Body, appearance, and health surveillance in female youth friendship contexts

In a number of countries in the global North, growing concerns about body dissatisfaction and eating distress among young people have resulted in the development of school-based interventions to promote positive body image. Reflecting the dominant approach to teaching about social and emotional wellbeing the most widely used intervention approach targets the individual child and focuses on individual capacity and effort in improving resilience to body image pressures. In this approach, body dissatisfaction is constructed as a 'problem' of the individual, thus obscuring the structural factors involved in the development of body anxieties. In contrast, this project adopts a poststructuralist and socio-critical perspective, investigating body, appearance, and health monitoring in friendship contexts between girls and young women, using an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach. Further, the project will involve end-users, eating disorder charities and schools in the co-creation of educational resources focused on stimulating critical thinking and discussion around body-centred talk in friendship contexts.

This research aims to:
* Understand how body monitoring and appearance-centred talk around beauty, weight, food, and fitness are experienced by girls and young women.
* Examine how the 'performative' culture of individualism impacts on practices of judgement and comparison among girls and young women.
* Investigate the extent to which educational resources, informed by a socio-critical approach, can help stimulate critical thinking around appearance-centred talk and practices in friendship contexts.

Taking a trans-national perspective, the research focuses on both a British and Swedish context. An overseas research visit at the faculty of Education and Society at Malmö University in Sweden will be undertaken, to gain perspective on teaching about social and emotional wellbeing in Sweden. This project has the potential to be of significant benefit in several ways. By taking an art-based, socio-critical approach to develop educational resources, the resources will aim to promote critical inquiry, listening, self-reflection and understanding, whilst encouraging students to become active researchers in their worlds and question taken-for-granted assumptions about bodies, beauty, and health. If the educational resources demonstrate promise, future research can investigate their effectiveness and potentially make the resources available to educators across the UK and Sweden via eating disorder organisations and education charities. Further, if arts-based methodologies and a socio-critical approach to healthcare education are found to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, this approach can be promoted for use in a wide range of education around health and social and emotional wellbeing.