Becoming fit to be a mother

Class, learning, and redemption inSupersize vs Superskinny

Bibliographic Data

ID3664751
AuthorsK Eli (0000-0001-9132-8404, University of Oxford, corresponding author), Anna Lavis (0000-0002-1080-2512, University of Birmingham)
Year2018
Volume27
Issue2
Pages129-140
Publication date2018-02-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Gender Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0958-9236 • E-ISSN: 1465-3869
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09589236.2016.1178630
OpenAlexW2405626559
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited43

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

Citizenship · Focus group · Middle class · Narrative · Obesity · Overweight · Political science · Population · Shame · Sociology · Storytelling · Underweight · Demography · Eating Disorders and Behaviors · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Medicine · Obesity and Health Practices · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access