Abou-Rizk Zeina, Rail Geneviève
Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa, 35 Université, Room 031, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada,
J Immigr Minor Health. 2014 Feb;16(1):150-64. doi: 10.1007/s10903-012-9757-5.
Our interest stems from the dramatic increase in the number of obesity studies, which expose Canadian women to a huge amount of information that links health to weight. Using feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial lenses, this paper investigates young Lebanese-Canadian women's constructions of the body and "health" practices within the context of the dominant obesity discourse. Participant-centered conversations were held with 20 young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women. A thematic analysis was first conducted and was followed by a poststructuralist discourse analysis to further our understanding of how the participants construct themselves as subjects within various discourses surrounding health, obesity, and the body. Our findings reveal that most participants conflate the "healthy" body and the "ideal" body, both of which they ultimately portray as thin. The young women construct the "healthy"/"ideal" body as a solely individual responsibility, thus reinforcing the idea of "docile bodies." The majority of participants report their frequent involvement in disciplinary practices such as rigorous physical activity and dietary restrictions, and a few young women mention the use of other extreme forms of bodily monitoring such as detoxes, dieting pills, and compulsive exercise. We discuss the language employed by participants to construct their multiple and shifting subjectivities. For instance, many of these Lebanese-Canadian women use the term "us" to dissociate themselves from Lebanese women ("them"), whom they portray as overly focused on thinness and beauty and engaged in physical activity and other bodily practices for "superficial" purposes. The participants also use the "us/them" trope to distance themselves from "Canadian" women (read: white Euro-Canadian women), whom they portray as very physically active for purposes beyond the improvement of the physical appearance of the body. We discuss the impacts of the young Christian Lebanese-Canadian women's hybrid cultural identities and diasporic spaces on their discursive constructions of the body and "health" practices. Finally, we examine the participants' fluid subject-positions: On one hand, they construct themselves as neoliberal subjects re-citing elements of dominant neoliberal discourses (self-responsibility for health, traditional femininity, and obesity) but, on the other hand, they at times construct themselves as "timid" poststructuralist subjects expressing awareness of, and "micro-resistance" to such discourses.
我们的兴趣源于肥胖研究数量的急剧增加，这些研究让加拿大女性接触到大量将健康与体重联系起来的信息。本文运用女性主义后结构主义和后殖民主义视角，在占主导地位的肥胖话语背景下，探究年轻黎巴嫩裔加拿大女性对身体的建构以及“健康”实践。我们与20名年轻的黎巴嫩裔加拿大基督教女性进行了以参与者为中心的对话。首先进行了主题分析，随后进行了后结构主义话语分析，以进一步理解参与者如何在围绕健康、肥胖和身体的各种话语中建构自身主体。我们的研究结果表明，大多数参与者将“健康”身体和“理想”身体混为一谈，最终都将它们描绘为瘦的。这些年轻女性将“健康”/“理想”身体建构为完全是个人的责任，从而强化了“驯顺身体”的观念。大多数参与者报告说他们经常参与纪律性实践，如严格的体育活动和饮食限制，少数年轻女性提到使用其他极端形式的身体监测，如排毒、减肥药和强迫性运动。我们讨论了参与者用来建构其多重且不断变化的主体性的语言。例如，许多黎巴嫩裔加拿大女性使用“我们”这个词来将自己与黎巴嫩女性（“她们”）区分开来，她们将黎巴嫩女性描绘为过度关注瘦和美，并为了“表面”目的而进行体育活动和其他身体实践。参与者还使用“我们/她们”的比喻来与“加拿大”女性（理解为：白人欧洲裔加拿大女性）保持距离，她们将加拿大女性描绘为非常热衷于体育活动，目的不仅仅是改善身体外观。我们讨论了年轻的黎巴嫩裔加拿大基督教女性的混合文化身份和散居空间对她们身体话语建构和“健康”实践的影响。最后，我们审视了参与者流动的主体位置：一方面，她们将自己建构为新自由主义主体，引用占主导地位的新自由主义话语元素（对健康的自我责任、传统女性气质和肥胖），但另一方面，她们有时又将自己建构为“胆小”的后结构主义主体，表达对这些话语的意识和“微观抵抗”。
