Women's health magazines and postfeminist healthism: A critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Daily, millions of North American women turn to popular media, like women's health magazines, for health-related advice and information. “Magazines continue to be a popular medium” and, given their power and reach, remain an important site for critical analysis. In this article, we examine the ways in which three popular women's health magazines provide “health” advice to their readers. We first provide an overview of research in feminist media studies exploring postfeminist sensibility, healthism, and now a postfeminist healthism. We then conduct a critical discourse analysis of articles from all 30 issues of Health, Women's Health, and Shape magazines published in 2018. Our investigation of how the magazines portray what it means to have “good health,” suggests that health continues to be conflated with appearance. Moreover, health is presented as confusing, such that maintaining health requires expert help, and as purchasable, and thus linked to economic practices.

Daily, millions of North American women turn to popular media for health-related advice and information (Duncan & Klos, 2014; Hinnant, 2009). Despite the audience reach of social media and other online platforms, women's health magazines have remained a strong epistemic resource; indeed, they are an “enduringly popular medium,” as indicated by their variety and readerships (Gill, 2006, p. 180; see Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016). Women's Health, ¹ for example, boasts more than 44 million monthly readers, and claims to outreach well-trafficked sites like Bustle, Popsugar, and Refinery29 (Hearst Corporation, 2022). Other popular magazines aimed at slightly older women like Health and Shape are similarly read by millions of print and digital readers. These titles are considered commercial successes, with circulations that can rival sports and fashion magazines (Newman, 2007).

Women's health magazines piggyback on the success of women's fashion and beauty magazines by sharing some of their core characteristics. Both, for example, feature experts, with women's health magazines offering advice from physicians, personal trainers, and nutritionists. They employ similar tactics to attract readers, including the use of “infotainment,” which allows readers to consume information in an entertaining way by presenting it in an easily digestible, bite-sized form (see Bonner & McKay, 2003). Attention-grabbing headlines like “40 Worst Foods for Your Heart”; “How Long Do You Really Need to Hold a Plank?”; and “Your Guide to the Anti-Inflammatory Diet Plan” draw readers in, promising an improved understanding of complex topics, though articles are often no longer than 1,000–2,000 words. Both feature an accessible writing style with an intimate tone (Gill, 2006), are visually appealing with content that is easily shared online or consumed in print form, and are, above all, affordable for readers. Furthermore, they are constructed as being in opposition to masculinity in that they are organized around “the shared pleasures and labours of femininity”; in other words, content focuses on concerns “women share by dint of being women” (Gill, 2006, p. 183). Since the 1990s, their material has been shaped by a neoliberal philosophy of individualism, with a strong focus on personal responsibility and individual action while ignoring systemic or structural struggles; unsurprisingly, they are also implicitly exclusionary, especially with respect to age, “race,” sexuality, and class (Gill, 2006, p. 183).

Given their values, reach, and power to shape subjectivities, practices, and embodiment, women's health magazines remain important sites for critical analysis. Work by scholars unmasking the discourses, values, and assumptions that pervade these publications has slowed with the rise of digital media, despite magazine readerships’ continued growth (Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016; Watson, 2022). Thus, we echo Reynolds and LoRusso's (2016) call for “revived scholarly engagement with research exploring the relationships between magazines and human health” (pp. 2–3). With our study, we endeavor to contribute to a small but growing number of contemporary studies exploring the portrayal of women's health in legacy media, especially in relation to nutrition and fitness (see Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016). Such work is important because not only can it demonstrate that issues identified by feminist media scholars persist despite decades of careful problematization, it can also illustrate how these issues have since expanded or changed. Such work is vital if we wish to resist the ways in which neoliberal, gendered ideas about women's health continue to gain purchase among publics.

In what follows, we first provide an overview of research from feminist media studies exploring how a postfeminist sensibility, healthism, and now a postfeminist healthism have shaped important elements of women's magazines (Evans et al., 2020). Second, we offer a critical discourse analysis of three popular women's health magazines: Health, Women's Health, and Shape. We investigate how these publications portray “good health” and how to achieve it, as well as the potential consequences such portrayals might have for readers. Although the magazines offer some content that considers broader health issues that affect women, this tended to be the exception; the content's dominant focus was on diet and fitness, and so this is on what our analysis centres. Ultimately, we argue that a postfeminist healthism pervades the articles we examined, which has important implications for shaping readers’ gendered subjectivities and embodiment (Bordo, 1993; Coffey, 2013; Marshall et al., 2019, p. 96).

Feminist media studies

Women's magazines and a postfeminist sensibility

Feminist scholars have explored the messaging and sociopolitical implications of women's magazines using a variety of methods and theoretical lenses, including semiotics, Marxism, social constructionism, and poststructuralism (Gill, 2006). Such approaches have been vital to elucidating the values and discourses found in the pages, images, and advertisements of women's magazines. They have also helped illustrate the effects of these magazines, including how they influence readers’ gendered subjectivities and embodiment through repeated exposure to narrow, normative representations of what it means to be an attractive woman. Indeed, readers implicitly learn what constitutes attractiveness through a litany of articles providing advice on practices and products designed to help them achieve this elusive aesthetic. Though the idea of “beauty” has changed over time, these magazines remain obdurately focused on women's bodies by emphasizing that the “thin-ideal” is essential to feminine attractiveness (Bordo, 1993; Davalos et al., 2007; Riley, Evans, & Robson, 2019).

