A discourse analysis of school girls engagement with fat pedagogy and critical health education: rethinking the childhood ‘obesity scandal’

ABSTRACT

New interdisciplinary approaches including fat studies, fat pedagogy, critical weight studies and critical health education have attempted to challenge forms of weight-based oppression associated with obesity discourse within education settings. Very little is known about young people’s views of these alternative critical approaches. Theoretically informed by these perspectives, this article examines girls’ responses to the messages of these alternative frameworks about weight and health and the utility of these perspectives as a possible approach to challenging weight-centric health education. The article presents unique findings from a study examining these responses within a secondary school context. The aim of the study was to introduce other ways of knowing fatness and health, which did not privilege the dominant biomedical knowledge of obesity discourse. Twenty-four girls aged 12–13 years participated in a series of interactive focus groups as part of a workshop designed to introduce them to fat pedagogy and critical health education perspectives. A feminist poststructural discourse analysis revealed that whilst the girls welcomed a fat pedagogy approach, they also identified barriers for its implementation in schools; the hegemony of obesity discourse which was compounded by the neoliberal logics of a postfeminist sensibility; the tensions between obesity discourse and body confidence messages in schools; and the dominance of a transmission model of health education in schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Obesity
• fatness
• health
• children
• young people
• workshops
• focus groups
• critical health education
• pedagogy

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the research participants (schools and girls) for their time and contribution to the study and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Emma Rich http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1774-2898

Notes

1 Postfeminism, like neoliberalism, is a contested concept. However, just as we agree with Bell and Green (2016) who view neoliberalism as an indispensible concept despite certain problems (e.g. contradictory invocations in the health field; see also Monaghan, Bombak, & Rich, 2018), we would concur with Gill (2016) who defends ‘postfeminism’ as a useful analytical category (see also Raisborough, 2016).

2 Not all of the girls participated in every activity for various reasons (having to leave school early, commitment to other activities, opt out, etc.).

3 The National Child Measurement Programme measures the height and weight of children in reception (aged 4 to 5) and year 6 (aged 10 to 11). Evans and Colls (2011) undertake a critical review of this policy questioning the value afforded to the Body Mass Index.

Additional information

Funding

Lee would also like to acknowledge the following funding, which is supporting his current research on concerns about young people, media literacy and representations of the putative 'obesity crisis': European Commission, Grant/Award Number: LC ‐ 00865164 ‐ MILT.