%0 Journal Article
%T ¡®Are You a Good Female Citizen?¡¯: Media Discourses on Self
%A Yoonso Choi
%J Sociological Research Online
%@ 1360-7804
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1360780418807949
%X Based on Foucault¡¯s work on governmentality, the purpose of this study is to examine the socio-cultural influences of media discourses that have been reproduced and spread in Korea¡¯s neo-liberal society through weight-loss reality TV shows. After neo-liberalism was established as a political ideology in Korea, weight-loss reality programs, which contain significant neo-liberal characteristics, have risen in popularity among ordinary Korean women. The popularity of female-oriented pop media culture has generated the idea of self-body care that now plays a powerful role in efficiently reproducing good female citizens who are able to be governed at a distance. This study particularly focuses on analyzing significant media discourse that tends to prompt ordinary girls and women into donning the role of a neo-liberal subject by taking care of their bodies. The major points include (1) producing a feminized, skinny body, rather than a healthy body; (2) defining clear boundaries between the normal and abnormal body by clothing size; (3) re-generating dominant female body discourse by a group of lifestyle designers; and (4) labeling female bodies that have failed in body-care. In conclusion, the study emphasizes significant cultural influences of the diet reality shows that operate as a cultural medium to efficiently produce a neo-liberal body
%K governmentality
%K media discourse
%K neo-liberalism
%K self-body care
%K weight-loss reality TV
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418807949