Browsing by Author "Pugmire, Ria"

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    Healthy bodies : in picture books & children's talk : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Pugmire, Ria
    This thesis explores the health and body discourses in children’s picture books, and in their talk. In part one I begin with an overview of the constructions in a broad selection of picture books, before narrowing down on seven key books for a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MMCDA). Overall, the books offered diverse constructions of health, bodies, food and physical activity; in contrast, those key books that focused on health reproduced dominant healthist discourses, where health was constructed in relation to diet and doing deliberate exercise. However, while this kind of ‘healthy living’ was constructed as what you should do, it was simultaneously shown as boring and unpleasant. In terms of bodies, the stories reproduced an ‘or you’ll get fat’ discourse (reminiscent of widespread obesity discourses) where being fat was constructed as the negative consequence of failing to do ‘healthy living’ correctly; and was associated with being greedy, lazy, humorous and unable. While the stories also offer some critique of these assumptions about health and bodies, these messages were often ambiguous or contradicted within and between the stories, and it was unclear how children ‘read’ these. For part two then, I conducted discussion groups with children (aged 6-7 years), to explore how the children made sense of the picture books in this context, as well as the health and body discourses they drew on in their talk. Predominantly, participants interpreted the stories in line with widespread healthist and obesity discourses, displaying their knowledge of what you should and shouldn’t eat, and constructing the fat characters negatively as ‘too fat’, with advice about how to change this. Their responses were mixed in terms of how they engaged with the critical elements of the stories. However, they also drew on a discourse of ‘growing big and strong’ in relation to health, occasionally troubled the simplistic constructions of fatness, and through their talk and body language showed the importance of pleasure in relation to food and movement. This study adds to our understanding of how children negotiate healthy body discourses in their talk, and reinforces the need to continue to explore how to engage with children about health and media literacy in more critical ways, avoiding the pitfalls of fat stigma.
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    "You can tell kind of about the body" : exploring young children's talk about bodies, health, fitness and fatness : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa/New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Pugmire, Ria
    Fears of an 'obesity epidemic' have led to a growing focus on children's weight, diet and activities. Children are seen as 'at risk of' or currently suffering from fatness, largely attributed to overeating, 'bad' diets and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Echoing work overseas, this has led to various initiatives in New Zealand where children, and those responsible for them, are targeted with messages about 'getting fit' and 'eating right' with implicit or explicit undertones of getting thin. The aim of this research project was to highlight children's voices, stepping back from obesity interventions to explore how these notions are taken up by young primary school children. Following ethical approval, nine six and seven year old children took part in individual semi-structured interviews which involved play and craft activities to focus discussion. Interviews were videotaped, transcribed, and a Foucauldian discourse analytic approach was used to explore how children talked about bodies, health, fitness and fatness, with an additional focus on the ways in which children used their bodies to convey meaning. Key lenses applied to the analysis included the roles of body image/function, morality, and pleasure, where children got their health information, and gendered effects in children's talk. Children primarily drew on a series of dichotomies to construct bodies, health, fitness and fatness in relatively clear cut ways, drawing on four inter-related discourses: good foods and bad foods; active, able and fit; unhealthy fat; and big strong and healthy. These findings support previous research suggesting that children, from a young age, are taking up narrow corporeal constructions of health in relation to food and fitness 'choices', and additionally children assume that these constructions can be 'read' off the body. Such constructions may be problematic given the complexity and ambiguity around the social and scientific research on health, fitness and fatness. Further, it may set children up to have unrealistic expectations about bodies and health with potentially damaging effects for how they engage with food, physical activity and their own and others' bodies. On the other hand, however, children were often hesitant, and at times resisted or problematized these straight-forward constructions, occasionally drawing on alternate or moderating understandings, including notions of pleasure and practicality, moderation, diversity and individuality, and being happy and healthy. Future research could explore these ideas further, investigating how children and adults utilise alternate meanings to negotiate the complexity of bodies, health, fitness and fatness.