TY - JOUR
T1 - Sweets are my 'best friend'
T2 - belonging, bargains and body-shaming in working class girls' food and health relationships
AU - Kitching, Karl
AU - Fernandez, Eluska
AU - Horgan, Deirdre
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/6/7
Y1 - 2021/6/7
N2 - Research and policy on children’s food consumption commonly highlights the unequal impact of obesogenic environments on their health. Yet obesogenic theories risk pathologising certain communities, when assuming fixed relationships between ‘unhealthy’ environments and ‘obese’ bodies, and neglecting children’s multi-layered relationships to food and health. Drawing on participatory photomapping with 11–12-year-old girls in an urban Irish working-class neighbourhood, this study conceptualises children’s food environments as dynamic, regulatory assemblages which involve multi-layered ‘pushes and pulls’ of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ foods, experiences and norms. Such foods, experiences and norms are related to in a variety of ways in the girls’ negotiation of belonging, bargain-hunting and body-shaming. The analysis challenges fixed, binary, adult-centred, classed and gendered ideas about healthy/unhealthy child bodies, foods and environments. We argue that viewing food environments as assemblages invites ‘obesogenic’ policy and research to inclusively engage children’s dynamic and multi-layered capacities to act, feel and desire around food.
AB - Research and policy on children’s food consumption commonly highlights the unequal impact of obesogenic environments on their health. Yet obesogenic theories risk pathologising certain communities, when assuming fixed relationships between ‘unhealthy’ environments and ‘obese’ bodies, and neglecting children’s multi-layered relationships to food and health. Drawing on participatory photomapping with 11–12-year-old girls in an urban Irish working-class neighbourhood, this study conceptualises children’s food environments as dynamic, regulatory assemblages which involve multi-layered ‘pushes and pulls’ of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ foods, experiences and norms. Such foods, experiences and norms are related to in a variety of ways in the girls’ negotiation of belonging, bargain-hunting and body-shaming. The analysis challenges fixed, binary, adult-centred, classed and gendered ideas about healthy/unhealthy child bodies, foods and environments. We argue that viewing food environments as assemblages invites ‘obesogenic’ policy and research to inclusively engage children’s dynamic and multi-layered capacities to act, feel and desire around food.
KW - Food environment
KW - assemblage
KW - childhood
KW - obesogenic
KW - participatory photomapping
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107610951&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14733285.2021.1937522
DO - 10.1080/14733285.2021.1937522
M3 - Article
SN - 1473-3285
JO - Children's Geographies
JF - Children's Geographies
ER -