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Becoming fit to be a mother : class, learning, and redemption in Supersize vs Superskinny
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Eli, Karin and Lavis, Anna (2018) Becoming fit to be a mother : class, learning, and redemption in Supersize vs Superskinny. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (2). pp. 129-140. doi:10.1080/09589236.2016.1178630 ISSN 0958-9236.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1178630
Abstract
The UK Channel Four reality television programmes Supersize vs Superskinny and Supersize vs Superskinny: Kids present their viewers with a stark, and supposedly educative, reforming of food practices. Pairing participants defined as underweight with others defined as morbidly obese, the programmes are premised on a so-called ‘diet swap’, in which participants consume their foils’ (either meagre or excessive) meals in order to face the supposed follies of their ways. While the programmes include both male and female participants, in-depth content analysis reveals that their televisual storytelling has gendered underpinnings, centred on the theme of ‘fitness’ to mother. Notably, this ‘fitness’, as the programmes frame it, entails reforming women’s food consumption: from ‘perilous’ working-class eating and feeding practices, which ‘threaten’ women’s and children’s bodies with obesity, to ‘appropriate’ middle class tastes and choices, poised to foster trans-generational wellbeing. Thus, presented as ‘public pedagogy’ that implicates both participant and viewer, Supersize vs Superskinny evokes classed abjection and shame to cast population obesity as the outcome of maternal ‘failings’. We argue, then, that at the core of Supersize vs Superskinny’s focus on ‘balanced diets’ lies a neoliberal prescription for women’s moral citizenship as anchored in upwardly mobile, middle classed, responsibilised motherhood.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences > Social Science & Systems in Health (SSSH) Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School |
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Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Gender Studies | ||||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0958-9236 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 2018 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 27 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 129-140 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/09589236.2016.1178630 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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