Lifestyle Matters Research Articles

Inside Out

This article examines the representation of men as domestic experts in the lifestyle genre on British primetime TV. This is contextualized in relation to changing representations of the home as a space for the stylish individual and to changes in British primetime programming, where a movement towards hybrid TV forms appears to rearticulate the mission to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and to transform private matters into public spectacle. The article aims to examine the ways in which contemporary representations of the male domestic expert struggle to negotiate perceived boundaries between the ‘inside’ of private space and the ‘outside’ of the public sphere and between the categories of femininity and masculinity, a struggle that is evident across the lifestyle genre and within individual programmes, such as BBC2’s Home Front. In Home Front, aestheticism and camp become key strategies for the redefinition of the home and masculinity as matters of lifestyle.

‘I’m Straight, but I Kissed a Girl’: The Trouble with American Media Representations of Female-Female Sexuality

Nearly 20 years ago, Kitzinger (1987) argued that the shift in psychological research in the 1970s and 1980s toward a liberal-humanistic view of lesbians and gay men as ‘just like’ heterosexuals (rather than intrinsically deviant and pathological) was not, in fact, as positive and progressive as it might have seemed. Rather, she noted that this conceptualization actually reinforced the dominant social order by presenting same-sex sexuality as a matter of private lifestyle, thereby neutralizing its political challenge to heterosexuality. This was, of course, an insidiously effective way of maintaining the social institution of heterosexuality, given that outright condemnation of homosexuals had gradually become less socially acceptable. An analogous critique can and should be made regarding the ‘positive’ and ‘accepting’ portrayals of female same-sex sexuality that have increasingly proliferated in American entertainment media. Over the past 5–10 years, there has been an upsurge of openly lesbian (and less often, bisexual) characters and relationships on American films and television shows (recent films include The Hours, Chasing Amy, But I’m a Cheerleader; Gigli, Lost and Delirious, Everything Relative; television shows include Ellen, ER, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NYPD Blue, All My Children, Friends, JAG, Melrose Place, Popular, Once and Again, Nip/Tuck, K Street, Coupling, Queer as Folk). More interestingly, however, there have also been numerous depictions of presumably heterosexual women hinting at or experimenting with same-sex sexuality, a phenomenon that has been called ‘heteroflexibility’ (Essig, 2000) (films include Kissing Jessica Stein; 8 Women, Laurel Canyon; Heavenly Creatures, television shows include Ally McBeal, Friends, Will & Grace, Party of Five, Sex and the City – see also the recent Madonna/Britney Spears and Madonna/Christina Aguilera kisses on the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards: ‘Madonna smooches with Britney and Christina’ [MTV, 2003]). On the one hand, feminist psychologists might hopefully surmise that these mass

Does lifestyle matter? H. pylori infection is not associated with lifestyle factors in the Bristol helicobacter project

Does lifestyle matter? H. pylori infection is not associated with lifestyle factors in the Bristol helicobacter project

The social context of Welsh-medium bilingual education in anglicised areas

Principal component analysis of indicators from the 1991 Census was used to characterise the social context of school age Welsh speakers in South East Wales. The area had been largely anglicised by the Census of 1971, but the growth of Welsh-medium education was responsible for net gains in numbers of younger Welsh/English bilinguals. Doubts as to whether young people will remain active bilinguals after leaving school have been raised. The inter-relationships between figures for Welsh speaking in the Census and other social indicators were examined. Being categorised as a young Welsh speaker was found to cut across an economic advantage/disadvantage dimension, and so was a matter of life style rather than a by-product of parental choices unrelated to language resurgence. Probing life styles by means of interviews where Welsh-medium and English-medium schools could be matched on the economic advantage/disadvantage dimension showed that deciding for Welsh-medium education was embedded in authentic local life styles. Although networks of people at more local spatial scales were involved in Welsh-medium education, they were linked to wider scale networks establishing domains for Welsh language use in the public sector and local government.

Inequalities in health: the interaction of circumstances and health related behaviour

AbstractThis paper derives its main hypothesis from results of the Health and Lifestyle Survey as reported in Blaxter's monograph Health and Lifestyles. In this book it is argued that in a favourable social environment a healthy lifestyle matters but in a unfavourable social environment a healthy lifestyle does not make much difference. This hypothesis is tested with data from health surveys from the Netherlands and Denmark. The Dutch data showed a highly significant relationship of unfavourable material and social circumstances with both poor health and an unhealthy lifestyle. In turn, an unhealthy lifestyle was also related to poor health. The Danish study showed similar, although generally weaker, associations. When the British findings would apply to Denmark and the Netherlands, we should find an interaction between material and social circumstances and health related behaviour in their association with health and illness. Neither the Dutch nor the Danish data showed an interaction of the type that the British study assumes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why the findings from the UK could not be replicated.

