Technologies of the Gendered Body Week 7

The “obesity epidemic” “the millennium disease” ( 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 food Increased reliance on motorised transport Less exercise Poverty Genetics

The war on obesity Lifestyle The “common sense cure” Individual responsibility Ogilvie, D. et al. “Obesity: the elephant in the corner”. BMJ 2005;331:

“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 Oct, 2006)

Gendering fatness Women’s bodies are held to a higher standard of slimness Worrying 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 groups Slimming industry is worth approximately £2bn per year Approx 17million people dieting per year ( 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 bodies Focusing on minute details Panoptic 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 bodies Self-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 bodies Susan 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-development Hupomnemata Self-knowledge New skills and capacities Meeting normative gendered roles Care of the self

Gimlin (2007) Slimming groups are not experienced in the same way by all members Age affects the meanings of body size in different contexts Older women were able to account for failure more easily than younger women Older women had more realistic weight loss goals Slimming group as a social function (see Lee Monaghan’s work about men’s slimming groups)

Conclusion Obese bodies are increasingly repudiated in contemporary society Body 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