Subtitle: Inside a Commercial Weight Loss Group
Author: Kandi Stinson
Subject: Sociology/Gender Studies
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2949-2
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2948-4
Pages: 256 pp.
Description: The first ethnography of the day-to-day struggles of women who participate in a weight-loss program.
Praise for Women and Dieting Culture
"An attentive and often perceptive ethnography of the inner working of [a weight-control group]. . . . Stinson intersperses her personal observations and reactions with a wide range of sociological, psychological and cultural research on women and weight. When Stinsons analysis works best, it combines her personal observations of the workings of the weight-loss group with an imaginative critical approach."The Womens Review of Books
"Stinson describes her participant observation study of a commercial weight loss group and shares a personal, firsthand account as a customer. . . . She summarizes five themes of weight loss: self-help, hard work, religion, food addiction, and feminism. . . . She provides interesting case studies of different group leaders and participants, their varying personality styles, goals, levels of information. . . . Extensive references. Recommended."Choice
"A wonderful ethnographic account of the central role body size has come to play in womens lives." Rose Weitz, editor of The Politics of Womens Bodies
American women invest millions of dollars in a quest for a body that meets our culture's standard of beauty-slenderness. Since we define a woman's sexual attractiveness as essential to her social worth, it is no wonder that "fat is a feminist issue."
Commercial weight loss organizations have come under attack from feminist scholars for perpetuating the very social values that cause women to obsess about their weight. In Women and Dieting Culture, sociologist Kandi Stinson asks how these values are transmitted and how the women who join such organizations actually think about their bodies and weight. Stinson fully participated in a national, commercial weight-loss organization as a paying member. Her acute analysis and sensitive insider's account vividly illustrate the central role dieting and body image play in women's lives.
As she experiences the program and interviews other members, Stinson discovers that the women's view of the causes and cures of being overweight can be placed in five distinct, though often overlapping, categories: self-help, work, religion, addiction, and feminism. She explores each category and outlines how they form interrelated patterns which, when analyzed, yield an exciting new perspective on the transmission of cultural values.
Kandi Stinson is an associate professor of sociology at Xavier University.
