Adaptive Body: The Weight-loss Practice And Body Construction Of "Fat Girl"

The implicit and unprovable nature of face-value discrimination culture has led society to selectively ignore the body inequalities that occur around them,and the practice of slimming by fat girls is in such a cultural context,reflecting to a certain extent the body patterns of modern young women.The bodies of these "fat girls" are not static,and they experience a life course of wandering from thin to fat,from fat to thin,and between fat and thin,and their slimming practice is not simply a superficial pursuit of beauty,the realization of desires,or the product of being coerced and disciplined by the patriarchal system and the consumer culture.This study adopts cultural action theory,structuration theory,and sociology of emotion theory to construct a structural-emotional-action analytical framework to explore the internal mechanism and action logic of women’s body construction.The author participated in observing the daily body displays of "fat girls" slimming through online ethnography and offline ethnography in L We Chat Weight Loss Group,X Women’s College,and H Weight Loss Club,and conducted in-depth interviews with 62 "fat girls",which were combined with online and offline interviews to improve the quality of the study.The study utilized a combination of online and offline interviews to enhance the reliability and validity of the data.The culture of face value discrimination influences women’s slimming actions by means of values,habits and symbols,and by means of ideological rules.Culture does not necessarily lead to actions,but is a prerequisite for actions,and is a map and framework for actions.Eliminating the negative emotions produced by the value discrimination culture is the driving force for the action of "fat girls".Without emotions,culture is only cognition,which is a "suspended object" outside the individual,and the mutual influence and coupling of culture and emotions is the key to the individual’s action.Fat girls in the value discrimination cultural framework for emotional confirmation,emotional experience,and the real self and the ideal self for comparison,meet the expectations of the positive emotions,do not meet the expectations of the negative emotions,negative emotions destroy the individual order of existence,while the positive emotions lead to the individual to produce a positive self-body identity.Therefore,when an individual generates negative affect,the individual dissipates the negative affect through affective defense,while maximizing the positive affect through affective reinforcement.Both affective defense and affective reinterpretation use the body as a landing place,and their end result is the construction of the female body.In the constructivist view,emotions are culturally constructed,but culturally charged emotions must be individually reflected upon and imagined in order to truly motivate the individual to take action and engage in emotion management and emotion regulation.The basic conclusions of this study are: firstly,the process of women’s slimming practice constructs the adaptive body,and the adaptive body is the organic unity of structure,emotion and action,which is the manifestation of the structure and emotion externalized in the action,and the presentation of the result of the action.The adaptive body is the unity of passive and active,rational and emotional.Secondly,the variability of the body is the material foundation of female body construction,the culture of face value discrimination is the cultural foundation of female body construction,and the emotional drive is the emotional foundation of female body construction.Thirdly,in the process of female body construction,culture is the "action map" and emotion is the "internal motivation",and the practice of slimming is a manifestation of the emotional regulation of "fat girls",which is the individual’s active choice and emotional regulation of self-body orientation.The practice of slimming is a manifestation of the emotional regulation of "fat girls" and is the initiative of the individual.The self-body orientation of emotional regulation is the most reliable,long-lasting and rational way of action.