‘You Can’t Be Supersized?’ Exploring Femininities, Body Size and Control within the Obesity Terrain

Tischner, Irmgard; Malson, Helen

doi:10.1057/9780230304239_4

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…In describing their patients' experiences, GPs in this study were drawing on metaphors that are widely used within healthcare (Fullager & O'Brien, 2012;Skelton et al, 2002) and which have been documented in relation to experiences of obesity and by health professionals caring for people with obesity (Kirk et al, 2014;Schmied et al, 2011). In the context of obesity, scholars have repeatedly noted the use of military metaphors within dominant discourse surrounding body weight (Saguy & Almeling, 2008;Tischner & Malson, 2011), which to some extent (i.e. in describing obesity as a 'battle'), have been reproduced here.…”

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confidence: 99%

Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication

Blackburn

Stathi

2019

Social Science & Medicine

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Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication

Blackburn

Stathi

2019

Social Science & Medicine

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“…3 3 To address this, we carried out a follow‐up study, which focuses predominantly on the issue of gender and body size, the results of which are reported elsewhere (Tischner & Malson, ).…”

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Deconstructing Health and the Un/Healthy Fat Woman

Tischner

Malson

2011

Community & Applied Soc Psy

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Dominant discourses represent body weight as a consequence of lifestyle, equating ‘fatness’ with ‘disease’ and ‘thinness’ with ‘health’. Consequently, fat subjects become framed as lazy and not willing to follow a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. In neoliberal societies, where ‘the autonomous, self‐regulating individual’ is highly valued, the previous construction of fat subjects appears particularly damning. In this study, we explore how women who self‐identify as ‘large’ negotiate their body weight, health and neoliberal credentials. To this end, interviews were conducted with 18 women, and the transcripts were analysed using discourse analysis. The constructions of health and well‐being articulated by the women were much broader and more complex than those reproduced in dominant neoliberalised discourses of health and body weight. Although most participants positioned themselves as healthy and health literate, prevailing constructions of ‘fat is unhealthy’ were also reproduced, and participants often struggled with the conflicting subject positions of the healthy and health‐conscious ‘good neoliberal citizen’ and the fat ‘failed’ individual risking ill‐health. Drawing on our analysis, we assert that, regardless of who is right in debates about the putative health implication of fat, the current reductionist approach to health and the global ‘war on obesity’ are problematic and potentially harmful. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…For the people we worked with who had been identified as obese, the very fact that we were there to speak with them labeled their bodies negatively. Indeed, Tischner and Malson (2011) illustrated the ways in which obese bodies are constructed as a threat to social order and how this moral reading of fatness is also highly gendered. As such, “large” women are positioned as the epitome of those who need to engage in body modification projects, and this subsequently produces and regulates the “embodied lived experiences and identities of women of all sizes” (Tischner & Malson, 2011, p. 110).…”

Section: Negotiating the Normalizing Gazementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, Tischner and Malson (2011) illustrated the ways in which obese bodies are constructed as a threat to social order and how this moral reading of fatness is also highly gendered. As such, “large” women are positioned as the epitome of those who need to engage in body modification projects, and this subsequently produces and regulates the “embodied lived experiences and identities of women of all sizes” (Tischner & Malson, 2011, p. 110). Foucault (1988) traced a hermeneutic analysis of “Technologies of the Self,” in which he drew attention to the moral function of self-surveillance in the legitimization of medical interventions.…”

Section: Negotiating the Normalizing Gazementioning

confidence: 99%

The Weight of the Word

Warin

Shipman

2013

Qual Health Res

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In this article, we examine the ethical and methodological tensions entailed in doing qualitative research in obesity studies. Framing our own embodied engagements through critical social theory, we consider how cultural meanings associated with obesity are silenced and negotiated in the research process. This negotiation is fraught with linguistic and corporeal challenges, beginning with the decision to use (or not use) the word obesity in research materials. Obesity is a visible stigma, and we argue that silencing language does not erase the tacit judgments that accompany discursive categorization. It is in a broader context of power relations that we examine the relationship between researcher and participant bodies and the ways in which collective knowingness about fat bodies underpins methodological engagement. The simultaneous presence and absence of obesity have a significant impact on the research process, in shaping both participants' experiences and the researcher's actions and interpretations.

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‘You Can’t Be Supersized?’ Exploring Femininities, Body Size and Control within the Obesity Terrain

Abstract: Tischner, I. and Malson, H. (2010) You cant be supersized? Exploring femininities, body size and control within the obesity ter-

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication

Moral discourse in general practitioners’ accounts of obesity communication

Deconstructing Health and the Un/Healthy Fat Woman

The Weight of the Word

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