Redefining Beauty

The fourth chapter turns to works by Pauline Melville and Elizabeth Nunez to explore how breast cancer and anorexia nervosa offer physical and emotional renewal for the protagonists. In The Migration of Ghosts, Boundaries, and Anna-In-Between, Melville and Nunez use their characters to question body-image ideals. The works attest to the life-altering impact of disease. The protagonists’ illnesses, rooted in their dis-ease with their bodies, their relationships, and their privilege, highlight the emotional side effects that can accompany physical maladies. In Melville and Nunez’s works, illness functions as the force of inertia that propels temporary migration and the protagonists’ intensely introspective experiences. Together, the texts afford a closer look at the relationship between disease, migration, and familial reconnection.

Discourses on body positivity: a fluid body image concept based on the case study of Jenna Kutcher instagram account

The purpose of this research was to understand the concept of body positivity and changes in body image ideals. Authors analyzed how Jenna Kutcher, an Instagram influencer, was able to carry on the ideal of body positivity. Body positivity is a concept that shows support and appreciation towards all body types without discrimination on size or aesthetical appearance. This research focused mainly on the topic on changes in body image ideals, and the discourses related to them, that emerged in Jenna’s posts and in her comments. The research was built on the literature review on body image and explored the importance of self-acceptance and self-satisfaction when considering the sense of attractiveness in individuals. Comments and posts were collected, coded an analyzed in accordance with a qualitative method of analysis. The research discussed how Jenna Kutcher was able to partially positively influence her audience through the use of the narratives in her pictures and the development of discourses around the body.

What triggers changes in adolescents’ physical activity? Analysis of critical incidents during childhood and youth in student writings

Objectives: We know little of the critical incidents that youths themselves associate with changes in their physical activity (PA). The aim of this study was to understand dynamic PA change by identifying narrative triggers that adolescents themselves relate to their PA changes. Design: A qualitative and inductive approach was used in this study.Methods: Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used to analyse 115 specimens of 15–24-year-old students’ writings. Results: We identified seven critical incident categories: promoting one’s own well-being, becoming aware of body-image ideals, finding an inspiring sport or losing sport motivation, encountering health problems, experiencing transitions in life circumstances, receiving support or lacking support from significant others, and becoming an adult. The adolescents’ stories described the first three as triggers of agentic PA increase.Conclusions: CIT was a useful analytical method for understanding the impactful events leading to changes in lifestyle PA during the life course from the participants’ own perspective.

Fatness and Failing Citizenship

This article examines how queer persons negotiate the technologies of health deployed to shape sexual citizenship, especially in relation to body size. Beginning with the claim that fatness is always already queered, the authors bring Jasbir Puar's concept of homonationalism into conversation with Samantha Murray's argument that fat persons are positioned as failed citizens. The authors illustrate how fat embodied subjects confront problematics of belonging through analysing in-depth interviews conducted for a research project that investigated how members of queer communities come up against, are affected by and resist body image ideals and body management expectations. Interview excerpts are organised around sites of constraint, contestation and creativity: medical space, queer space and the body as space.

Psychological concomitants of crossfit training

The research aimed at studying relationships between characteristics of CrossFit training (time elapsed from starting with training, weekly session frequency) and indicators of well-being, self-esteem, body awareness, satisfaction with body image, and perceived body competence. Participants, 186 Norwegian individuals (57.5% female; mean age: 28.9±7.81 years) regularly participating in CrossFit, completed online surveys (WHO-5 Well-being Scale, PANAS, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Body Awareness Questionnaire, Body Image Ideals Questionnaire, Body Competence Scale, motivations for doing CrossFit). Weekly frequency of CrossFit sessions was not connected with positive affect (Kendall tau_b=-.02, p=.766), negative affect (-.01, p=.861), or well-being (.10, p=.068) in the correlation analysis. Similarly, overall CrossFit experience (duration x frequency) was not related to global self-esteem (Kendall tau_b=.01, p=.778), body awareness (-.04, p=.379), body image dissatisfaction (.04, p=.423), and body competence (-.07, p=.184). In the regression analysis, well-being was connected with male gender (β=-.205, p<.01), time elapsed from starting with CrossFit (β=-0.178, p<.05), dissatisfaction with body image (β=-.218, p<.01), and body awareness (β=.149, p<.05). Global self-esteem was related to age (β=.164, p<.05), body competence (β=.152, p<.05), and body image dissatisfaction (β=-.276, p<.001). CrossFit training was not connected with higher levels of psychological functioning (well-being, affect, body awareness, and self-esteem) and satisfaction with body image.