Abstract
The increasing prevalence of body dissatisfaction among young people is now well recognised with much of the existing literature making connections between media imagery and body dissatisfaction. Media literacy-based interventions continue to be rolled out in schools across the global north in an attempt to prevent body dissatisfaction. However, the pervasiveness of digital media in young people’s lives has prompted questions about the adequacy of current theories of media literacy and associated school-based interventions. We explore how feminist theories focused on the affective, material and more-than-human offer different insights into new digital configurations of agency and mediated learning. We reflect on this potential through analysing empirical data from a study involving arts-based workshops in two schools in the South West of England. Our focus on affect and agency as relational and entangled has important implications for theory and practice in school-based body image programmes and media literacy approaches.
Highlights
It is estimated that between 25% and 61% of adolescents experience body dissatisfaction (Al Sabbah et al, 2009), with body dissatisfaction often framed as risk factor for other health problems (Diedrichs et al, 2020)
We extend the work on body pedagogy to consider how learning about and through bodies is produced via multiple ‘intra-actions’, that are formal and informal, and that produce material-discursive phenomena, such as body dissatisfaction
We have argued that theorising body disaffection through feminist new materialist approaches opens up promising new directions to advance pedagogical responses to body disaffection among young people
Summary
It is estimated that between 25% and 61% of adolescents experience body dissatisfaction (Al Sabbah et al, 2009), with body dissatisfaction often framed as risk factor for other health problems (Diedrichs et al, 2020). Literature has examined the relationship between levels of media literacy and body dissatisfaction and disordered eating (Levine and Kelly, 2012; Levine and Murnen, 2009; McLean et al, 2016a, 2016b; Rodgers et al, 2019) This literature explores the impact that distorted and unrealistic media images can have on young peoples’ embodied subjectivities. Critical media literacy approaches often seek to ‘empower’ young people to evaluate, critique and create alternative media and they rely heavily upon individualised notions of agency in conceptualising learning Many of these interventions have provided important steps in helping young people develop more critical engagements with the pervasive imagery of the ideal body, those who might be deeply troubled by weight-centric imperatives circulating in these media. The term media literacy is used throughout so we can engage in these conversations while staying committed to advancing an understanding of mediated learning as an affective, relational process
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