Through thick and thin: Storying queer women’s experiences of idealised body images and expected body management practices

Abstract

In this study we examine how discourses of obesity and eating disorders reinforce cissexist and heteronormative body standards. Sixteen queer women in Canada produced autobiographical micro-documentaries over the course of two workshops. We identified three major themes across these films: bodily control, bodies as sites of metamorphosis, and celebration of bodies. Such films can be memorable, cultivate empathy, disrupt misunderstanding of queer bodies, and inform medical practice. Our analysis suggests that research and policy on ‘disordered’ bodies must better account for how people negotiate discourses around body shape and size, how shaming is internalised, how regulation can function as resistance, and how variant bodies can be embraced, desired, and celebrated. Community-grounded, arts-based research points to new ways of gathering and producing knowledge.

Revisioning aging: Indigenous, crip and queer renderings

“…These stories are produced in the form of one-to-five-minute-long videos that pair personal/community narratives with visuals such as video, artwork, photos, and more. We have worked with disability communities on healthcare access (Chaplick, Mykitiuk & Rice, 2015;Rice, LaMarre & Mykitiuk, 2018;Rice et al, 2017;Rice, LaMarre, Changfoot & Douglas, 2018;Viscardis et al, 2019); with urban Indigenous students, teachers, and parents on challenging colonial and neocolonial systems of formal schooling (Rice, Dion, Mündel, & Fowlie, 2020); with urban Inuit people on mobilizing Inuit cultural voice (Curley et al in press); with disability and aging arts and activist movements (Aubrecht, et al, 2020;; and with diverse queer women's negotiations of body ideals and management practices (Rinaldi et al, 2016;Rinaldi et al, 2017;. We continue to develop our method, attentive to intersectional (Rice, Harrison, & Friedman, 2019) and intrasectional knowledge (Rice, 2018; that surfaces in the workshop spaces.…”

Navigating feminist and biomedical conceptual frameworks in educational interventions for eating disorders: Spanish educators’ understandings of the causes and treatment of eating disorders

“…Scholars have also used objectification theory to study how women's socialisation and experiences of sexual objectification have contributed to mental health problems such as EDs (Moradi & Huang, 2008). For Rinaldi et al (2016), it is important to show a wide range of experiences around body size, shape and satisfaction to explain how people negotiate discourses about body shape and size, “how shaming is internalised, how regulation may function as a resistance strategy, and how variant bodies can be embraced, desired, and celebrated” (p. 25).…”