“Judging a Body by Its Cover”: Young Lebanese-Canadian Women’s Discursive Constructions of the “Healthy” Body and “Health” Practices

Abstract

Our interest stems from the dramatic increase in the number of obesity studies, which expose Canadian women to a huge amount of information that links health to weight. Using feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial lenses, this paper investigates young Lebanese-Canadian women's constructions of the body and "health" practices within the context of the dominant obesity discourse. Participant-centered conversations were held with 20 young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women. A thematic analysis was first conducted and was followed by a poststructuralist discourse analysis to further our understanding of how the participants construct themselves as subjects within various discourses surrounding health, obesity, and the body. Our findings reveal that most participants conflate the "healthy" body and the "ideal" body, both of which they ultimately portray as thin. The young women construct the "healthy"/"ideal" body as a solely individual responsibility, thus reinforcing the idea of "docile bodies." The majority of participants report their frequent involvement in disciplinary practices such as rigorous physical activity and dietary restrictions, and a few young women mention the use of other extreme forms of bodily monitoring such as detoxes, dieting pills, and compulsive exercise. We discuss the language employed by participants to construct their multiple and shifting subjectivities. For instance, many of these Lebanese-Canadian women use the term "us" to dissociate themselves from Lebanese women ("them"), whom they portray as overly focused on thinness and beauty and engaged in physical activity and other bodily practices for "superficial" purposes. The participants also use the "us/them" trope to distance themselves from "Canadian" women (read: white Euro-Canadian women), whom they portray as very physically active for purposes beyond the improvement of the physical appearance of the body. We discuss the impacts of the young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women's hybrid cultural identities and diasporic spaces on their discursive constructions of the body and "health" practices. Finally, we examine the participants' fluid subject-positions: On one hand, they construct themselves as neoliberal subjects re-citing elements of dominant neoliberal discourses (self-responsibility for health, traditional femininity, and obesity) but, on the other hand, they at times construct themselves as "timid" poststructuralist subjects expressing awareness of, and "micro-resistance" to such discourses.

Healthicization and Lay Knowledge About Eating Practices in Two African American Communities

“…Some participants decentered healthist messages in media accounts of food celebrities to focus on broader (non-health) understandings of the self. Furthermore, similar to results in studies on obesity discourse in racially marginalized groups (Abou-Rizk & Rail, 2014; McPhail, 2013), these African American Kentuckians created “micro-resistances” to the dominant neoliberal discourse about health. Participants questioned the authority of government food programs, obtained but did not use health-promoting information from media accounts and physicians, and reinterpreted the consumption of traditional foods as “healthy” when consumed occasionally.…”

“…Results from this article have additional implications for the ongoing study of healthicization in Black communities. First, unlike much of the previous healthicization research in which individual choice is constrained by social expectations to engage in explicit and conscious regimens of health-promoting behaviors, this article supports emergent research showing that marginalized communities exercise agency (Abou-Rizk & Rail, 2014; McPhail, 2013). In this article, we drew upon Armstrong and Murphy’s work (2012) that formulated resistance as a multi-dimensional and nuanced concept, including not only overt contestation or non-acceptance of healthist messages but also more subtle acts of resistance.…”

“…As an act of micro-resistance (Abou-Rizk & Rail, 2014), this mother challenged the health-promoting agenda of the program. However, this, too, was an exception: Participants rarely mentioned the intrusion of governmental and other authoritative or expert sources into their information-seeking practices.…”

Body and mirror paradox of nursing students: Vicious cycle of popular diets

“…26 In a study of 20 Lebanese-Canadian young women, women described a healthy body as a thin body and stated that they often went on diets and used methods such as herbal methods, detox practices, and slimming pills to achieve this image. 27 Detox diets are popular types of diets which often lead to excessively low-calorie intake in a short time. Weight gain is possible following detox diets when a normal diet is restarted, and long-term sustainability may not be possible.…”

“…It was also found that young people tried to change their bodies to achieve the perceived ideal body 26 . In a study of 20 Lebanese‐Canadian young women, women described a healthy body as a thin body and stated that they often went on diets and used methods such as herbal methods, detox practices, and slimming pills to achieve this image 27 . Detox diets are popular types of diets which often lead to excessively low‐calorie intake in a short time.…”