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Critical feminist approaches to eating disorders and "obesity" have recently come under criticism for relying too heavily on textual- and image-based analyses of health, identity and body weight, shape, and size. In this article, we examine qualitative interviews with self-identified anorexic and "obese" women using a new material feminist lens-particularly the work of Karen Barad-to see what this perspective contributes to conceptualizations of weight-based oppressions. In addition to outlining how the material world actively participates in ongoing processes of oppression, we also highlight how the body presses back, offering up potentially less oppressive processes of materialization. The article concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, pointing to how a new materialist framework may draw attention to micropolitical processes of becoming otherwise.

Within the Canadian context, the physical activity levels of children and youth in the after school time period has become a source of public health concern. We argue that this concern is informed by broader public health crises, in particular the "global obesity epidemic" and the closely related "global pandemic of physical inactivity," and that these so-called "crises" operate as part of a discursive regime that serves to justify after school interventions aimed at increasing the physical activity practices of children and youth. Although the objectives of such interventions are seemingly well intentioned, we suggest that such interventions nonetheless harbor difficult to discern, but potentially pernicious consequences, for the communities in which they are implemented. We focus our attention on the place-specific effects of one Public Health Agency of Canada-funded after school physical activity intervention--After the School Bell Rings (ASBR)--that was implemented in the mostly Indigenous, northern community of Placid, Manitoba. Based on a critical analysis of the ASBR program itself, along with interviews and focus groups with children, parents and recreation providers (n = 10) from the community of Placid, we contend that the ASBR serves to govern Indigenous recreation at a distance. We argue that when implemented in the place-specific context of Placid, the ASBR functions as part of a broader governmental assemblage composed of loosely connected discourses, institutions, socio-structural conditions and individuals that, when assembled, ultimately serve to govern geographically and culturally distinct communities. We conclude by suggesting that the objectives of broad-based health interventions, such as the goal of increasing after school physical activity levels, should not be universally implemented across diverse locales, but need to account for the diverse, place-specific priorities and needs of the communities into which they are implemented.

Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with larger bodied patients (n = 20) and their healthcare practitioners (n = 22) in Canada, this paper combines micro and macro approaches in outlining a social justice approach to caring for larger patients in healthcare practice. Theoretically, we draw upon structural competency and critical consciousness to address the question of how social justice is enacted, experienced, and understood in interactions between clinicians and larger patients. Our findings highlight four key themes that provide a framework for integrating social justice into healthcare practice: (1) an awareness of one's simultaneous experience of marginalisation and privilege in the clinical interaction; (2) navigating between additive and interactive understandings of intersectionality; (3) micro and macro approaches to change; and (4) straddling the line between equity and equality. The synergies in participants' perspectives across social identities suggests that the cultivation of social justice awareness potentially mitigates some blinders of privilege. Furthermore, practitioners' social justice orientation positively impacted patient experience, with most patients expressing appreciation for having their various histories of trauma and social challenges handled compassionately during appointments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though considerable resources have been allocated to the study of obesity, there is no consensus on its definition, causes, or solutions. Amidst ongoing debates over understandings of obesity, Obesity Canada (OC) was established to enhance the quality of life of Canadians with obesity through the advancement of anti-discrimination, policy change, and obesity prevention and treatment. Drawing upon a transdisciplinary social justice framework, we use critical thematic analysis to examine the OC website, which is the organization's primary knowledge mobilization platform. We will address the following research question: To what extent does OC serve social justice goals that promote the best interests of larger people? We argue that the social justice potential of OC ultimately falls short and conclude with some recommendations on how the site content could be enhanced with social justice principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical feminist approaches to eating disorders and "obesity" have recently come under criticism for relying too heavily on textual- and image-based analyses of health, identity and body weight, shape, and size. In this article, we examine qualitative interviews with self-identified anorexic and "obese" women using a new material feminist lens—particularly the work of Karen Barad—to see what this perspective contributes to conceptualizations of weight-based oppressions. In addition to outlining how the material world actively participates in ongoing processes of oppression, we also highlight how the body presses back, offering up potentially less oppressive processes of materialization. The article concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, pointing to how a new materialist framework may draw attention to micropolitical processes of becoming otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the Canadian context, the physical activity levels of children and youth in the after school time period has become a source of public health concern. We argue that this concern is informed by broader public health crises, in particular the ‘global obesity epidemic’ and the closely related ‘global pandemic of physical inactivity', and that these so-called ‘crises’ operate as part of a discursive regime that serves to justify after school interventions aimed at increasing the physical activity practices of children and youth. Although the objectives of such interventions are seemingly well intentioned, we suggest that such interventions nonetheless harbor difficult to discern, but potentially pernicious consequences, for the communities in which they are