Fitness, fatness and healthism discourse: girls constructing ‘healthy’ identities in school

ABSTRACT

Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative research into girls’ participation in physical activity and sport in the UK, this article will explore girls’ embodied constructions of ‘healthy’ identities. My research with girls (aged 10–13) found that over the transition to secondary school, classed and gendered healthism discourses had come to powerfully frame girls’ sports participation by condoning the achievement of slender embodied femininities through physical activity. The findings suggest that while neoliberal indictments of self-care through physical activity can usefully frame girls’ individual ‘body projects’, these discourses also contribute to a hierarchisation of bodies within physical activity settings and to increasingly narrow standards of acceptable bodies able to take part in physical activity. Within the article, I consider how healthism discourses both regulate and are resisted by the girls as they work to construct physical identities within their school settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical activity
• sport
• friendships
• girls
• healthism
• health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The National Healthy Schools Programme was initiated in 1999 by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and set out guidance for a whole school approach to ‘health and wellbeing’. A 2011 evaluation of the programme by the National Centre for Social Research concluded that despite many implemented changes by schools, the impact of the programme on individual pupils was not significant over a two-year time frame (NatCen 2011, 4).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 752-2006-0654].