Fulfilling the self through food in wellness blogs: Governing the healthy subject

Tiusanen, Kaisa

doi:10.1177/13675494211055734

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…By doing so, they align themselves with the entrepreneurial spirit fostered by neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005), reinforcing the notion that individuals possess the power to shape their destinies in the relentless pursuit of a 'good life' (Bachkirova and Borrington, 2020;Deery, 2006;McGee, 2005;Raisborough, 2016). Their very existence thus upholds the status quo of an everneeding-to-improve individual (Lynch, 2004;Tiusanen, 2021), which guarantees the continue demand for their services (Nehring, et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Field Of Life Coachingmentioning

confidence: 84%

"Unlock a better life: Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances

Verhulst,

De Wolf,

Evens

et al. 2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession. Drawing from a one-month observation of 1,650 posts collected from 20 Instagram profiles of life coaches, our analysis provides insight into how these professionals strategically display and integrate cultural practices, tastes, and preferences that align with neoliberal ideals of self-improvement and self-responsibility to set themselves apart as experts within their field. They then use this distinctiveness as a marketing technique, thereby feeding off their cultural and social capital, among others by rationalizing their expertise by appealing to their own experiences, embedding client testimonials, and driving the narrative by combining hashtags or images that refer to self-entrepreneurism, self-responsibility, and the good life. We reflect on the potentially harmful implications of these legitimization techniques on individuals and society.

show abstract

Section: The Field Of Life Coachingmentioning

confidence: 84%

"Unlock a better life: Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances

Verhulst,

De Wolf,

Evens

et al. 2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Wellness culture is entangled with other often more legitimised discourses where wellness practices and beliefs co-inform mainstream approaches to health (e.g. neoliberal governance, healthism; O 'Neill, 2021;Tiusanen, 2021) as well as more challenging political beliefs (e.g. far-right extremism; Baker, 2022).…”

Section: Digital Wellness Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Hey lovely! Don’t miss this opportunity!’ Digital temporalities of wellness culture, email marketing, and the promise of abundance

Hendry

2022

Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For the wellness industry, email communication, albeit mundane, remains an essential practice even as wellness entrepreneurs embrace newer digital technologies. Drawing on ongoing insights from a larger Australian digital ethnographic project, I explore how these ‘wellness emails’ – electronic mail communication (outside of social media) that typically circulate wellness-related content through automated email list subscriptions – promise an always-ready, abundant space for transforming bodies and optimising health. These emails teach alternative bodily temporalities, distinct from the inhospitable biomedical time of mainstream healthcare, yet also employ time-critical marketing tactics and stories to drive attention, where recipients are encouraged both to not miss out on opportunities but also to respect their own ‘divine timing’. Such temporal flexibility of wellness culture, and its promise of abundance, contributes to its global expansion, where email offers personal and marketised engagement and, critically, a potential escape from social media censorship and public health scrutiny.

show abstract

“…Accounting for the ways that the intersections of race, gender and class are implicated in who was (and who was not) able to work (and rest) from home during the crisis, I examine depictions and discourse related to #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking. While baking became known as a common pastime during the COVID-19 crisis, the symbolic significance of baking long precedes it, and includes narratives related to the perceived ‘healthy subject’ (Tiusanen, 2021) and gendered depictions and discourses of domesticity (Casey, 2019; Casey and Littler, 2022; Hollows, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

White and gendered aesthetics and attitudes of #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking

Sobande

2024

European Journal of Cultural Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Foodwork is a political matter, and baking is no exception. Many messages are associated with the symbolic significance of baking, such as idealised notions of white, middle-class domesticity, femininity and visibility. The rise in home-baking during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a surge in social media content, which conveys much about the different meanings ascribed to baking. Relatedly, scholarship on ‘COVID-19 foodwork, race, gender, class and food justice’ highlights that intersecting oppressions are implicated in such matters. Drawing on different lines of research that specify and address structural power relations (e.g. gendered whiteness), I analyse the aesthetics and accompanying attitudes conveyed via Instagram posts about #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking. In doing so, I draw and build on critical studies of whiteness and digital food media, and connections between consumerism and COVID-19. This work considers what such online content suggests about the relationship between a ‘feminised, white, aestheticised ethos’ and digital discourse and depictions regarding food, family, domesticity, work and rest. Consequently, this research ponders over whether the labour and framing involved in documenting #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking on Instagram reflects a neoliberal form of entrepreneurial ‘freelance feminism’, which is animated by the tension between the ‘frequently polarized figures of “the feminist” and “the housewife”’. I examine the significance of three key themes related to #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking: (1) Gendered domestic labour and digital depictions and discourses of motherhood; (2) productivity, pausing and so-called ‘soulfulness’; and (3) domestic minimalism and aesthetics of whiteness. In turn, this article critically reflects on the relationship between mediated constructions of gendered whiteness and baking, while echoing calls for more research that explicitly addresses dynamics between digital whiteness, class, aesthetics, gendered racial capitalism, foodwork, feminism and online content creation.

show abstract

Fulfilling the self through food in wellness blogs: Governing the healthy subject

Cited by 10 publications

References 40 publications

"Unlock a better life: Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances

"Unlock a better life: Here's how!": A critical inquiry into how life coaches gain capital and shape legitimacy using Instagram's affordances

‘Hey lovely! Don’t miss this opportunity!’ Digital temporalities of wellness culture, email marketing, and the promise of abundance

White and gendered aesthetics and attitudes of #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About