Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness

Dworkin, Shari L.; Wachs, Faye Linda

ISBN 10: 0814719686 / ISBN 13: 9780814719688

Published by New York University Press, 2009

Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0814719686I3N00

Synopsis:

Dworkin and Wachs analyze 10 years of health and fitness magazines to uncover how bodies are made in popular culture
Are you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a fitness ideal―not just thin but toned, not just muscular but cut―that is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particular body types come to be “fit”? And how is it that having an unfit, or “bad,” body gets conflated with being an unfit, or “bad,” citizen?
Dworkin and Wachs head to the newsstand for this study, examining ten years worth of men’s and women’s health and fitness magazines to determine the ways in which bodies are “made” in today’s culture. They dissect the images, the workouts, and the ideology being sold, as well as the contemporary links among health, morality, citizenship, and identity that can be read on these pages. While women and body image are often studied together, Body Panic considers both women’s and men’s bodies side-by-side and over time in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of this pervasive cultural trend.

About the Authors: Shari L. Dworkin is Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. She is the author or editor of several books, most recently Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness and Men at Risk, both with NYU Press.

Faye Linda Wachs is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Psychology and Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona).

Bibliographic Details

Title: Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling ...
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication Date: 2009
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket