Weight-Reflexive Culture and Normalized Corporeal Anxiety of Urban Youth

Abstract

This paper analyzes the corporeal culture of modern urban youth. This includes the standards, criteria and evaluation methods utilized when dealing with the body. Contemporary youth is involved in many contexts that regulate their bodily production: the media, their family, school and peer group. However, within this environment young people produce conventional shared representations and practices regarding bodily shapes and sizes, which both reproduce and override the general cultural codes. This study provides an analysis of qualitative interviews with 40 young people aged 16 to 29 years old, living in St. Petersburg. The results demonstrate that among urban educated youth, a weight-reflexive culture has emerged. Its constitutive elements are the routinized everyday monitoring of young people’s body, regular self-evaluation of one’s own body, an evaluation of assessments made on it by other people, the use of special competences to manage the size and the shape of the body and gender neutrality. Reflexive corporeal assessment produces normalized anxiety and discontent due to one’s own body, which corresponds to cultural norms regarding the "slim" body.