"That chart ain't for us": How Black women understand "obesity," health, and physical activity.

In this article, we use qualitative methodology to explore how eight physically active Black women, who self-identify as "obese," understand and experience health and physical activity, as well as how they position themselves in relation to discourses pertaining to "obesity" and Black femininity. Drawing on Foucauldian-informed critical obesity scholarship and Black feminist thought, we explore the ways in which physically active Black women concurrently resist, reproduce, and navigate racialized and gendered obesity discourse. Our findings advance critical obesity scholarship as we indicate that participants simultaneously adapt to, negotiate, and resist obesity discourse by re-defining health, questioning the BMI, and centering their desire for corporeal "thickness" as critical to their identity as Black women.

Assembling the 'Fitbit subject': A Foucauldian-sociomaterialist examination of social class, gender and self-surveillance on Fitbit community message boards.

The rise of fitness-tracking devices such as the Fitbit in personal health and wellness is emblematic of the use of data-gathering health and fitness technologies by institutions to create a surveillance regime. Using postings on Fitbit community message boards and the theoretical frames of Michel Foucault and sociomaterialist scholars, the goal of this article is to analyse the experiences of those who choose to self-track using a Fitbit and the constellation of barriers and facilitators (human and non-human) related to social class and gender that enable and constrain one's ability to use a Fitbit as intended. First, we examine the social class assumptions of Fitbit as a risk management tool in the workplace, illustrating what elements must come together - both human and non-human - to create an environment that enables walking throughout the workday to combat the risks of sedentary work. Second, we explore the ways that Fitbit users 'confessed' to their past inactivity and how gendered home labour differently enables and constrains some of the users' abilities to act on their confessions. Ultimately, one's ability to engage in the idealized use of the Fitbit in the minds of its users, or what we term the 'Fitbit subject assemblage', is structured by numerous material and social factors that must be taken into account when examining the mechanics of power in fitness tracking.

Promoting Prenatal Exercise From a Sociocultural and Life-Course Perspective: An "Embodied" Conceptual Framework.

PURPOSE: Prenatal exercise is a health behavior that is receiving growing attention amid concern that women in Western societies are gaining excess weight during pregnancy and contributing to future obesity in both the mother and child. In this article, we draw on insights from the fields of social epidemiology and social theory of the body to examine existing prenatal exercise interventions and to propose a multidimensional framework intended to guide future theorizing and intervention design. METHOD: A scoping review of existing prenatal exercise programs and interventions focused on controlling gestational weight gain was conducted. Articles published prior to January 2017 were obtained from PubMed and CINAHL, and relevant articles were identified (n = 62) using specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Identified articles were further analyzed to classify the level(s) of the socioecological model targeted in the intervention or program. RESULTS: The majority of existing interventions target intrapersonal factors during pregnancy and do not attend to the role that cumulative exposure of social and structural disadvantage over the lifetime-not just during the prenatal period-plays in shaping health outcomes. In response, a multidimensional framework is proposed that includes key concepts that facilitate a life-course perspective, as well as attention to the integration of biological and social factors as they relate to health and health-related behaviors. CONCLUSION: Efforts to promote prenatal exercise and to improve maternal and infant health should attend to how systemic inequality impacts women's health.

Promoting Nature-Based Activity for People With Mental Illness Through the US "Exercise Is Medicine" Initiative.

Nature-based physical activity programming (e.g., countryside walks, hiking, horseback riding) has been found to be an effective way to help improve the health of people with mental illness. Exercise referral initiatives, whereby health practitioners prescribe exercise in an attempt to prevent or treat chronic illnesses, have helped make such nature-based activities accessible to this population in the United Kingdom and Australia; however, there is a dearth of research related to the most prominent exercise referral program in the United States: Exercise is Medicine. Taking into account the barriers to physical activity faced by people with mental illness, we explore how nature-based programming for this population might be mobilized in the United States through the growing Exercise is Medicine initiative.

