Weight-loss practices among working-class women in France
Résumé
It has long been known that obesity and weigh-control practices are inversely associated with one’s occupation category, and women from working-class backgrounds are more widely affected. The aim of this paper is to increase our understanding of the methods working-class women use to implement slimming diets. It uses the results of a qualitative survey conducted among women who participated in a Food Education Programme in the north of France, the region where obesity is most widespread. We illustrate that the women interviewed use three types of techniques (physical, dietary or culinary) in order to lose weight, revealing three different ways of envisaging weight-loss – interventions upon the body (including weight-loss surgery) without any modification of food intake / severely restricting food intake / adapting culinary practices. These differences reflect the effects of class belonging and the subdivisions of that class, combined with the effects of social trajectories. Conceptions of dieting and its implementation can be understood in light of the somatic cultures particular to each subdivision, which reproduce internally the more general differences dividing social groups concerning disease, health and eating habits. Social and family trajectories tend to reinforce these differences, especially when the social mobility of daughters acts as inverse socialisation when they encourage their mothers to adopt their own standards for body weight. These results lead us to call into question the possibility of implementing a policy for nutrition on a large scale.