Body Panic

Dworkin and Wachs analyze 10 years of health and fitness magazines to uncover how bodies are made in popular culture Are you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a fitness idealnot just thin but toned, not just muscular but cutthat is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particular body types come to be fit? And how is it that having an unfit, or bad, body gets conflated with being an unfit, or bad, citizen? Dworkin and Wachs head to the newsstand for this study, examining ten years worth of mens and womens health and fitness magazines to determine the ways in which bodies are made in todays culture. They dissect the images, the workouts, and the ideology being sold, as well as the contemporary links among health, morality, citizenship, and identity that can be read on these pages. While women and body image are often studied together, Body Panic considers both womens and mens bodies side-by-side and over time in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of this pervasive cultural trend.