%0 Journal Article
%T Men¡¯s weight loss stories: How personal confession, responsibility and transformation work as social control
%A Danielle Couch
%A Gil-Soo Han
%A Paul Komesaroff
%A Priscilla Robinson
%J Health
%@ 1461-7196
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1363459317724855
%X Obesity is considered a public health concern. In Australia, there are a greater number of overweight or obese men compared with women. The media is an important source of information about body weight and weight management. We undertook a qualitative study to analyse men¡¯s weight loss stories in a popular men¡¯s magazine. Between January 2009 and December 2012, we collected 47 men¡¯s weight loss stories from the Australian edition of Men¡¯s Health magazine. We undertook thematic analysis to examine the stories. Confession, personal responsibility, appearance and transformation were key themes. The stories describe the men¡¯s self-discipline and their monitoring and tracking of their behaviours as activities which supported their weight loss. In this way, the stories promote the importance of such panoptic self-surveillance and self-discipline to the readers. We consider how such stories contribute to the wider synoptic system of media messages about body weight
%K media
%K men¡¯s health
%K obesity
%K social control
%K weight loss
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1363459317724855