‘If I go in like a cranky sea lion, I come out like a smiling dolphin’ : marathon swimming and the unexpected pleasures of being a body in water

Drawing on (auto)ethnographic research—on the process of becoming a marathon swimmer, this paper argues that conventional characterisations of marathon swimming as being ‘80 per cent mental and 20 per cent physical’ reprise a mind–body split that at worst excludes women and at best holds them to a masculine standard. This in turn draws the focus towards sensory deprivation, bodily suffering and overcoming, to the exclusion of the pleasures of swimming, beyond the expected ones such as the challenge of swim completion. By exploring instead the ‘shifted sensorium’ of marathon swimming, and examples of the autotelic pleasures of swimming, this paper argues that training changes the way swimming body feels, and that it is these changes that enable a swimmer to feel ‘at home’ in an environment to which it does not naturally belong. This focus on the sensory aspects of swimming, and its unexpected pleasures, both highlights the ways in which those pleasures do not flow unproblematically to women, and brings to light alternative and politically provocative ways of experiencing the gendered sporting body. This highlights the contingency, however constrained, of even the most entrenched ways of thinking about bodies, both within and outside sport. </jats:p

'I'd kill anyone who tried to take my band away' : obesity surgery, critical fat politics and the 'problem' of patient demand

Obesity surgery is commonly figured within Fat Studies as the violent mutilation of the fat body, and as the unjustifiable apotheosis of the war on obesity. However, while calls to stop obesity surgery are politically appealing, they are unable to account for positive accounts of surgery, or the rising demand for it, outside of narratives of victimhood or false consciousness. This paper asks how a critical perspective can account for those surgery patients who, regardless of any problems that they or others may have encountered in the process, remain positive advocates for surgery. Drawing on interviews with obesity surgery patients and observations in an obesity surgery clinic, this paper argues that obesity surgery is usefully conceptualised not simply as acquiescence to the anti-fat imperative, or its brutal implementation, but as a complex interaction of interests, desire and power relations which is inseparable from deeply problematic anti-obesity ideologies, but which is not confined to them. I conclude that the small resistances that are evident in the everyday experience of obesity surgery signal one way in which it may be possible to identify new, unexpected spaces for critique and contestation, and to open up novel and inclusive avenues for critical thought. This opens up the possibility of taking patient demand for, and endorsement of, obesity surgery seriously as part of a critical fat politics, rather than as anomalous to it

"Calling it a day": the decision to end IVF treatment

This thesis focuses on the experiences of women and couples who have undergone in vitro fertilisation (IVF) unsuccessfully and who have subsequently stopped treatment. The thesis is feminist in that it aims to make visible the gendered power relations within which IVF failure is experienced and accounted for. IVF is viewed here not as a neutral artefact, or the violent imposition of male power, but as a form of disciplinary technology, the experience of which is always contradictory and ambivalent. The thesis takes a discourse analytic approach to the interview data. This approach necessarily conceptualises the participants as active, but constrained, agents in the production of meaning in relation to IVF, and the analysis seeks to identify the discursive strategies which they employ in accounting for their experiences. It is argued that those who have stopped treatment occupy an ambiguous liminal space among the dominant discourses of gender, technology and body, and that this constitutes an unusually productive location from which to think about IVF, both in terms of challenging the apparent inevitability of those discourses and creating openings for the production of new knowledges. The analysis is organised around four key themes which emerged from the interview data: the negotiation of discourses of nature and technology; the location of IVF within consumer culture; the distribution of responsibility when treatment fails; and the seeking of resolution around the end of treatment. This thematic structure forms a platform from which to consider not only the specificities of the experience of IVF failure, but which also generates broader insights at the theoretical and conceptual level, focusing particularly on the limitations of oppositional paradigms of transgression / conformity, material / discursive, agency / constraint and theory / practice in the feminist theorising of IVF

Fat, syn and disordered eating: The dangers and powers of excess

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Fat Studies on 8 April 2015 available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21604851.2015.1016777This article draws on qualitative research inside one UK secular commercial weight loss group to show how ancient Christian suspicions of appetite and pleasure resurface in this group’s language of “Syn.” Following ancient Christian representations of sin, members assume that Syn depicts disorder and that fat is a visible sign of a body which has fallen out of place. Syn, though, is ambiguous, utilizing ancient theological meanings to discipline fat while containing within it the power to resist the very borders which hold women’s bodies and fat in place. Syn thus signals both the dangers and powers of disordered eating.This article draws on qualitative research inside one UK secular commercial weight loss group to show how ancient Christian suspicions of appetite and pleasure resurface in this group’s language of “Syn.” Following ancient Christian representations of sin, members assume that Syn depicts disorder and that fat is a visible sign of a body which has fallen out of place. Syn, though, is ambiguous, utilizing ancient theological meanings to discipline fat while containing within it the power to resist the very borders which hold women’s bodies and fat in place. Syn thus signals both the dangers and powers of disordered eating

Dilemmas in the process of weight reduction: Exploring how women experience training as a means of losing weight

Patients diagnosed with obesity are usually offered group-based behavior interventions which include dietary advice and exercise programs. In particular, high-intensity training—combining weight lifting with aerobic exercising—has been proven effective for losing weight. Moreover, recent studies have shown that persons participating in high-intensity training are more likely to maintain their weight loss compared to persons with lower levels of physical activity. However, most of the research in the field has made use of quantitative methods focusing on the measurable effect of such interventions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to show how the training is experienced from a first-person perspective, namely the patients themselves. Our hope was to shed some new light on the process of weight loss that concerns more than the measurable “impacts” of the training. A qualitative approach was used based on interviews with five women selected from a primary healthcare clinic in Norway. Our results show that experiences of training are connected to the participants' general experience of being overweight. Both relationships to other people and earlier experiences are important for how the training is carried out and perceived. Five themes were identified supporting this line of argument: (1) the gaze of others; (2) a common ground; (3) dependence of close-follow up; (4) bodily discomfort as painful; and (5) aiming for results—an ambivalent experience. The results highlight the importance of finding the proper context and support for each patient's needs

Discourses of Health and Illness in Accounts of IVF Failure

When in vitro fertilisation (IVF) fails, there are few socially and culturally intelligible resources available with which to make sense of those experiences other than tragic stories of despair and interminable lack. This paper argues that those for whom treatment fails occupy an ambiguous liminal location between dominant stories, and that they have to draw strategically from often contradictory discursive resources in order to make sense of those experiences in a way which minimises the significance of their reproductive difference and produces belonging. Based on a series of interviews with women and couples who had IVF unsuccessfully and ended treatment, this paper explores the ways in which the participants mobilised discourses of health and illness in order to make sense of those experiences both to themselves and others. The analysis illustrates the extent to which reproductive normativity produces a burden of justificatory discursive labour for those for whom treatment fails, and highlights the seemingly intractable association of healthy femininity with motherhood. However, this discursive work also exposes the dynamic and provisional nature of the apparently static categories of health and illness, opening up possibilities for transformation in power relations

"It’s different for men": masculinity and IVF

Drawing on interviewdata with men andwomen who have engaged with in vitro fertilization (IVF) unsuccessfully, this article explores the ways in which men experience and make sense of the failure of treatment. Focusing on men’s experiences of infertility, their perceptions of IVF as a technology, and their involvement in the IVF process, the analysis highlights the ambivalent relationship between men and IVF as a technology; the predominance of hegemonic masculine culture in mediating the meaning of IVF for both men and women, particularly in relation to the association of fertility and virility in the normative construction of masculinity; and the very traditionally gendered emotional scripts that structure the experience of IVF and its failure