Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women's Gym.
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| Title: | Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women's Gym. |
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| Authors: | Shalma, Margaret, Michalko, Rod1 |
| Source: | Disability Studies Quarterly. Fall2008, Vol. 28 Issue 4, p18-18. 1p. |
| Subject Terms: | *Disability studies, Obesity in women, Physical fitness for women, Feminism, Personal beauty, Body image in women |
| Abstract: | This paper uses feminist disability studies to explore the discursive production of fat embodiment within contemporary Western society. I examine beauty and medicine as fields of knowledge which create and sustain bodily norms, representations and practices. Specifically, I examine the representation of women's (fat) embodiment through an analysis of the promotional material at a well-known women's gym. I show that this gym implicitly references wider health discourses to characterize fatness as pathology, thereby requiring intervention through physical fitness to return the body to normality. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that fatness is not a value neutral embodiment but is socially produced. By bringing together disability studies and fat studies, I highlight the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue, and reveal how different forms of oppression and discourse interlock to create normative understandings of embodiment. I argue that by re-reading fatness we can resist these normative demands and begin to imagine ways of desiring embodied difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Education Research Complete |
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| Abstract: | This paper uses feminist disability studies to explore the discursive production of fat embodiment within contemporary Western society. I examine beauty and medicine as fields of knowledge which create and sustain bodily norms, representations and practices. Specifically, I examine the representation of women's (fat) embodiment through an analysis of the promotional material at a well-known women's gym. I show that this gym implicitly references wider health discourses to characterize fatness as pathology, thereby requiring intervention through physical fitness to return the body to normality. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that fatness is not a value neutral embodiment but is socially produced. By bringing together disability studies and fat studies, I highlight the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue, and reveal how different forms of oppression and discourse interlock to create normative understandings of embodiment. I argue that by re-reading fatness we can resist these normative demands and begin to imagine ways of desiring embodied difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| ISSN: | 10415718 |
| DOI: | 10.18061/dsq.v28i4.150 |
