Katy Day

“Warning! alcohol can seriously damage your feminine health”: A discourse analysis of recent British newspaper coverage of women and drinking

Women’s increasing alcohol consumption has come under intense scrutiny recently within the UK press and, as this paper will report, the coverage on the whole can be seen to present women who drink as problematic. Although feminist researchers have examined media constructions of gender (Marjorie Ferguson 1983; Ellen McCracken 1993), and although men’s drinking has been the subject of critical analyses (Brendan Gough & Gareth Edwards 1998; Debra Kaminer & John Dixon 1995), there appears to be little feminist work on women’s drinking per se. This is a significant omission, since gender representations around eating, drinking, or sex tend to draw upon conventional ideals around femininity (and masculinity) and as such invite feminist deconstruction (Susan Bordo 1997; Julie Hepworth & Christine Griffin 1995). It is also necessary for feminists working in this area to examine critically scientific thinking on women’s drinking, as media constructions and everyday understandings will inevitably be distilled from mainstream psychological “knowledge.” Indeed, science is often invoked in discourse to warrant particular constructions as legitimate or self-evident, as opposed to mere opinion (Derek Edwards & Jonathan Potter 1992).

Starving in cyberspace: a discourse analysis of pro-eating-disorder websites

Recently, we have seen the emergence of ‘pro-eating-disorder’ websites and Internet communities, providing opportunities for girls and women who practise self-starvation and purging to converse and swap ‘tips’ online. This has generated discussion about the feminist response to this so-called ‘pro-eating-disorder movement’. Although a number of studies have focused on online eating-disorder support groups, they have not examined the material posted on pro-eating-disorder websites. The study reported here is an examination of how members of the pro-eating-disorder movement construct their interests, activities and identities. This was done by performing a poststructuralist style of discourse analysis informed by a feminist perspective on the material downloaded from pro-eating-disorder websites. The analysis highlights the discursive work occurring on the sites around the power of beauty ideals and conformity to these. Yet at the same time, this sub-cultural group is engaged in counter-hegemonic work with regards to dominant meanings surrounding self-starvation and purging. Suggestions for future work are also presented.

‘Cos girls aren’t supposed to eat like pigs are they?’ Young women negotiating gendered discursive constructions of food and eating

While psycho-medical understandings of ‘eating disorders’ draw distinctions between those who ‘have’/‘do not have’ eating disorders, feminist poststructuralist researchers argue that these detract from political/socio-cultural conditions that invoke problematic eating and embodied subjectivities. Using poststructuralist discourse analysis, we examine young women’s talk around food and eating, in particular, the negotiation of tensions arising from derogating aspects of hetero-normative femininities, while accounting for own ‘feminine’ practices (e.g. ‘dieting’) and subjectivities. Analysis suggested that eating/dieting was accounted for by drawing upon neo-liberalist discourses around individual choice; however, these may obscure gendered, classed and racialized power relations operating in local and wider contexts.

I. Pro-anorexia and ‘Binge-drinking’: Conformity to Damaging Ideals or ‘New’, Resistant Femininities?

In recent years, the spotlight in the British media has often been on girls’ and young women’s ‘wayward’ and self-destructive practices, creating a degree of ‘moral panic’. One example is heavy and so-called binge-drinking (Day et al., 2004), which has been cast within the media in various, negative ways, for example, as the price of women’s so-called emancipation and as an unfortunate breaking down of clearly defined gender roles in society (see Day et al., 2004). More recently, internet sites promoting extreme dieting have received attention from journalists, organizations (e.g. SCaRED1) and feminist scholars (e.g. Pollack, 2003) concerned about the impact of these on the health and well-being of the girls and women who visit the sites (see Day and Keys, 2009, for an overview). Such cyberspaces have typically been characterized as fora of female pathology with subsequent calls for their censorship (e.g. by Australian Labour MP Anna Burke). Whilst there are a plethora of feminist analyses of body modification or ‘eating disorders’ that have cast these practices in diverse, complex and sometimes contradictory ways (see Malson, 1998), there is a scarcity of feminist literature on women’s alcohol consumption. Although the two topics are clearly distinct, my research has elucidated a number of similarities and common themes pertinent to feminism. For example, representations around both eating and drinking (alcohol) tend to draw upon conventional ideals around femininity (and masculinity), such as the idea that ‘good’ women should exercise restraint and denial. Such representations invite feminist deconstruction (e.g. Hepworth and Griffin, 1995; Bordo, 1997). Furthermore, my research has highlighted how both women’s drinking and extreme dieting can be understood (partially) as practices by which girls and women challenge and resist gender ideals and social processes aimed at controlling women, and via which they sometimes attempt a (re)construction of meanings and identities. This is consistent with poststructuralist feminist arguments that girls and women have the ability to ‘rewrite’ gender ideologies, often in ways that benefit them by, for example, positioning them in more powerful ways (e.g. Eckermann, 1997). However, an analysis of such ‘destructive’ health-

Exploring Women’s Agency and Resistance in Health-related Contexts: Contributors’ Introduction

