsing for this part during the past few weeks of maintenance instruction, and now it’s time to perform. And the best part is that there’s no need to be nervous since the only audience is you.” (“Staying the Course” WW leaflet, cited in Heyes, 2006: 134).

Docile bodiesSusan Bordo, Sandra Bartky – use

Foucault’s module of power and docility to describe the repressive nature of diet culture (e.g. ideal images / surveillance / minute attention to detail, especially for women)

Cressida Heyes (2006) – “Dieting has a cultural resonance beyond the primarily repressive and disciplinary picture I’ve painted here” (p. 135).

Heyes, 2006: 128“On the one hand, deliberately losing weight

by controlling diet involves the self-construction of a docile body through attention to the minutest detail. On the other hand, becoming aware of exactly how and what one eats and drinks, realising that changing old patterns can have embodied effects, or setting a goal and moving toward it, are all enabling acts of self-transformation.”

Dieting as self-developmentHupomnemataSelf-knowledgeNew skills and capacitiesMeeting normative gendered rolesCare of the self

Gimlin (2007)Slimming groups are not experienced in

the same way by all membersAge affects the meanings of body size in

different contextsOlder women were able to account for

failure more easily than younger womenOlder women had more realistic weight

loss goalsSlimming group as a social function(see Lee Monaghan’s work about men’s

slimming groups)

ConclusionObese bodies are increasingly repudiated

in contemporary societyBody size is experienced, perceived and

managed in gendered ways.Commercial slimming organisations are

good examples of the production disciplined bodies

The production of the disciplined (docile) body is not only experienced as repressive.

Different bodies experience diet culture in different ways