A growing number of authors recognise the increasing expectations placed on young women as the vanguard of economic, social and cultural change. This paper explores how these imaginings have come to bear upon young women's bodies, as part of a special issue on pedagogical responses to the changing position of girls and young women. In examining…

Drawing on research investigating the impact of health imperatives around obesity, diet and exercise on the actions of teachers and pupils in schools, this paper offers a reflexive account of the relationships between the "noise" of obesity discourse in the public domain, policies forged to tackle health issues and the realities of…

This paper examines the multiple ways in which health policy relating to obesity, diet and exercise is recontextualised and mediated by teachers and pupils in the context of social class in the UK. Drawing on a case study of a middle-class primary school in central England, the paper documents the complexity of the policy process, its uncertainty,…

Recent work in human geography has begun to explore the fluidity of bodily boundaries and to foreground the connectedness of bodies to other bodies/objects/places. Across multiple subdisciplinary areas, including health, children's and feminist geographies, geographers have begun to challenge the notion of a singular, bounded body by highlighting…

On 16 January 2002, the United Kingdom House of Commons Select Committee published a report entitled "Tackling Obesity in England". Drawing on insights from the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Foucault, this article will suggest that the report provides an example "par excellence" of the way in which "the body" (our…