Hannah Frith

Using Photographs to Capture Women's Experiences of Chemotherapy: Reflecting on the Method

This article examines the value of using the photo-elicitation method for generating health-related narratives. Drawing on research in which women kept a photographic record of their experiences of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, this research explored how this method (a) produced elaborate accounts of illness experiences through an exploration of the process of representing experiences and through an interrogation of the images themselves; (b) allowed an opportunity to capture experiences over time and a way of capturing the past, which can then be reexplored from the present; (c) enabled patients to retain control over their images of themselves and how they choose to represent their experiences; and (d) provided a window into the private, everyday experiences of patients away from a health care setting.

Focusing on Sex: Using Focus Groups in Sex Research

Recent commentators have advocated the greater use of qualitative methods in sex research. Drawing on the growing body of sex-related focus group research (including the authors own research on sexual refusals), this article highlights some key benefits of the focus group method. In particular, the collective discussion and interaction between research participants enables the exploration of under-researched topics, insight into the language commonly used by respondents to describe sexual activities, and provides the conditions under which people feel comfortable discussing sexual experiences.

De)constructing Body Image

The reification of body image leads to unarticulated ideological and conceptual assumptions that obscure the most dynamic and productive features of the construct. These assumptions are that body image: (1) ‘exists’; (2) is a socially mediated product of perception; (3) is ‘internal’ and ‘of the individual’; (4) can be treated and measured as if real; and (5) individuals’ respond to body image measures as if neutrally providing information about pre-existing images held in their heads. We argue that it is more useful to consider body imaging as a process, an activity rather than a product.

Adolescents’ and Parents’ Experiences of Managing the Psychosocial Impact of Appearance Change During Cancer Treatment

Using combined qualitative data from multiple case study interviews and an online survey, this study explored the impact of appearance change on 22 adolescents receiving cancer treatment aged 13 to 18 years and six of their parents. Data were analyzed using template analysis. Appearance changes were a major concern. Adolescents typically struggled to adapt to new experiences and concerns related to this highly sensitive issue. Many felt anxious and self-conscious and were reluctant to reveal appearance changes in public. These feelings were compounded by the negative reactions of others (e.g., staring, teasing, and inappropriate questioning), which sometimes lead to avoidance of social activity and threats of noncompliance. Parents of these children felt ill-prepared to manage appearance-related anxieties. Adolescents wanted support to develop the practical and social skills necessary to maintain a “normal” appearance and manage the negative responses of others. However, some adolescents showed resilience and, with support from friends and family, developed strategies to manage their altered appearance and its social consequences. These strategies are explored, which can inform interventions to support adolescents and parents.

Labouring on orgasms: embodiment, efficiency, entitlement and obligations in heterosex

Womens orgasms have long been subject to vociferous scientific debate, but over the last 10–15 years a small but growing body of largely feminist qualitative research has begun to explore how the sociocultural construction of orgasm finds contemporary articulation in popular culture and in lay accounts of heterosex. This work is explicitly concerned with gendered power relations and how these operate. This paper provides a critical review and synthesis of this work by exploring three discursive imperatives: (1) orgasm and the coital imperative (2) efficient orgasms and hard work (3) and the ethic of reciprocity. Drawing on these insights, this paper outlines how a focus on embodiment, on situated meaning-making and on everyday sexual practices would further extend our understanding of the social construction of orgasm. Finally, the paper argues for the importance of locating these processes of meaning-making in relation to socially structured material realities.

Editorial: Imag(in)ing Visual Methodologies

From the use of models to show cognitive processes, to recordings of parent /child interaction, the visual has always had a place in psychology. Indeed, visual representation is an integral part of ‘doing’ scientific theory (see Garfinkel et al ., 1981; Lynch and Edgerton, 1988), and the verbal and the visual are integrally intertwined in representing scientific theory, method and data, and in enabling the expression of everyday experiences. Notwithstanding this interweaving of the verbal and the visual, psychology has tended to privilege the verbal / even when examining text that contains both visual and verbal communication (cf. Rose, 2000). Despite a long history of using visual techniques as stimuli for eliciting data and as tools for representing theory or empirical findings, psychologists have rarely self-consciously explored visual methodologies as a source of knowledge construction in their own right. This special issue draws together researchers who use visual methods to examine different ways of meaning-making, and who explore some of the key issues that underpin the use of visual methods. Visual methods are an exciting means of doing psychology, but using them makes salient concerns of process, translation, ethics and representation.

