Sin or Slim?
Christian morality and the politics of personal choice in a secular commercial weight loss setting
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v8i1.92Keywords:
choice, fat, morality, Syn/sin, weight lossAbstract
Is fat a sin? Popular ‘knowledge’ about obesity which frames fat as an avoidable behavioural condition would certainly suggest it can be blamed on the fat person. Discourses of health reproduced within public policy and media reporting assist in the pathologization of fat bodies, insisting that fat is the result of unhealthy lifestyle choices. It is, however, not simply medical interpretations of fat that facilitate this moral discourse. Religion also provides an important source of moral judgment. This paper draws on my qualitative research inside a UK secular, commercial slimming group to consider how the Christian moral language of sin functions within this setting to construct a politics of choice that holds the dieter personally responsible for her fat. Interpreting weight loss and weight gain as a measure of moral character, this theological language assists in the operation of ‘normative conformity’, conforming women’s bodies to cultural knowledge about fat.
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References
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Saguy, A. C., and K. W. Riley. 2005. “Weighing Both Sides: Morality, Mortality, and Framing Contests over Obesity,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 30.5, 869–922. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/03616878-30-5-869
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Stinson, K. 2001. Women and Dieting Culture: Inside a Commercial Weight Loss Group. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
Stone, K. 2005. Practising Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective. London and New York: T. & T. Clark.
Tertullian. 2004. On the Apparel of Women. Trans. Revd S. Thelwall. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing.
Weber, M. 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London and New York: Routledge.
Wolf, N. 1991. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used against Women. New York: Anchor Books.
Bacon, H. 2011. “Does Size Really Matter? A Feminist Theological Response to Secular Dieting and Weight Loss,” in H. Bacon, W. Morris and S. Knowles, eds, Transforming Exclusion: Engaging Faith Perspectives. London & New York: T. & T. Clark, 101–13.
Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Cassian, J. 1894. The Conferences. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Company.
Department of Health. 13 October 2011. Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Call to Action on Obesity in England. http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_130487.pdf.
Evans, B. 2006. “ ‘Gluttony or Sloth’: Critical Geographies of Bodies in (Anti)Obesity Policy,” Area, 38.3, 259–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2006.00692.x
Gerber, L. 2008. “Health, Moralization and Negotiating Judgment in Two Evangelical Ministries,” Fieldwork in Religion, 3.1, 7–28.
Gerber, L. 2009. “My Body is a Testimony: Appearance, Health, and Sin in an Evangelical Weight-loss Program,” Social Compass, 56.3, 405–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0037768609338760
Gilman, S. L. 2008. Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Griffith, R. M. 1997. God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. London, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Griffith, R. M. 2004. Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity. London: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520217539.001.0001
Herndon, A. P. 2008. “Taking the Devil into your Mouth: Ritualized American Weight-loss Narratives of Morality, Pain, and Betrayal,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 51.2, 207–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.0004
Heyes, C. 2006. “Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers,” Hypatia, 21.2, 126–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01097.x
House of Commons. October 2004. Obesity. London: The Stationery Office Limited.
Hoverd, W. J., and C. G. Sibley. 2007. “Immoral Bodies: The Implicit Association between Moral Discourse and the Body,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46.3, 391–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00365.x
Hoverd, W. J. 2005. Working Out my Salvation: The Contemporary Gym and the Promise of “Self” Transformation. Oxford: Meyer & Meyer Sport
Hoverd, W. J. 2009. “Deadly Sin: Gluttony, Obesity and Health Policy,” in E. B. Coleman and K. White, eds, Medicine, Religion and the Body. Leiden: Brill, 203–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004179707.i-300.68
Levy-Navarro, E. 2012. “I’m the New Me: Compelled Confession in Diet Discourse,” The Journal of Popular Culture, 45.2, 340–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2012.00928.x
McLaren L. 2007. “Socioeconomic Status and Obesity,” Epidemiol Rev, 29, 29–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/epirev/mxm001
Orbach, S. 2006. Fat is a Feminist Issues. London: Arrow Books.
Quinn, D. M., and J. Crocker. 1999. “When Ideology Hurts: Effects of Belief in the Protestant Ethic and Feeling Overweight on the Psychological Well-Being of Women,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77.2, 402–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.402
Saguy, A. C., and K. W. Riley. 2005. “Weighing Both Sides: Morality, Mortality, and Framing Contests over Obesity,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 30.5, 869–922. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/03616878-30-5-869
Sawyer, D. 1992. “Resurrecting Eve? Feminist Critique of the Garden of Eden,” in P. Morris and D. Sawyer, eds, A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 273–89.
Sawyer, D. 2008. “Hidden Subjects: Rereading Eve and Mary,” Theology and Sexuality, 14.3, 305–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1355835808091422
Stinson, K. 2001. Women and Dieting Culture: Inside a Commercial Weight Loss Group. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press.
Stone, K. 2005. Practising Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective. London and New York: T. & T. Clark.
Tertullian. 2004. On the Apparel of Women. Trans. Revd S. Thelwall. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing.
Weber, M. 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London and New York: Routledge.
Wolf, N. 1991. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used against Women. New York: Anchor Books.
Published
2013-10-29
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bacon, H. (2013). Sin or Slim? Christian morality and the politics of personal choice in a secular commercial weight loss setting. Fieldwork in Religion, 8(1), 92-109. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v8i1.92
