The Eating Disorders Health Integration Team (EDHIT) are running a half-day virtual research conference with presentations from Professor Emma Rich from the University of Bath and Professor Carla Rice from the University of Guelph, Canada.
More information on the event and the speakers are below.
Programme:
13:00 Welcome and Introductions
13:15 Professor Emma Rich
‘Young People, Digital Cultures and Body Disaffection’
14:00 Professor Carla Rice
‘Through Thick and Thin’
14:45 Concluding Discussion
15:00 Close
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Professor Emma Rich
Department of Health, University of Bath
‘Young People, Digital Cultures and Body Disaffection’
During the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, there was a significant increase in the downloading and use of fitness and dieting digital technologies. In this talk, I draw on research from a two-year welcome trust funded project examining young people’s use of digital health technologies. Young people are engaging in a range of different digital health devices and platforms (social media, apps, websites, videos, images, wearable devices) and the data on and about their bodies and health practices continue to accumulate, sometimes without their knowledge. As a result, their bodies and health states are becoming increasingly datafied and quantified. However, research findings suggest that many of these digital health tools can lead some young people to engage with forms of self-monitoring which have been linked with disordered eating or excessive exercising regimens. The research revealed that in extreme cases parents or others have intervened to stop young people from using fitness and dieting apps because of their perceived harmful effects. I consider the implications of these findings for health education and argue that the pervasiveness of digital media in young people’s lives raises questions about the adequacy.
Professor Carla Rice
College of Social & Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
‘Through Thick and Thin’
Carla will talk about one of her recent projects wherein queer women speak back to ED and obesity discourses. The project uses storytelling and interviews to surface the operations of weight stigma in and beyond health care and theorizes fatmisia as hatred as opposed to fear of fat. Feelings about and treatment of fat persons are understood as being located on a register comparable to misogyny. The project also looks at how fat stigma intersects with other spaces of othering and belonging such as race, class, age, indigeneity, gender and sexuality.
