Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth: men's critical understandings of ‘appropriate’ weight-for-height

摘要: Based on the Body Mass Index (BMI, kg/m(2)), most men in nations such as UK and USA are reportedly overweight or obese. This is authoritatively defined a massive growing problem. Drawing from embodied sociology, critical obesity literature qualitative data generated during an Economic Social Research Council funded project masculinities weight-related issues, this paper offers realist contribution to debate. Rather than endorsing institutionalised war fat, correcting so-called 'laymen' who dismiss medicalized weight-for-height recommendations, following presents honours men's justificatory accounts for levels of body mass that medicine labels too heavy (implicitly explicitly fat). Men's understandings, which connected their displays moral worth, considered under three headings: compatibility heaviness, healthiness physical fitness; looking feeling ill at supposedly 'healthy' BMI; resisting irrational standardisation. By empirically 'bringing in' meanings, sensibilities culturally informed aesthetics, casts different light measures support potentially corrosive epidemic psychology.