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voices
Abstract
Introduction
Gendered bodies
Data was collected through two focus groups which took place in
December, 1994 and March, 1995 in Gosford and Sydney,
Australia. Fourteen women, seven in each group, took part in the
research. Participants were required to be pre-menopausal women
who identified themselves as not having any medical condition in
need of dietary modification and who had a history of dieting to
lose weight. Present weight was not a restriction. Participants
were initially recruited through existing weight control groups,
but when this yielded insufficient numbers, the snowballing tech-
nique was used, where existing participants were requested to
invite other people known to them. The number of focus groups
required for research is determined by repeating the focus group
discussions until a repetition of themes occurs. This happened
after two focus group discussions.
Participants completed a short written questionnaire which pro-
vided information on level of education, occupation, income and
previous experience with dieting. Demographic data from the
questionnaires showed the first group (from the suburb of
Gosford) was made up of women who had left secondary school
The women were asked what being on a diet meant to them. Max
summed up the feeling of all but two of the women toward diet-
ing in stating: 'I hate the thought of dieting, I hate it!' Audrey
agreed, revealing that dieting was: 'Restricted and boring.
Deprived!'. However, two of the women described the pleasure
that dieting could provide:
Body surveillance
Gyrtle: It's weird, but people think they're being nice if they
comment on my weight, that I've lost weight . . .
they always think they have to say something to
overweight people.
Size acceptance
Mitzy and Marilyn had only recently accepted their size and
stopped dieting due to the support of their partners (neither of
whom were overweight).
Claudia's partner was also accepting of her size, but she still felt
pressured to diet and aspire to the thin ideal.
the way I look, but I'm paranoid that I'm not good
enough and I feel like I have to be slim for me not
for him.
Wolf (1990) argues that women's eating pattems are a public and
political issue. Food, with the implications it has for their bodies,
defines a woman in western society. Wolf sees dieting as 'self-
inflicted semi-starvation' and argues that we need to move away
from individually based psychological explanations of dieting, to
focus on the public sphere. She maintains that the thin ideal
should be conceived of as a pre-emptive strike at women because
'fat' is inherently feminine - to deny it is misogynistic - women
naturally have breasts, buttocks, rounded abdomens and hips.
However, Wolf presents an overly deterministic and simplistic
view of the way women respond to the pressure to conform to
female appearances norms. The voices of the women in this study
represent a myriad of reactions to the thin ideal in terms of how
the dominant discourse is accepted, modified, resisted or rejected.
The subjective experience of women who diet can be characterised
in women's contradictory relationship with food, where they
derive both 'pleasure and pain' from food and dieting. The quali-
tative methodology employed in this study reveals the complexity
of the dieting process. Three main themes to emerge from the
data are: the diet/health trade-off, women play a significant role
in reinforcing the thin ideal, and the reverse discourse of size
acceptance. These themes will be explored further below.
The discourse of dieting and the thin ideal exposes the dominant
cultural sources of control and manipulation of women's bodies.
The cult of slimness remains the key reason why women attempt
weight loss diets, despite the resistance to this dominant dis-
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the participants, the research assistance of Jane Potter; and
Helen Belcher, Lois Bryson, Peter Khoury and Deidre Wicks, for their insights on
earlier drafts. The research was made possible by an intemal grant from the
University of Newcastle.
Note
1 The authors acknowledge that any definition of overweight or obesity is arbi-
trary, but have adopted these medically recognised terms due to their use in the
literature.
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