PARADIGM OR PERIOD PIECE? DAVID LODGE'S HOW FAR CAN YOU GO ? IN PERSPECTIVE

It Is Now over a decade since the publication of How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge's astutely observant, often wickedly amusing, but also deeply serious novel of English Catholic life from the early 1950s to the mid 1970s.1 Although by no means Lodge's first attempt to construct a fictional narrative with post-war English Catholicism as its principal subject, How Far Can You Go? was certainly—and to date remains—Lodge's most ambitious and far-ranging exploration of this theme.2 The scope of How Far Can You Go? is, indeed, ambitious, for it attempts nothing less than a narrative of the various stages in the transition (or rather transitions) of a group of a dozen or so central characters from a rather narrow and essentially obedient, if also somewhat grudging and perplexed, acceptance of Catholic religious authority and tradition in their student days of the early 1950s; through the experience of an extraordinary expansion of their options both secular and religious in the 1960s; down to a point in the mid-1970s at which the relative uniformity and order of their Catholic identity of the early 1950s has given way to a remarkable plurality (or even perhaps chaos) of alternative ways of being Catholic in the mid-70s. Along the way, the various characters discover first the desire, then the possibility, and finally the necessity to 'choose for themselves' in matters of lifestyle, of morality and of religion—even if the final choice for some of them is a return to a more or less traditional version of their Catholic faith.

Health promotion policy in Sweden: means and methods in intersectoral action.

In Sweden different commissions have been working on legislation, prevention programmes and financing, and have aimed at implementing the Health For All strategy at national level. National programmes for cardiovascular diseases, cancer, accidental injuries, etc were established by parliamentary resolution in 1985. The role of health education has been extended: from the earlier concern with matters of individual lifestyle the focus has shifted towards motivating the community as a whole to take an active interest in its health. There is good public support in the areas of legislation, knowledge and awareness, international development (WHO), and public policy. Despite the existence of legislation, strong official policy and a good organizational structure, strong efforts are still needed to turn health promotion into general practice. National, regional and local bodies as well as non-governmental and private organizations are showing an increasing interest in health promotion. Health promotion strategies are used in traditional fields such as alcohol and smoking as well as other sectors such as education, employment, culture, social welfare, town and house planning, transport and environmental protection. There has never been such a positive basis for the further development of health promotion policy in Sweden though there are a number of potential conflicts and problems related to knowledge, organization, attitudes, financing, distribution of power, etc. These are outlined broadly as "The organizational trap", "Modification or revolution?" and "Individual or public responsibility for health?".

Qui veut, en France, d'un mode de vie plus sain?

Changes in lifestyles are strongly suggested by Health Education. However, a major problem appears when these suggestions are transformed into actuality: is it possible to identify the groups which are convinced that a change is necessary? In France, an investigation about the rationality of administrative authorities, of physicians and of lay individuals shows the acuity of the question. The article first deals with administrative interests in lifestyle matters. It provides the evidence of incompatibility between Public Health Planning and short term management in the French social system. The second section sheds light on the concern of the medical profession with lifestyles. Physicians' attitudes seem to be dependent on the background of daily activities. Moreover, the problems of income and professional legitimacy faced by some sections of the profession in the Private Sector explain how and why they are in favour with prevention and Health Education. The final section focuses upon public awareness of changes in lifestyles. It provides a brief description of different ways of defining health among social classes, and of different health beliefs. Beyond this heterogeneity, the various conceptions of health are an expression of individual resources and social backgrounds; they are always related to actual working conditions and status.

The Case of the Silk-Stocking Socialists and the Calculating Children of the Middle Class

Recent developments in the political behaviour of the British electorate have called into question the once-prevalent view that class was what counted when it came to voting and all else was ‘embellishment and detail’. Two streams of thought dominate the recent literature. One notes the continuing prominence of social class in the context of voting behaviour, but stresses the extent to which class is no longer expressable as a simple function of occupation (manual and non-manual), but instead requires paying attention to such aspects of lifestyle as tenancy patterns. The other, best exemplified in Dunleavy's recent work, pays less attention to individual lifestyle and emphasizes instead the extent to which changes in the occupational structure (particularly sectoral location and unionization) have altered the political meaning of workplace (‘production’) locations. The theoretical interest in sectoral location arises from the growth of public sector employment since the early 1960s and the increase in public sector labour militancy in the early 1970s. According to this view, partisan choice is influenced by sectoral location and by union membership, which is itself not a matter of lifestyle nor a simple extension of social class, but is bound up with sectoral (public/corporate/small private) location of occupation.