Fitness, ‘Wellbeing’ and the Beauty-Health Nexus

Abstract

Bodies are always a key site for the materialisation and management of social and moral imperatives. Changing social environments, the importance of local geopolitics and mobile and responsive patterns of gendered subjectivity all help shape preferences and ideals for the size and shape of bodies in any given society. In contemporary Western societies, physical survival into old age is now rarely in question, and illness and disease can often be managed. Despite this, the body has not receded from view. Instead, bodies continue to be imbued with new meanings and materialised through changing regulatory frameworks. In particular, the ability to secure adequate food without physical effort (Orbach, 2010) has created new dilemmas in regard to body strength and size, creating in turn a modern concern with physical ‘fitness’.

As I say, I mean, I have struggled all my life to try and you know keep myself at a weight that, to be honest again, [is] more of a social thing than a health thing.

(Marie, 42)