Feminist scholars have also studied the power effects of women's magazines, including the consequences of internalizing this gendered messaging. Naomi Wolf (1991), for example, argued that the political weaponization of beauty in women's media has contributed to forestalling women's political and social advancement. Similarly, Susan Bordo (1993) argued that the preoccupation with reducing women to docile bodies is “an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control” (p. 166). Others have pointed to adverse health effects among women, ranging from rising rates of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and body dysmorphic disorder (Duncan & Klos, 2014; Schaefer et al., 2019) to an increased prevalence of psychological issues like low self-esteem and depression (Ahern et al., 2011). Importantly, these claims have become sites for feminist analysis in their own right, as scholars have challenged their individualized and pathologized nature; Susan Bordo (1992), for instance, asserted that eating disorders represent “cultural disorders” more than individual ones (p. 200; see Moola & Norman, 2017). ²

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, feminist scholars noticed that discourses in women's media were shifting. Increasingly, media offered inconsistent notions of ideal femininity and contradictory advice on how to live well as a woman (Riley, Evans, & Robson, 2019). For example, while women's magazine articles emphasized second-wave feminist values like gender equality, self-determination, agency, and personal choice, they simultaneously highlighted ideas that feminists had long critiqued, including a focus on personal responsibility (without attending to related structural or systemic issues) and biological essentialism (Gill, 2006, 2007; Riley et al., 2017). This led scholars to argue that underneath a gloss of feminine empowerment and girl power, women's content (re)produced conservative, patriarchal values and a neoliberal rationality—characteristics that came to signify a postfeminist media culture ³ (Gill, 2006, 2007). This shift also positioned women as “self-made, savvy, empowered consumers” who were purportedly confident, sexually assertive, and ultimately liberated (Riley et al., 2017, p. 2).

For Gill (2007), postfeminist media culture included interrelated themes like:

Femininity is a bodily property produced through appearance work (see Riley et al., 2016, 2017). A sexy body is key to a woman's identity and success and requires extreme discipline and surveillance.

Women are flawed and therefore require reinvention or transformation. This produces feelings of shame or humiliation, which can only be abated by fashioning women into willing recipients of expert advice and compliant consumers. Relatedly, an outsized focus on makeovers positions appearance work as empowering and pleasurable by leading to a “better you” (Riley et al., 2017).

A shift from objectification to subjectification through a resexualization of women's bodies. Women are not just objectified passively by the male gaze, but are “portrayed as active, desiring subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their liberated interests to do so” (Gill, 2006, p. 151; Goldman, 1992). Women's sexuality is framed as being a source of identity, empowerment, and choice, though ultimately aims to fulfill men's heteronormative fantasies through the perception that sexually liberated women are “up for anything” (Evans et al., 2010, p. 115); and,

Individualism, choice, empowerment. All aspects of life are individualized and freely chosen. Free choice is portrayed as being possible because the inequalities that held women back in earlier decades have disappeared, suggesting that feminism is no longer needed.

Gill (2006) is careful to point out that these ideas should not be read as a historical era, a new wave of feminist activism, an identity, or an epistemology; rather, they are best understood as a “postfeminist sensibility” that gives the current moment a particular feel and a way of shaping gendered subjectivities in a neoliberal context (Gill, 2006, 2007; see also Riley et al., 2017). As Evans et al. (2020) further explain:

Within a postfeminist sensibility, the individual becomes a marker of their own success and failure, so that optimal life is presented as freely available to anyone, regardless of class, race, differently abled embodiments, and so on. In this way, the task of analysing and making sense of a postfeminist sensibility engages in the task of critically interpreting the gendered implications of neoliberalism. (p. 100)

Women's health magazines and healthism

Though women's health magazines share some common features with fashion and beauty-focused publications, including being shaped by a postfeminist sensibility (see Eskes et al., 1998) and focus on appearance (see Aubrey, 2010; Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016), they differ in key ways. Most importantly, women's health magazines are influenced by powerful, normative notions about health best described by Robert Crawford's (1980) concept of healthism, where the idea of “health” expanded beyond just physiological or medical concerns to include assumptions about a person's morality. This cultural shift is connected to a decades-long rise of “a popular health consciousness” in the West, which effectively recast the idea of “health” as a “super value, a metaphor for all that is good in life” (Crawford, 1980, p. 365). The resultant connection between health and morality led to governments and industries alike exhorting publics to achieve good health through individualizing and responsibility-focused discourses that “became a model of and a model for the neoliberal restructuring of American society” (Crawford, 2006, p. 419). According to Nikolas Rose (2001), this cultivated a “will to health” because “Every citizen must now become an active partner in the drive for health, accepting their responsibility for securing their own well-being” (p. 6). Paired with an increasingly low tolerance for risk (see Lupton, 1999), health problems were read as the result of individual choices, poor discipline, and personality defects that required individualized solutions (Crawford, 1980; Evans et al., 2020).