Dressing the Body: The Role of Clothing in Sustaining Body Pride and Managing Body Distress

This qualitative research extends current theorizing on behavioural strategies for managing body distress by exploring how women manage body image through clothing practices. Eighty two women reported their subjective understanding of how body evaluation and clothing practices are interconnected in response to open-ended questionnaires. Thematic analysis of responses revealed that clothing practices are a mundane and agentic part of the adjustive and self-regulatory processes for managing distressing body image (cf. Cash, 2002b). Clothing is used strategically to manage bodily appearance and anxiety by hiding ‘problem areas’, accentuating ‘assets,’ and flattering the figure. Body image is actively negotiated and managed through everyday behaviours which fluctuate on ‘fat’ days and ‘thin’ days. These data illustrate the processes which underpin the active negotiation of body image and capture the fluidity of body evaluations and strategies for managing the appearance of the body. These findings raise a number of challenges for theorizing and research including the need to adopt methods which capture the dynamic interplay of body image processes, and the need to address body appreciation as well as distress.

The Best of Friends: The Politics of Girls Friendships

Contradictory representations of girls’ friendships as close and intimate bonds characterized by sharing, trust and support, or, conversely, as hierarchical cliques plagued by ever shifting and re-negotiated processes of inclusion and exclusion and battles over power and status, highlight the complexities of these relationships. Girls have uniquely different friendships than boys do: they have smaller groups of friends, more exclusive friendships and more intimate, close and selfdisclosing relationships than boys (see Caldwell and Peplau, 1982; Eder and Hallinan, 1978; Savin-Williams and Berndt, 1990). Girls attach great importance to their friendships, and report intense emotional attachments to one another (Griffiths, 1995; McRobbie and Garber, 1980). Developmental psychologists have consistently demonstrated that close and intimate friendships are linked to positive developmental outcomes, while social isolation and rejection are linked to poor outcomes (see Hartup, 1996; Parker and Asher, 1987 for reviews of this literature). Consequently girls’ friendships have often been romanticized as a haven of warmth and support, intimate self-disclosure and trust. Mapping on, as they do, to stereotypical and culturally evocative notions of respectable femininity, such romanticized images of girls’ friendships have proved problematic. For example, in their analysis of girls’ psychological development, Brown and Gilligan (1992) examine the ways in which the pressure on girls to be ‘nice’ results in a metaphorical loss of ‘voice’ which limits their ability to negotiate areas of difficulty and to develop ‘authentic’ friendships. Girls’ friendships are also characterized by strict hierarchies and highly differentiated peer groups in which being popular (rather than having close friends) becomes increasingly important (Eder, 1985; Michell, 1999).

Accounting for orgasmic absence: exploring heterosex using the story completion method

Orgasms are central to academic and lay debates about sexual ‘normality’ and ‘dysfunction’ and are culturally constructed as the peak of heterosexual sex (Potts, 2000). Conversely, sexual interaction without orgasm is positioned as ‘only foreplay’, a failure or dysfunctional. Examining how people account for orgasmic absence during heterosex using a story completion method, this article addresses three key themes: (1) ‘reciprocity, blame and the orgasmic imperative’, which places obligations on both men and women to elicit or deliver an orgasm to another; (2) ‘sex work, technique and the orgasmic imperative’, which indicates the growth of a ‘performance imperative’ in which both men and women must work to improve their sexual skills and (3) ‘honesty and dishonesty in sexual communication’ in which open communication is positioned as difficult but key to solving sexual difficulties. Collectively, these themes demonstrate how gendered discourses of sexuality coalesce to produce an orgasmic imperative that provides different entitlements and obligations for both men and women.

C’mon girlfriend Sisterhood, sexuality and the space of the benign in makeover TV

In the context of a purported shift from humiliation to the benign exemplified by the marked contrast between How to Look Good Naked and What Not to Wear, this article examines the cultural work performed by the ‘space of the benign’. We identify three main mechanisms — body appreciation, synthetic friendship and suspended sexuality — which manipulate existing constructions of female friendship and homosexuality to produce the host as the ‘gay best friend’. As such, the host sidesteps the heterosexual scopic economy while seeking to re-place women within it, and avoids the censure frequently directed at female presenters. At the same time, by coaxing women towards an acceptance of their body as is, How to Look Good Naked provides a ‘feel-good’ sense of empowerment while preserving individualistic framings of body problems and solutions. We conclude that the show rehabilitates women within the heteronormative scopic economy, and reinscribes them as neo-liberal consumers.