‘As long as I’m fit and a healthy weight, I don’t feel bad’: Exploring body work and health through the concept of ‘affect’

Abstract

In diverse social contexts individuals are encouraged to ‘work on’ their bodies to improve their health and appearance. This article builds on recent sociological and feminist approaches which foreground the body and embodiment, combining a Deleuzian theorisation of bodies and the concept of affect to analyse qualitative interviews with young people about their body work practices. Empirical work which explicitly employs a Deleuzian theory of bodies in methodology and analysis is relatively new in sociological studies of the body. Drawing on young people’s narratives about their body practices, and their embodied everyday experiences of ‘health’, this article shows the value of a Deleuzian approach to rethinking bodies, arguing that the concept of affect helps to extend understandings of embodiment. Through interviews with young people about their bodies and body work practices, this article explicates how a Deleuzian approach to bodies can be practically extended in empirical analysis.