Natalie Beausoleil

Breaking down "Healthism": Barriers to Health and Fitness as Identified by Immigrant Youth in St. John's, NL, Canada.

In this article, we challenge dominant health and fitness discourses which stress individual responsibility in the attainment of these statuses. We examine the results of an empirical study exploring how a group of 15 Canadian immigrant youth, aged 12–17, discursively construct notions of health and fitness. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups and journaling and analyses were formed using feminist post-structuralist perspectives to examine how the youths ideas of health and fitness are influenced by cultural and institutional discourses. Through our analysis of their ideas regarding barriers to health and fitness, we argue that while current dominant discourses emphasize individual responsibility for health and fitness; these concepts are linked to a variety of political, social and economic influences.

Confusing constructions: Exploring the meaning of health with children in “obesity” treatment

ABSTRACT Fat studies scholars challenge the notion of the “obesity epidemic,” explicating how “obesity” discourse serves to shape our views of health and the body. It is argued that childhood “obesity,” in particular, has been constructed as a modern day scourge that threatens the future health of populations. The authors provide an examination of the embodied experiences of children enrolled in an “obesity” treatment program in a Canadian hospital. Utilizing a feminist poststructural framework, they provide narratives illustrating how these children construct their meanings of health and how “obesity” discourse restricts fat children’s opportunity to identify as healthy.

Taking Up the Vitality Message Health Knowledge, Feeling Good, and Pleasure in Newfoundland Children’s Drawings and Talk

Currently, in Canada and elsewhere in the West, government spending, media, and health activities focus heavily on “lifestyles” and the “obesity epidemic.” In the last decade, many health and education professionals in Canada have adopted policies to improve health and fitness among youth, seeing them particularly “at risk” for engaging in unhealthy practices. Canada’s Vitality message of learning how to eat well, be active, and feel good about one’s self serves as the health promotion framework guiding our analysis of children’s constructions of health. Adults and youth readily identify with dominant health messages related to eating and being physically active but only rarely acknowledge any sense of embodiment or feeling good. Research with adults, embodiment, and health suggests that feeling good about one’s health and body is an impossible proposition as learning to care for the body is a constant and obligatory individual responsibility with limited possibilities of contentment. Health must be consistently and continuously worked at, making body-related projects a health imperative. We argue that learning how youth feel and experience health in relation to feeling good and pleasure is also imperative given the complex and contested relationships individuals have with health. Based on focus groups with 123 Grade 2 and Grade 4 students in Newfoundland, we use a feminist poststructuralist approach to examine how children understand healthy practices and messages about the ideal “healthy” body. A thematic and performance analysis combining talk, drawings, and talking about the artistic productions reveals children’s complicated relation to health and the body, where pleasure figures centrally and opens up possibilities for alternative conceptions of self and embodiment. We propose a serious investigation of children’s sense of pleasure and “having fun” as a fruitful avenue of research for critical scholars who aim to challenge dominant discourses of health and the body.

Activité physique, santé et vieillissement chez des femmes francophones de l'Ontario

This article discusses qualitative research conducted in minority Francophone communites in Ontario. The perceptions of and participation in physical activity by some thirty women are analysed with respect to sociological foundations and current views on aging. These views apply to individual responsibility for health; to the links between health, beauty, and aging; to participation in sports; to perceptions of masculinity and femininity; and, finally, to the obligation to remain physically active at all stages of life. The results of the study among women grouped into three age brackets reveal that, although these women have adopted a view of individual responsibility for health and the prevention of the harmful effects of aging through regular physical exercise, they may also be seen as subjects who find strategies in their daily lives to avoid falling prey to the pressures of health and beauty standards regarding aging, to face limitations, and to develop a healthy way of experiencing the aging process.