'We usually just start dancing our Indian dances': urban American Indian (AI) female youths' negotiation of identity, health and the body.

In this article, we utilise qualitative research techniques to explore how 14 urban American Indian (AI) females (aged 11-17) living in the state of Maryland discursively construct and experience health and the body, as well as how/if traditional culture shapes their understandings. In doing so, we address a significant gap in the knowledge base concerning the health beliefs of urban AI youth, and build upon research utilising a decolonising approach. Using a two-step process of thematic analysis and poststructuralist discourse analysis, we arrived at three key findings: (1) while youths are taught (and learn) mainstream lessons about health and bodily norms (mostly at school), they negotiate these lessons in complex and at times contradictory ways; (2) they do not view their AI status as conferring more or less risk upon them or their community; and (3) AI identity appears to be fluid in nature, becoming more salient, even a resource, in certain situations. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of spaces within the urban context in shaping youths' embodied subjectivities, and in particular, contrast the space of the school with that of the urban AI community centre.

Resisting, reproducing, resigned? Low-income pregnant women's discursive constructions and experiences of health and weight gain.

In this article, we use qualitative methodology to explore how 15 low-income women of diverse sociocultural location construct and experience health and weight gain during pregnancy, as well as how they position themselves in relation to messages pertaining to weight gain, femininity and motherhood that they encounter in their lives. Discussing the findings through a feminist poststructuralist lens, we conclude that the participants are complex, fragmented subjects, interpellated by multiple and at times conflicting subject positions. While the discourse of maternal responsibility (i.e. managing personal behaviours for the baby's health) is very much in evidence in their narratives, embodied experiences of pregnancy, lived experiences of financial constraints and religious beliefs provided some with an alternative discourse and resistant subject position. Participants also had mixed emotions about weight gain; they recognized the need to gain weight in order to have a healthy pregnancy, but weight gain was also not welcome as participants reproduced the dominant discourse of obesity and the discourse of 'feminine' bodily norms. Based on our results, we advocate for change to recent clinical guidelines and social discourses around pregnancy and weight gain, as well as for policies that provide pregnant women with a range of health-promoting resources.

Ills from the womb? A critical examination of clinical guidelines for obesity in pregnancy.

In this article, we critically examine the clinical guidelines for obesity in pregnancy put forth by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) that are underpinned by the rules of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), a system of ranking knowledge that promises to provide unbiased evidence about the effectiveness of treatments. While the SOGC guidelines are intended to direct health practitioners on 'best practice' as they address pregnancy weight gain with clients in the clinical context, we question their usefulness, arguing that despite their commitment to objectivity, they remain mired in cultural biases that stigmatize large female bodies and associates them to 'unfit' mothers.

Exercising caution: the production of medical knowledge about physical exertion during pregnancy.

In this article I explore the production of medical knowledge about exercise during pregnancy in the latter half of the 20th century, illustrating how debates about the safe limits of maternal exercise were rooted in longstanding anxieties surrounding the female reproductive body as well as epistemological questions concerning what counts as knowledge or evidence in the scientific realm. By drawing to the surface the "rules of formation" for the production of knowledge about the pregnant body, I aim to bring to light the contingent nature of this knowledge--never neutral but always bound up in relations of power.

Female youths' perceptions of smoking in popular films.

In this study, the authors used focus group interviews to explore how female adolescents in a Canadian high school interpreted and used tobacco imagery in films in their daily lives. Findings from interviews with 20 smokers led them to argue that smoking scenes in films might stimulate youth smoking and that cigarettes are an important symbol in youth peer groups with explicit social meanings and functions. Their analysis of interviews with 17 nonsmokers revealed that although the majority noticed smoking in movies, it did not detract from their viewing experience. Although both smokers and nonsmokers were aware that tobacco placements in films served as a form of product promotion, they typically focused on smoking's function as a dramatic device for character development rather than its promotional value. Overall, both groups appeared capable of critical readings of smoking in films but tended not to use these capabilities when viewing movies.