Carsten Stage & Stinne Bach Nielsen
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark
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 attention linked to bodily extremes (for instance high body weight) and to be able to pass unnoticed; and ‘self-care’, where fitness is reframed as a bodily practice not about appearance, but linked to inner motivation, personal empowerment and wellbeing. The complex roles of fitness in relation to body shame, however, are stressed as half of the participants also understand fitness activities as co-producing shame by enabling an environment of comparison and sometimes too demanding levels of activity. Finally, the article discusses if body shame should be conceptualised not as a negative emotion to be eradicated, but rather as indicative of subjective investments in personal transformation and validation.
Click here to read this peer reviewed article in Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum, Vol. 14, 2023
CARSTEN STAGE is a Professor of Culture and Media at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. His main research interests include digital health, illness and body cultures, affect and shame. Recent monographs include Quantified Storytelling (Palgrave 2020), Illness and Death on Social Media (Emerald, 2018), and Networked Cancer (Palgrave, 2017).
STINNE BACH NIELSEN is a PhD student at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her main research interests include qualitative research methodologies, digital media affects and online harassment.
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