Focusing on the social and cultural influences on body image, this book delves into the challenges faced by contemporary youth regarding their bodily experiences. It highlights how gender norms and issues of inequality affect body image perceptions, offering a sociological perspective that complicates simplistic views. By emphasizing the collective conditions surrounding young people's lives, the author advocates for a broader understanding and approach to addressing body image concerns, moving beyond individualistic strategies to tackle this significant aspect of youth wellbeing.
Focusing on youth studies, this book delves into the relationship between health and the performance of gender ideals. It explores how societal pressures shape individual responsibilities and management in achieving a 'healthy' body. Through this lens, the author investigates the broader implications of body work in contemporary culture.
'Learning Bodies’ addresses the lack of attention paid to the body in youth and childhood studies. Whilst a significant range of work on this area has explored gender, class, race and ethnicity, and sexualities – all of which have bodily dimensions – the body is generally studied indirectly, rather than being the central focus. This collection of papers brings together a scholarly range of international, interdisciplinary work on youth, with a specific focus on the body. The authors engage with conceptual, empirical and pedagogical approaches which counteract perspectives that view young people’s bodies primarily as ‘problems’ to be managed, or as sites of risk or deviance. The authors demonstrate that a focus on the body allows us to explore a range of additional dimensions in seeking to understand the experiences of young people. The research is situated across a range of sites in Australia, North America, Britain, Canada, Asia and Africa, drawing on a range of disciplines including sociology, education and cultural studies in the process. This collection aims to demonstrate – theoretically, empirically and pedagogically – the implications that emerge from a reframed approach to understanding children and youth by focusing on the body and embodiment.
