Fit for life : a media analysis of the socially constructed meanings of exercise and the fit body

Abstract

This thesis explores the representations of exercise and the fit body within a Norwegian media context. The data were derived from newspaper articles, the web sites of health clubs, and an online discussion forum. The aims of the study were to identify the possibilities of subjective experience that were opened up and closed down through the discursive constructions of exercise and the fit body and to discuss likely implications of this for people’s experiences of embodiment. A critical discourse analysis was carried through. The findings revealed a complex interdiscursive web of discourses implicated in the constructions of exercise and the fit body, which, in short, were represented in terms of an individual consumer project, where health and beauty were closely intertwined with the meanings of fitness. The fit body was represented as a site for challenging and reproducing mainstream norms at one and the same time, especially with respect to gender. Finally, and of especial importance, exercise and the fit body were constructed in terms of scientific truths. I suggest that the discursive production of fitness in the media is highly restrictive of the range of available embodied possibilities, as it excludes a great number of people, whose bodies will never conform to current mainstream ideals. I thus argue for a wider understanding of fitness, which takes into account individual differences in bodily prerequisites.