Carsten Stage & Stinne Bach Nielsen
Vol. 14 2023, pages 53–74
Published March 27, 2023
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between body shame and fitness through interviews with 20 young Danes (age 15-24) who use a fitness centre at least twice a week as part of a process of self-defined bodily transformation. The analysis shows that body shame is a well-known feeling for a vast majority of the informants and that fitness is used by the informants to counter body shame in three ways: through a logic of ‘reversal’, where body shame is transgressed by spectacularly reversing the body – from e.g., being small to pumped or large to slender – with the goal of embodying culturally praised ideals; ‘normalization’, where fitness is used to avoid the negative … Read more!