Defining Fat Fitness: Alternative Practitioners' Attempts to Redefine Fitness

• In Event: 577 - Section on Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Health, Expertise, and Embodiment

Abstract

Researchers have documented the social construction of the “obesity epidemic” and examined the social consequences of fatness. Other research has explored how fat activists and fat acceptance groups have challenged popular notions of the “obesity epidemic” and fat stigma. However, fewer researchers have explored how these groups have responded to the fitness industry’s idealization of the thin, fit body. The growing popularity of fitness activities and the idealization of embodied fitness both draws from and feeds the moral panic about fatness. I examined fitness as a cultural field in which actors compete to define fitness. Utilizing interviews, my research examined how Health at Every Size (HAES) practitioners defined fitness and conceptualized the exercising fat body. Respondents not only promoted understandings of the body that challenge perceived body size and shape ideals, but they also redefined the definition of, purpose, and method of pursuing “fitness.” Methods of challenging popular notions of fatness/fitness included citing scientific research, personal history and embodied experiences, and social justice/human rights arguments. HAES practitioners drew on community knowledge, resources, and support to promote their beliefs and practices on social media, in their workplaces, in speaking engagements, and in their local communities. In these ways, HAES practitioners represent a challenge to—or at least an alternative form of—fitness industry messages and ideals. The struggle to redefine fitness and body ideals highlights the perpetual social re-construction of the body and embodied practices.

Author

• Sarah Pollock, UNC Charlotte