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Psychologizing childhood in the reality show Biggest Loser: Temporal ordering and narrating a fat identity
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Child and Youth Studies.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8684-3724
2023 (English)In: Narrative Inquiry, ISSN 1387-6740, E-ISSN 1569-9935, Vol. 33, no 1, p. 91-111Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Obesity and overweight are central issues in contemporary western societies, and the public debates in media are extensive. This paper investigates stories from participants in the reality TV-show Biggest Loser, and how the participants invoke temporal identity changes and childhood traumas to produce discursively accepted narratives about the causes for being obese. This study analyses personal stories about being overweight, and narratives of living a life of obesity. The findings illustrate narrative trajectories in personal stories used to explain overweight within a contemporary therapeutic discourse, and how the participants use chronology and childhood as narrative resources to explain their obesity. These narratives do not only produce preferred explanatory narrative elements, but also highlight that a number of psychologized explanatory storylines must be used in order to produce a culturally valid and discursively accepted personal obesity-narrative.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. Vol. 33, no 1, p. 91-111
Keywords [en]
overweight, obesity, Biggest Loser, psychologization, therapeutic discourse, narrative genre, storylines, childhood narratives, childhood traumas, discursive psychology
National Category
Other Social Sciences
Research subject
Child and Youth Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-204604DOI: 10.1075/ni.21084.kilISI: 000793096600001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85190644060OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-204604DiVA, id: diva2:1657996
Available from: 2022-05-13 Created: 2022-05-13 Last updated: 2024-11-14Bibliographically approved

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Kilger, Magnus

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