No abstract

By discursively analyzing blogs and popular press articles written by people who discontinued using Fitbit, this article reveals the incongruities between the tracking of our bodily information, the communication of that bodily information via wearables, and the promises of changing of users’ attitudes and behaviors with how wearables are actually used in practice. The discourses of discontinuance in this analysis also reveal how former Fitbit engenders feelings of disconnection and may affect users in detrimental ways. As a result, and despite the predominant framing and conceptualization of wearables as “motivating,” “empowering,” and “useful” (self)surveillance tools, I argue that Fitbit is an example of a failure both of self-surveillance and of wearable communication for helping users achieve their health and fitness goals. Finally, I argue that we need to start thinking about wearable communication like other forms of communication that are inherently inconsistent and contradictory, and that can be accepted, negotiated, or rejected by users. Instead of focusing on the disciplinary or controlling potentials of wearables as a form of self-surveillance, this paper considers the resistance and negotiations inherent in the (dis)use of wearables, and demonstrates the necessity of exploring both wearables and surveillance itself in relation to fundamental understandings of communication.

I could not have finished this without the support of my parents, Tom and Karla Zimdars, my brothers, John and Zach Zimdars; and my good friend, Jenna Marchant. I also feel so grateful for my Communication Studies colleagues-for-life, who put up with me being "two-points Mish," humbled me with their intelligence, and made me laugh and smile during my lowest points. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Adam Rugg

No abstract

From U.S. Marine Corps helicopters rescuing "stranded" participants on The Biggest Loser to having individuals temporarily enlist in the Army on Extreme Weight Loss, these examples of military imagery work toward legitimizing the disciplinary logics put forth on reality weight-loss programs. Yet the military is simultaneously relying more on weight-loss and training practices originating in the commercial sector, including those found on TV, due to perceived "softness" and "fatness" within its ranks. This article thus examines the military-inspired disciplinary logics both reinforced and inadvertently challenged across weight-loss reality TV programs, the "fattening" and commercialization of the military, and the way each ultimately challenge the authority and expertise of the other, revealing numerous instances of disciplinary discrepancy.