Fat free schooling: The discursive production of ill-health

Abstract

This article centres attention on the rising tide of eating disorders, essentially anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, afflicting young people, particularly young women globally, it seems. It explores the relationships between discourses of food refusal/slenderness and those of 'obesity'/'overweight' and examines their effect on curricular concerned with the education of the 'body' in schools First, the analysis points to the limits of reducing eating disorders to a problem of 'body image' or to what some have called the 'cult of slenderness' affecting, and exported from, 'Western cultures'. Secondly, it interrogates the ways in which 'obesity' and 'overweight' are socially constructed and suggests that these discursive corollaries to the cult of slenderness, when expressed in the curricular of schools, may be seriously implicated in the production of disordered eating and ill health. Finally, it is suggested that a shift in the focus of analysis from gender to issues of power and control may be a necessary precursor to more complete understandings of the challenges facing young people in a fast changing global age, as well as to achieving forms of education that can deliver empowerment and health.