‘Are they just checking our obesity or what?’ The healthism discourse and rural young women

Abstract

This paper makes use of critical discourse analysis and Bourdieu's theoretical framework to explore rural young women's meanings of health and fitness and how the healthism discourse is perpetuated through their experiences in school physical education (PE). The young women's own meanings are explored alongside interview data from their school PE head of department (HoD). The healthism discourse was evident in the way that the young women spoke of physical activity, health, fitness and their bodies. They viewed health and fitness as being important to control body shape and adhered to a stereotypical feminine appearance as ideal. The data also illustrate how a school health and physical education (HPE) HoD's own engagements with the healthism discourse and the school's HPE curriculum shaped the young women's understandings of health and fitness and their bodies. Data presented in this paper are drawn from an Australian longitudinal, qualitative project involving interview and visual collection methods. The longitudinal nature of the data adds to existing research by demonstrating the durability of the healthism discourse as it is perpetuated through PE even up to two years post-school. Understanding how the healthism discourse is reproduced through social structures such as the school, and how it perpetuates traditional meanings and approaches to physical activity has important implications for the generation of physical activity and health promotion initiatives.

Keywords:

• Health
• Fitness
• Rural
• Young women
• Healthism
• Bourdieu
• Obesity

Notes

1. The purpose of the LAP was to examine the place and meaning of physical activity in the context of young people's lives and in doing so, to investigate some of the taken for granted assumptions about young people's participation in physical activity and the relationship between physical activity and health that underpin practices in physical education and in public health promotion. For the national project, interview data were collected over a period of 7 years (1999–2006) with a cohort of young people (n=97) from various geographical and social locations in three states in Eastern Australia. One-off interviews with a sample of parents and school PE teachers were also conducted.