The series of articles presented here addresses the problematic issues of women’s agency and resistance in the context of feminist discursive research conducted by members of the Feminism and Health Research Group, based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, on the topics of women’s drinking, pro-anorexia, pregnancy, (hetero)sexual and romantic relationships and gender and risk in the workplace. A running theme within feminist research and theorizing has been the constraining and oppressive functions of women’s roles and constructions of femininity (e.g. Humm, 1992; Millett, 1971; Wetherell, 1995; White and Kowalski, 1994; Wittig, 1992). However, whilst the social must remain central in feminist analyses, critics have attacked deterministic explanations that obscure notions of agency (e.g. Morris, 1997). Foucauldian-influenced poststructuralism has enabled feminist work to explore women’s agency within various sites (see for example Currie, 2004 and Raisborough, 2006), with writers arguing that the subject can reflect upon the discourses and discursive relations that constitute her and that she has some leeway in choosing from the options available (e.g. Weedon, 1987). Further than this, it has been suggested that women have the potential to ‘rewrite’ ideologies of gender by subverting dominant discourses through the mobilization of ‘alternative’ or counter discourses that position them in more powerful ways (e.g. Eckermann, 1997). Here, discourse becomes a crucial site for active resistance to gender ideologies, which in turn opens up possibilities for positive action and social change (Burman and Parker, 1993; Gill, 1995; Wetherell, 1995). Women are not simply positioned by existing discourses but can position themselves within these, variably taking these up, resisting, negotiating and tailoring them to achieve a desired identity (Court and Court, 1998; Davies and Harre, 1990). However, at the same time, feminists have cautioned against neo-liberal, individualistic notions of agency and choice (e.g. Petchesky, 1986; Wray, 2004). The

Starving in Cyberspace: The Construction of Identity on ‘Pro-eating-disorder’ Websites

‘The self’ has often been central to analyses of ‘eating disorders’ and problems with food and ‘body image’. However, in mainstream psychology notions of the self have often been situated within a false dichotomy between the subject and the social world, a dichotomy that has been deconstructed by critical theorists, particularly those writing from a social constructionist perspective (e.g. Burkitt, 1991). This chapter explores these debates and trends in theorising of the self, and reports on a study that analysed the discourse on pro-eating-disorder websites from a feminist social constructionist perspective. The analysis highlights the active discursive construction of feminine identities within these spaces and how this is closely bound with punitive regimes on the female body such as self-starvation. Through our analysis, the chapter challenges notions that the self can be understood as a separate, ‘pre-existent’ or static entity in understandings of self-starvation. Rather, ‘anorexic selves’ are constructed, worked on, multi-faceted and shifting, and an understanding of the discursive locatedness of these is important for fuller understandings of body modification and the self.

Old Jokes, New Media – Online Sexism and Constructions of Gender in Internet Memes

The Internet is a space where the harassment of women and marginalised groups online has attracted the attention of both academic and popular press. Feminist research has found that instances of online sexism and harassment are often reframed as “acceptable” by constructing them as a form of humour. Following this earlier research, this present paper explores a uniquely technologically-bound type of humour by adopting a feminist, social-constructionist approach to examine the content of popular Internet memes. Using thematic analysis on a sample of 240 image macro Internet memes (those featuring an image with a text caption overlaid), we identified two broad, overarching themes – Technological Privilege and Others. Within the analysis presented here, complex and troubling constructions of gendered identity in online humour are explored, illustrating the potential for the othering and exclusion of women through humour in technological spaces. We argue that this new iteration of heteronormative, hegemonic masculinity in online sexism, couched in “irony” and “joking”, serves to police, regulate and create rightful occupants and owners of such spaces.

Food, Eating, and ‘Eating Disorders’: Analysing Adolescents’ Discourse

Female adolescents have long been identified as a group ‘at risk’ of developing an eating disorder (Fairburn & Harrison, 2003). Moreover, figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC, 2014) indicate that the number of hospital admissions for treatment of an eating disorder had risen by 8% in the preceding 12 months. In terms of girls who were admitted, the most common age was 15 (300 out of 2,320), whereas for boys, this was 13 (50 out of 240). Published statistics must be treated with caution, however. First, as these tend to be based on those receiving treatment, they provide only a partial account as many ‘cases’ remain unidentified. Second, as we shall argue, treating anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (and other so-called eating disorders such as ‘binge eating disorder’) as identifiable conditions is fraught with problems. Nevertheless, there appears to be a consensus that eating practices that are a cause for concern are on the rise, and that young people are particularly vulnerable.

Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis: putting the personal in the political in feminist research

ABSTRACT Discourse analysis is a useful and flexible method for exploring power and identity. While there are many forms of discourse analysis, all agree that discourse is the central site of identity construction. However, recent feminist concerns over power, agency, and resistance have drawn attention to the absence of participants’ first-hand experiences within broad discursive accounts (Lafrance & McKenzie-Mohr 2014; Saukko 2008). For those with an interest in power relations, such as feminist researchers, this is a problematic silence which renders the personal functions of discourse invisible. In this article, we argue that the “personal” and “political” are inextricable, and we make a case for putting the “personal” into broader discursive frameworks of understanding. Further, we assert that feminist research seeking to account for identity must more explicitly aim to capture this interplay. To this end, we argue that voice is the key site of meaning where this interplay can be captured, but that no clear analytical framework currently exists for producing such an account. In response, we propose Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis (FRDA) as a voice-centered analytical approach for engaging with experience and discourse in talk. We then set out clear guidance on how to do FRDA, as applied in the context of women working in U.K. policing. Finally, we conclude that by prioritizing voice, FRDA invites new and politicized feminist readings of power, agency, and resistance, where the voices of participants remain central to the discursive accounts of researchers.

Towards a Critical Social Psychology of Social Class

Social psychologists have paid relatively little attention to class compared with scholars from other disciplines (e.g., sociology). This is a concern as class shapes nearly every aspect of human life and has a profoundly psychological dimension. This chapter critically reviews mainstream social psychological work on class, highlighting the general failure of this to problematise the class system of countries like Britain and the United States. It then moves on to discuss critical social psychological work on class and what this has offered those seeking to alleviate the problems caused by social and economic inequalities. Finally, the chapter reviews the current ‘state of play’ for critical scholarship in this area, considering future directions for this field of study.