M Zimdars
Biographic Data
| ID | 43717 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Zimdars |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Zimdars |
| SIGNATURE | ZIMDARS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Merrimack College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8580-3133 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Their Truth is Out There
The information-sharing practices within alternative health social media groups makes them important spaces for analyzing and understanding the factors shaping the online spread of alternative health and health science (mis)information. Through interviews and observation of participants in alternative health groups on both Facebook and Reddit, we explore how people use health science information from government, health, and news sources, alternat…
Alternative health groups on social media, misinformation, and the (de)stabilization of ontological security
Through 19 semistructured interviews, we explore why people join and participate in “alternative health” Facebook groups and Reddit subs. Participation in these groups creates an ontological circle where people’s feelings of fear, desperation, and distrust in the systems and actors that comprise our government, health, and news systems inspire alternative information and support-seeking in these groups and subs. While participation assuages those…
Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life
On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programme…
The Self-Surveillance Failures of Wearable Communication
By discursively analyzing blogs and popular press articles written by people who discontinued using Fitbit, this article reveals the incongruities between the tracking of our bodily information, the communication of that bodily information via wearables, and the promises of changing of users’ attitudes and behaviors with how wearables are actually used in practice. The discourses of discontinuance in this analysis also reveal how former Fitbit en…
American Housewife and Super Fun Night
This article offers a reparative textual analysis of the fat representations and comedy in the first seasons of the sitcoms American Housewife and Super Fun Night. These series navigate a discursive terrain that increasingly encourages individual body positivity while not overtly pushing back against discourses of the “obesity epidemic.” These narratives and representations of individual body positivity or acceptance that avoid or fail to engage …
Having it both ways
This article explores representations of juvenile post-feminist masculinity across two television texts: Two and a Half Men and Entourage. These programs exhibit a contradictory continuum of masculine performances allowing men to “have it both ways,” or to be both sensitive and casually sexist within contemporary culture. By detailing how similar kinds of masculinity exist across two seemingly disparate channels and television programs, this anal…
Fat Acceptance TV
Big Sexy (2011), a television mini-series on TLC, tells the story of five "larger than life" Manhattan women working in the fashion industry. In comparison to dozens of reality television programs that emphasize weight-loss, Big Sexy critiques the idea that all fat individuals need to lose weight, or should even want to lose weight in the first place. This resistant message of fat acceptance exists in a carnivalesque televisual space, creating a …
Inactive Duty
From U.S. Marine Corps helicopters rescuing “stranded” participants on The Biggest Loser to having individuals temporarily enlist in the Army on Extreme Weight Loss, these examples of military imagery work toward legitimizing the disciplinary logics put forth on reality weight-loss programs. Yet the military is simultaneously relying more on weight-loss and training practices originating in the commercial sector, including those found on TV, due …
Fat Acceptance TV
Big Sexy (2011), a television mini-series on TLC, tells the story of five "larger than life" Manhattan women working in the fashion industry. In comparison to dozens of reality television programs that emphasize weight-loss, Big Sexy critiques the idea that all fat individuals need to lose weight, or should even want to lose weight in the first place. This resistant message of fat acceptance exists in a carnivalesque televisual space, creating a …
Alternative health groups on social media, misinformation, and the (de)stabilization of ontological security
Through 19 semistructured interviews, we explore why people join and participate in “alternative health” Facebook groups and Reddit subs. Participation in these groups creates an ontological circle where people’s feelings of fear, desperation, and distrust in the systems and actors that comprise our government, health, and news systems inspire alternative information and support-seeking in these groups and subs. While participation assuages those…
Their Truth is Out There
The information-sharing practices within alternative health social media groups makes them important spaces for analyzing and understanding the factors shaping the online spread of alternative health and health science (mis)information. Through interviews and observation of participants in alternative health groups on both Facebook and Reddit, we explore how people use health science information from government, health, and news sources, alternat…
Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life
On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programme…
Having it both ways
This article explores representations of juvenile post-feminist masculinity across two television texts: Two and a Half Men and Entourage. These programs exhibit a contradictory continuum of masculine performances allowing men to “have it both ways,” or to be both sensitive and casually sexist within contemporary culture. By detailing how similar kinds of masculinity exist across two seemingly disparate channels and television programs, this anal…
Inactive Duty
From U.S. Marine Corps helicopters rescuing “stranded” participants on The Biggest Loser to having individuals temporarily enlist in the Army on Extreme Weight Loss, these examples of military imagery work toward legitimizing the disciplinary logics put forth on reality weight-loss programs. Yet the military is simultaneously relying more on weight-loss and training practices originating in the commercial sector, including those found on TV, due …
Fat Acceptance TV
Big Sexy (2011), a television mini-series on TLC, tells the story of five "larger than life" Manhattan women working in the fashion industry. In comparison to dozens of reality television programs that emphasize weight-loss, Big Sexy critiques the idea that all fat individuals need to lose weight, or should even want to lose weight in the first place. This resistant message of fat acceptance exists in a carnivalesque televisual space, creating a …
Inactive Duty
From U.S. Marine Corps helicopters rescuing “stranded” participants on The Biggest Loser to having individuals temporarily enlist in the Army on Extreme Weight Loss, these examples of military imagery work toward legitimizing the disciplinary logics put forth on reality weight-loss programs. Yet the military is simultaneously relying more on weight-loss and training practices originating in the commercial sector, including those found on TV, due …
Having it both ways
This article explores representations of juvenile post-feminist masculinity across two television texts: Two and a Half Men and Entourage. These programs exhibit a contradictory continuum of masculine performances allowing men to “have it both ways,” or to be both sensitive and casually sexist within contemporary culture. By detailing how similar kinds of masculinity exist across two seemingly disparate channels and television programs, this anal…
American Housewife and Super Fun Night
This article offers a reparative textual analysis of the fat representations and comedy in the first seasons of the sitcoms American Housewife and Super Fun Night. These series navigate a discursive terrain that increasingly encourages individual body positivity while not overtly pushing back against discourses of the “obesity epidemic.” These narratives and representations of individual body positivity or acceptance that avoid or fail to engage …
The Self-Surveillance Failures of Wearable Communication
By discursively analyzing blogs and popular press articles written by people who discontinued using Fitbit, this article reveals the incongruities between the tracking of our bodily information, the communication of that bodily information via wearables, and the promises of changing of users’ attitudes and behaviors with how wearables are actually used in practice. The discourses of discontinuance in this analysis also reveal how former Fitbit en…
Alternative health groups on social media, misinformation, and the (de)stabilization of ontological security
Through 19 semistructured interviews, we explore why people join and participate in “alternative health” Facebook groups and Reddit subs. Participation in these groups creates an ontological circle where people’s feelings of fear, desperation, and distrust in the systems and actors that comprise our government, health, and news systems inspire alternative information and support-seeking in these groups and subs. While participation assuages those…
Medicalized reality weight-loss television and the negotiation of neoliberalism on My 600 Pound Life
On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programme…
Their Truth is Out There
The information-sharing practices within alternative health social media groups makes them important spaces for analyzing and understanding the factors shaping the online spread of alternative health and health science (mis)information. Through interviews and observation of participants in alternative health groups on both Facebook and Reddit, we explore how people use health science information from government, health, and news sources, alternat…
Sociology (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Obesity and Health Practices (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Gender Studies (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works)