‘Taking charge of your health’: discourses of responsibility in English‐Canadian women's magazines

Abstract

This article presents an examination of the ways in which responsibility for health is constructed in popular English-Canadian women's magazines. Women's magazines are a unique media form, acting as guidebooks for women on matters relating to feminine gender roles and are important to examine as part of the corpus of societal discourses which frame our understandings of what it means to be healthy and how good health is achieved. Using discourse analysis several techniques were found which reinforce women's individual responsibility to create and maintain good health for themselves and their families. The magazines instruct women/readers directly about their health-related responsibilities and outline the negative consequences of inaction or incorrect action. The magazines also use the traditional discursive technique of women's personal accounts as both cautionary tales and inspirational stories to encourage readers to actively pursue healthy behaviours. Reflecting and reinforcing the discourse of healthism, women's magazines consistently present health as an important individual responsibility and a moral imperative which creates an entrepreneurial subject position for women. The article concludes by discussing the implications for women's magazine audiences within the ongoing feminist debate about this cultural industry.

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

“…Traditional ideals of motherhood and the gendered division of labour are not challenged here, and this is consistent with research findings on women's magazines in other areas (e.g., Madden and Chamberlain, 2004;Roy, 2008). Although some involvement in paid employment is presented here as a normative part of motherhood there is an inherent conflict as there is also a strong message that good motherhood and excessive amounts of paid employment are incompatible.…”

“…The analysis was performed in a similar fashion to the method used by Roy (2008). Initially, the various constructions and representations of multiple roles, work-life balance, working motherhood and related issues were identified.…”

“…Increasingly, media representations are investigated from a discursive approach, which emphasises the contested nature of media representations, or media discourses, and sees these discourses as offering people a way of making sense of social issues and of themselves (e.g., Gazso, 2004;Roy, 2008;Wood and Finlay, 2008).…”

“…Studies have revealed and explicated gendered constructions of other issues in women's magazines, such as health messages and eating behaviour (e.g., Madden and Chamberlain, 2004;Roy, 2008;Whitehead and Kurtz, 2008), but there are few discursive analyses of work-life balance issues in 6 popular media forms, such as magazines, in the UK. This study, therefore, investigates the discursive construction of work-life balance in a sample of popular UK women's magazines collected over a 12 month period.…”

Causal accounts as a consequential device in categorizing mental health and substance abuse problems

“…Accordingly, causal accounting research informs and deepens the current political, academic and professional discussion on responsibilization (e.g. Share and Strain 2008;Roy 2008;Michailakis and Schirmer 2010). In professional practice, it is crucial to be sensitive and reflect more on the ways of making arguments on who or what is responsible for causing the current welfare, health and social problems, and why.…”