The term ‘body image’ has come to be used widely in the academic world, clinical practice, schools and popular culture to signify a cluster of meanings, but mostly these days meanings associated with body weight and shape. One of the enduring responses in schools (and on the internet) internationally to concerns about young people’s (read young women’s), ‘body dissatisfaction’ has been programs developed to promote positive ‘body image’ and to reduce eating disorders (Levine & Smolak 2002).

These programs take up what Gill and Elias (2014) describe as ‘love your body’ (LYB) discourses, discourses which have gained prominence in social and established media as an apparent counter to ‘normalized hostile judgement and surveillance of women’s bodies in contemporary media culture’ (p.180). In this presentation we use the notion of biopedagogies (Wright 2009), derived from Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, to examine the conditions of possibility for ‘positive body’ pedagogies in the context of widespread exhortations that schools address children’s and young peoples’ poor health habits and attitudes in relation to obesity.

Gill, R. and Elias, A. S. 2014. 'Awaken your incredible': Love your body discourses and postfeminist contradictions. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 10(2), 179-188. Levine, M. P., & Smolak, L. (2002). Ecological and activism approaches to the prevention and changing of body image problems. In T. F. Cash & T. Pruzinsky (Eds.), Body image: A handbook of theory, research and clinical practice. New York: The Guilford Press. Murray, S., 2008. The 'Fat' Female Body. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Wright, J. (2009) Biopedagogies and the obesity epidemic. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds), The biopolitics of the obesity epidemic: Governing the body. New York and London: Routledge