To Örebro University

This paper explores how a cohort of pre-service Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers from an Australian university describe and construct discourses about body fat. Risk and uncertainty are characteristics of our current society. In this context, it is expected for people to understand the diverse ‘risks’ and engage in self-monitoring strategies (Garrett & Wrench, 2012). The well known ‘obesity epidemic’ is a major discourse in today’s society and the obesity epidemic is a clear indicative of a control society. Furthermore, panic is widely created through media campaigns using ‘alarming’ statistical information, mainly based in BMI levels. It has been suggested that HPE teachers usually have fat phobia tendencies (Sykes, 2009; Sykes & McPhail, 2008) and they can even transmit these beliefs and attitudes to their students (Yager & O’Dea, 2009). Taking a poststructuralist Foucauldian perspective, the aim of this paper is, therefore, to explore how these discourses about fatness have been constructed among pre-service HPE teachers and the effects that they may have on teaching practices. References Garrett, R., & Wrench, A. (2012). ‘Society has taught us to judge’: cultures of the body in teacher education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 40(2), 111–126. Sykes, H. (2011). Queer Bodies. Sexualities, gender, & fatness in physical education. New York: Peter Lang. Sykes, H., & McPhail, D. (2008). Unbearable Lessons: Contesting Fat Phobia in Physical Education. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, 66-96. Yager, Z., & O’Dea, J. (2009). Body image, dieting and disordered eating and activity practices among teacher trainees: implications for school-based health education and obesity prevention programs. Health Education Research, 24(3), 472–482.