¹National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. E-mails: dorothy.broom@anu.edu.au; jane.dixon@anu.edu.au

Abstract

The relevance of gender to the contemporary obesity crisis is more complicated than might be evident from an examination of sex differentials in the prevalence of overweight and obesity. We examine how Australia's most popular commercial weight-loss programme deploys gender in its materials, simultaneously appealing to and reproducing conventionally gendered subjectivities and relationships. We also describe how gender operates in resistance to exhortations to lose weight. Together, these analyses confirm the centrality of gender distinctions in normative body image and weight-related practices. The fact that it can be mobilized both for and against the weight-loss agenda relies on the complex and contradictory character of gender, and raises ethical and practical questions for the public health response to weight-related disease and disability.