Celebrity and the Obesity Industry: The Spectacle of Child-Saving in a Neoliberal Era

• In Event: Roundtable Session 109
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum of Embodiment

Abstract

Discourses about youth and risk are evident in the recent social discourse on childhood obesity that constructs youth as necessary targets of dramatic, child-saving efforts. The public is not only asked to accept the problem of obesity but, often we are also asked to believe that only a dramatic intervention can counter it. In this paper we explore the resultant phenomenon of the obesity industry, by which we mean the consolidated efforts of celebrities, politicians, and corporations to profit from their “concern” about childhood obesity. In an era where health initiatives increasingly find traction in schools, this research highlights the need to participate in critiques of how health projects are incongruent with a commitment to fostering empowering and liberating schools.

Authors

• Kip Kline, Lewis University

• Carolyn Vander Schee, Northern Illinois University