Main description:

How do the media represent obesity and eating disorders? How are these representations related to one another? And how do the news media select which scientific findings and policy decisions to report? Multi-disciplinary in approach, Obesity, Eating Disorders and the Media presents critical new perspectives on media representations of obesity and eating disorders, with analyses of print, online, and televisual media framings. Exploring abjection and alarm as the common themes linking media framings of obesity and eating disorders, Obesity, Eating Disorders and the Media shows how the media similarly position these conditions as dangerous extremes of body size and food practice. The volume then investigates how news media selectively cover and represent science and policy concerning obesity and eating disorders, with close attention to the influence of pre-existing framings alongside institutional and moral agendas.
A rich, comprehensive analysis of media framings of obesity and eating disorders - as embodied conditions, complex disorders, public health concerns, and culturally significant phenomena - this volume will be of interest to scholars and students across the social sciences and all those interested in understanding cultural aspects of obesity and eating disorders.

Contents:

Contents: Preface; Introduction: obesity, eating disorders and the media, Karin Eli and Stanley Ulijaszek. Part I Rhetorics of Abjection and Alarm: Alarming engagements? Exploring pro-anorexia websites in/and the media, Anna Lavis; Obesity in the US media, 1990-2011: broad strokes, broad consequences, Natalie C. Boero; Invisible fat: the aesthetics of food and the body, Pino Donghi and Josephine Wennerholm; From abject eating to abject being: representations of obesity in 'Supersize vs. Superskinny', Karin Eli and Anna Lavis. Part II Representations of Science and Policy: Mothers as smoking guns: fetal overnutrition and the reproduction of obesity, Megan Warin, Tanya Zivkovic, Vivienne Moore and Michael Davies; Eating disorders in the media: the changing nature of UK newspaper reports, Emily Shepherd and Clive Seale; Making the 'obesity epidemic': the role of science and the news media, Abigail C. Saguy and Rene Almeling; Obesity, government and the media, Stanley Ulijaszek; Heavy viewing: emergent frames in contemporary news coverage of obesity, Helene A. Shugart. Index.