The industries surrounding health/fitness, weight-loss and diet make over 35 billion dollars a year in sales. The success of these industries depends heavily on the production & reproduction of dominant discourses that criticize and “other” bodies that are not thin. The impact of these discourses is obvious, AND profound.
With clever names like, Nutrisystem and Medifast, we are informed that we can actually transform who we are, not just the way we look. In other words, these discourses create “othering” by reminding us that being overweight is not only bad dangerous, and undesirable, but apparently, it fundamentally changes who you are (and clearly, not in a good way).
Furthermore, the fact that these discourses are encoded in so many different ways plays a large role in the impact they have. The basic dominant discourse that fat bodies are wrong, bad, ugly, unhealthy etc., is reproduced through websites, ludicrous surveys, and medical professionals who talk about the dangers of belly-fat.
Take a look at the videos and websites below and consider how they “other” fat bodies. What do you observe? What impact does this type of “othering” have on our indentities?
http://chli.com/packages/individual_package/promotional?gclid=CNiu9MDHp54CFShSagod4wrklw
http://www.medifast1.com/?campaign=3257&gclid=CI7VlszHp54CFRhfagodEQhWlQ
I think it's crazy how the man in the video is so critical about the measurements of his body. I think it would be so much healthier to promote the fact that measurements and weight should not affect your image. The number on the scale does not reflect if a person lives a healthy lifestyle or not. It is just a number. I wonder how the perfect measurements of a women even started. By "othering" different body types we constantly are setting ourselves up for failure as these perfect bodies have a huge genetic basis and are sometimes using unhealthy methods to obtain these results.
ReplyDeleteCSP420 Robyn Campbell