Teenage Girlhood and Bodily Agency: On Power, Weight, Dys-Appearance and Eu-Appearance in a Norwegian Lifestyle Programme

Abstract

Despite the growing literature on childhood obesity and lifestyle intervention programmes focusing on weight loss, few studies have examined young persons' experiences of being identified as candidates for such programmes and of participating in them. This paper does so. Juxtaposing insights from phenomenology with an approach inspired by Foucault, the paper shows how teenage girls' bodily self-perception and bodily self-awareness are shaped in intercorporeal assemblages comprising other people and specific features or elements of the lifestyle programme. Inspired by van Manen's hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with its point of departure in lived experience, this paper draws on interviews with Norwegian teenage girls participating in the same lifestyle programme and identifies three core thematic aspects of the girls' experiences: being identified as a candidate for a lifestyle programme and not wanting this; negotiating the lack of weight loss and the scales; and bodily situated agency-feeling good and being able. Permeating all three themes are two central, interrelated phenomena: agency and resistance. Furthermore, the paper shows how a combination of Foucauldian insights and a phenomenological understanding of intercorporeality can help to shed light on the power, affective, material and temporal dimensions of dys-appearance (i.e., when one's body appears as bad or wrong), as well as those of eu-appearance (i.e., when one's body appears as healthy or strong), and thus contribute to the understanding of the girls' narrated lived experiences. On the basis of these findings, we argue that weight-related treatment goals are not necessarily compatible with the strengthening of adolescents' body images and self-esteem. However, whilst being obliged to attend to their bodies while in the programme, the girls also encountered unexpected, positive bodily feelings and experiences. Such events, we suggest, offer a means of resisting the more troubling dys-appearing bodily situations our participants described so powerfully.

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“…In contrast, My Vital Cycles ® built competencies using relatable science to recognize personal patterns and to determine if these fit within healthy ranges. This follows Wilding's and Griffey's call for a personalized approach [55] as well as Groven's and Zeiler's emphasis of individual agency [54].…”

“…An initial hesitancy to engage was replaced by easiness and confidence. Groven's and Zeiler's qualitative Norwegian study [54] similarly encountered this transformation in a girls' lifestyle program. Interviews with seven girls post-program theorized that the body is a site of self-becoming which opens up a world of meaning and understanding of the body and its capacities [54].…”

“…Groven's and Zeiler's qualitative Norwegian study [54] similarly encountered this transformation in a girls' lifestyle program. Interviews with seven girls post-program theorized that the body is a site of self-becoming which opens up a world of meaning and understanding of the body and its capacities [54]. The reported improvement of comfort may have led to unexpected positive bodily feelings and experiences.…”

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How sociophenomenology of the body problematises the ‘problem-oriented approach’ to growth hormone treatment

“…Staying attuned to interviewees’ lived experiences of height as narrated from a first-person perspective, we pursued what one of us has labelled a ‘sociophenomenology of the body’ (Slatman, p. 555),34 and attended to the interviewees’ narrated experiences, paying attention to sociocultural dimensions. We also attended to material dimension of bodily existence and coexistence 56. The interviews focused on participants’ narrations of their everyday experiences of height, including narrations of situations in which they came to think about or note their height.…”