'She was becoming too healthy and it was just becoming dangerous': health affects, image and embodiment

This paper builds on recent theoretical developments in sociological and feminist theory to explore the embodied dimensions of ‘health’. Drawing on qualitative interview data with young people about their body work practices, the paper unpacks the complex ways ‘health' is conceptualised and embodied in relation to social life. Health was described in interviews as a set of practices, activities or performances that involve the body and have social dimensions. Health is commonly understood to entail a state of being that can be attained through a series of practices such as diet and exercise. However, as participants describe, the experience of ‘health’ is not the straightforward result of undertaking ‘healthy’ practices, and these practices require negotiation so as not to slip over and become ‘dangerous’ such as through under-eating or over-exercising. The paper argues that understanding health and embodiment as states of becoming (rather than being) can assist us to understand the complex and contradictory ways health is understood and lived. This approach can also assist in problematising links between health and ‘healthy’ practices, and health and appearance.