On Monday, September 9, 2024, at 13:15, Karin Andersson will present and defend her dissertation Healtism and professional identity: Group fitness instructors navigating health discourses at the Department of Sport Sciences, Malmö University, in Room D138, Orkanen, Nordenskiöldsgatan 10, Malmö. The defence will be live streeamed as well, link TBA.
The faculty examiner is Professor Pirkko Markula, University of Alberta, and the examining committee is made up of Associate professor Jörg Krieger, Aarhus university; Professor Mikael Quennerstedt, The Swedish school of sport and health sciences; and Professor Lone Friis Thing, Norwegian school of sport sciences.
Professor Susanna Hedenborg, Malmö University, has been Karin Andersson’s principal supervisor, and Professor Jesper Andreasson, Linnæus University, co-supervisor.
This compilation thesis is available here in full text, open access.
English abstract
This mixed methods dissertation employs a survey, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions to investigate the health consciousness of Les Mills International (LMI) group fitness instructors. Using Foucauldian concepts such as discourse and bio-power, the study examines instructors’ construction of their professional identity, and the link between professional identity and healthism, a discourse that promulgates health as an individual responsibility. The findings reveal that LMI instructors’ professional identity is anchored in sociability, commitment, and physical perfection.Two stereotypical LMI instructor profiles emerged. Firstly, “the sociable instructor”, who values interacting with participants and colleagues at the gym, as well as engaging with the global LMI community online. Secondly, the “all about being fit instructor”, who teaches LMI to enhance their individual physique. Moreover, instructors understand themselves as role models and health gatekeepers aiming to combat inactivity by exercising vigilantly and adhering to LMI regulations. Moreover, the results show that healthism constitutes LMI professional identity, upheld through social interactions and a collective belief in healthism’s rationality. Furthermore, instructors understand their professional identity through their bodies while positioning the body both as a threat and as a solution to health, which reveals how the construction of health is framed as an individual endeavor. This perspective was fortified during the COVID-19 pandemic, where staying fit became a defense strategy against the virus. Finally, this thesis shows that healthism is inextricably linked to normative femininity and a pathogenic perspective on health. Since healthism masquerades as an apolitical concept through the body, fitness culture can be used to reinvent suppressive structures, such as patriarchy, via healthism. Accordingly, the thesis manifests that investigating health consciousness provides a means to dismantle gendered understandings of health.