implemented. We focus our attention on the place-specific effects of one Public Health Agency of Canada-funded after school physical activity intervention – After the School Bell Rings (ASBR) – that was implemented in the mostly Indigenous, northern community of Placid, Manitoba. Based on a critical analysis of the ASBR program itself, along with interviews and focus groups with children, parents and recreation providers (n = 10) from the community of Placid, we contend that the ASBR serves to govern Indigenous recreation at a distance. We argue that when implemented in the place-specific context of Placid, the ASBR functions as part of a broader governmental assemblage composed of loosely connected discourses, institutions, socio-structural conditions and individuals that, when assembled, ultimately serve to govern geographically and culturally distinct communities. We conclude by suggesting that the objectives of broad-based health interventions, such as the goal of increasing after school physical activity levels, should not be universally implemented across diverse locales, but need to account for the diverse, place-specific priorities and needs of the communities into which they are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contemporary Western society, both anorexic and obese1 bodies are regarded to be “out of bounds.” Although scholars have enhanced our understanding of anorexia and obesity, these “disorders” have most often been studied in isolation from one another. In this article, we examine the similarities and differences in the embodied experiences of anorexic and obese women. Informed by the phenomenological research tradition, we follow in the footsteps of other scholars who have already begun to depart from binarized, polarized views by describing how women living with anorexia and obesity in two Canadian provinces experience the body, food and eating. Anorexic and obese women described a vast range of intense emotional experiences to characterize their relationship to food, the body and eating. Shame marked the bodies of these women. Family relationships also changed how the women experienced the body and food over time. The women ascribed a diverse array of complex meanings to the body and food. We hope that our study opens new phenomenological terrain to dialogue with and for anorexic and obese bodies in a relational way, recognizing that both of these bodies hurt in a remarkably similar manner. In a judgement day of sorts, both anorexic and obese bodies carry the heavy burden of culture’s expectations to fit within a narrow range of normative slenderness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that standard built environmental accounts of obesity and physical inactivity offer little insight into the multiplicity of power relations that shape the localized mobility practices of rural places. In making this argument, we draw upon literature from with the “new mobilities paradigm” in qualitatively examining the multiple ruralities and rural mobilities of the Swampy Cree of the northern Canadian community, Lynn Lake, Manitoba. We argue that environmental accounts of mobility need to broaden their lens to consider those more-than-built-environmental, historical, cultural, economic and social forces that shape the practices and meanings of movements in rural locales, generally, and Indigenous rural communities, more specifically. In addition to our critique, we also draw attention to the hopeful geographies that reflected the participants' connection to the land, where the land played a pivotal role in fostering, sustaining, and restoring Indigenous physical cultural mobilities. We conclude by pushing back against dominant built environmental discourse that proposes to ‘cure the environment’ as a means of promoting active health. Instead, we suggest that resolving disputed land claims and restoring Indigenous territorial control over ancestral lands may be more conducive to fostering sustainable physical cultural mobilities that, in the long run, may be more health enhancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that mass media representations of obesity operate biopedagogically and, in doing so, teach viewers how to think and feel about what it means to be fat. These teachings are what we call “life lessons”—that is, lessons aimed at instructing viewers in how to relate to both their own bodies and the bodies of others—and are readily discernible in a wide variety of magazines, radio segments, and television shows. We suggest that life lessons of this sort are neither separate nor entirely distinct from public health campaigns, but rather overlap with and, at times, intensify their messages. With this in view, we undertake a four-part analysis of how the North American mass media represent obesity. In the first part, we outline contemporary theories of biopower, biocitizenship, and biopedagogy and how they can be used to make sense of these representations. In the second part, we contextualize them by providing an overview of relevant public health policy such as the United State’s Let’s Move campaign and the World Health Organization’s Prioritizing Areas for Action in the Field of Population-Based Prevention of Childhood Obesity. In the third part, we present a systematic review of the critical literature on representations of obesity with an emphasis on the North American media landscape. And in the fourth part, we submit an episode of the popular television program Nip/Tuck to an in-depth critical examination as a case study of how mass media representations of obesity function biopedagogically. In the end, we show that the representations we discuss not only reflect public health priorities but also reproduce neoliberal ideas about how to manage the life of the human body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current sociopolitical context, the lean, muscular body has come to epitomize masculine health and beauty. Not all boys and young men, however, unequivocally subscribe to dominant constructions that position fatness as unhealthy and unattractive. Using qualitative inquiry with thirty-two “skinny” or “normal”-bodied young men (thirteen to fifteen years of age), I demonstrate that fat talk is a prominent resource through which “normal” masculine embodiment is achieved. More specifically, I reveal that sociocultural positioning influences how young men take up, make sense of, and articulate constructions of fatness and demonstrate how such articulations function in the materialization of their “normal” embodied subjectivities. I also examine how fat masculinities operate differently within diverse emplaced contexts and in relation to distinct discursive communities. Such a line of investigation I argue helps to reveal the ways in which power relations of privilege and oppression are performatively embodied in everyday contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]