Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Women Can't Win: Gender Irony and the E-Politics of The Biggest Loser

Women Can't Win: Gender Irony and the E-Politics of The Biggest Loser

Michael S. Bruner, Karissa Valine, Berenice Ceja
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 19
ISBN13: 9781522518624|ISBN10: 1522518622|EISBN13: 9781522518631
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch015
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Bruner, Michael S., et al. "Women Can't Win: Gender Irony and the E-Politics of The Biggest Loser." Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces, edited by Yasmin Ibrahim, IGI Global, 2017, pp. 244-262. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch015

APA

Bruner, M. S., Valine, K., & Ceja, B. (2017). Women Can't Win: Gender Irony and the E-Politics of The Biggest Loser. In Y. Ibrahim (Ed.), Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces (pp. 244-262). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch015

Chicago

Bruner, Michael S., Karissa Valine, and Berenice Ceja. "Women Can't Win: Gender Irony and the E-Politics of The Biggest Loser." In Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces, edited by Yasmin Ibrahim, 244-262. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1862-4.ch015

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

This chapter employs irony as a tool to make clearer the workings of one form of the e-politics of food, namely, the structural food oppression linked to the weight and shape of the female body. The authors argue that the e-politics of the weight and shape of the female body is one of the most important incarnations of the e-politics of food and one of the most vigorously contested. This chapter examines many forms of public discourse and e-politics, from Bing to Tumblr, from Huffington Post to the Mirror (UK), from TV news in Lacrosse, Wisconsin to The Times of India, from the documentary film Killing Us Softly to the book You Are What You Eat, and from WebMD to Twitter, in the end, with a central focus on Rachel Frederickson on the TV show, The Biggest Loser. The critical rhetorical analysis finds some support for the Women Can't Win thesis. Women are in a Catch-22 situation, trapped between fat-shaming and skinny-shaming.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.