Women's health magazines are replete with content perpetuating and reinforcing healthism. In their articles on diet and fitness, readers are positioned as responsible for their own good health, which is dependent on their lifestyle choices (despite health being influenced by many factors beyond personal agency; Ahern et al., 2011; Mishra, 2017). Like beauty and fashion magazines, they have become associated with distorted body image and anxieties about fatness, irrespective of their claim to focus on health and wellness (Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016). However, women's health magazines feature several other unique characteristics. For example, they (a) add gendered values, assumptions, and subject positions connected with the cultural politics of health that are largely absent from fashion and beauty magazines (e.g., a normative concern for being considered “a healthy woman”). Madden and Chamberlain (2004) demonstrate this in their analysis of nutrition texts aimed at women, in which health and well-being were framed as ideals for which all women should strive. These magazines also (b) strengthen and legitimize the values advanced in fashion and beauty magazines by repackaging the thin-ideal as a concern for health (see Conlin & Bissell, 2014; Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016). Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that women's health magazines conflate health and beauty by representing thinness (and not other well-established markers of health like heart rate, blood pressure, VO₂ max) as a sign of health, and fat as an indicator of poor health, weakness, lacking discipline and femininity, personal failure, and ugliness (Aubrey, 2010; Bordo, 1993; Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016). This focus on appearance-related outcomes is perhaps most obvious in “before-and-after” content that frames the higher weight “before” photo as less attractive and less healthy in comparison to the “after” photo (Duncan, 1994), or in magazine headlines that centre on the look of women's bodies (Aubrey, 2010). For many critical health scholars, the rising intensity and ubiquity of medical discourses on “obesity” not only lend legitimacy to fatphobia, but they further indicate an embodied neoliberalism that idealizes thinness as a bodily expression of self-mastery and responsibility while naturalizing fatness as a health problem (Cairns & Johnston, 2015, p. 156). Adding another layer of complexity to women's health magazines is the idea that (c) readers are less likely to challenge “science-backed” information. Health advice can take on an “almost authoritarian role,” because the values that inform it are not easily discerned due to the assumption that health is a “neutral” topic shaped by “unbiased” biomedical knowledge (Hinnant, 2009, p. 319). Yet Reynolds and LoRusso (2016) found that experts provide relatively little source material for women's health magazines. In their study, they determined that only 37.8% of content was sourced from professionals or experts, 14.7% from research studies, and the rest from celebrities, “real people,” and members of the editorial team, raising concerns about the legitimacy, reliability, and accuracy of the content (Reynolds & LoRusso, 2016).

Postfeminist healthism

Combining insights about postfeminist sensibility with neoliberal notions of moral citizenship and healthism, Evans et al. (2020) developed the concept of a postfeminist healthism (see also Riley, Evans, & Robson, 2019). While healthism captures some of the most important values and assumptions shaping our current understandings of health, the authors argue that the choices we make to secure our health and well-being in the context of neoliberalism are highly gendered and are shaped by a postfeminist sensibility. Because women's health magazines have become “potent prescriptive sources for not only how women should look but also how they should take care of themselves” (Aubrey & Hahn, 2016, p. 496), how women “think, act and feel in relation to health” should be explored in light of this entangled, dynamic context that Evans and colleagues highlight (p. 100).

Building on the work of Gill (2006, 2007), Evans et al. (2020) argue that postfeminist healthism centres on three key contradictions that produce a commonly felt anxiety among women:

Normalizing desire for “good health.” Everyone should want to have good health, and having good health is connected to happiness. However, what is considered “healthy” is constantly shifting and difficult to pin down.

Despite health being framed as normatively good, “good health” is “highly idealized and exceptional.” The authors argue that “the conflation of ‘exceptional health’ with ‘normal health’ produces suffering, since such exceptional health is ultimately unattainable” (p. 103). According to McRobbie (2015), this creates “a new psychic fragility” for women in that exceptional health requires a life-long commitment to self-labour and discipline (as quoted in Evans et al., 2020, p. 103). In this sense, postfeminist healthism is “a normalising sensibility, presenting a desire for good health as ordinary and expected, and a sensibility secured by a perfection that is precarious and insecure” (Evans et al., 2020, p. 103).

The management of women's bodies is presented as being freely chosen, rational, and a pleasurable act of agency that contributes to improved health. This applies to all disciplinary acts, purchases, and appearance work that can be framed as being beneficial to health.

The contradictions present in postfeminist healthism provide the foundation for managing and controlling women's bodies, though ultimately work by preserving anxiety with respect to women's health. Evans et al. (2020) argue that “if we are anxious about health, we are more likely to conform to current ideological expectations that shape how women can understand themselves and their bodies” (p. 105). Now, we turn to our analysis of women's health magazines and their portrayals of “good health.”

Method

Magazines

In 2019, MB borrowed all issues of Health, Shape, and Women's Health from 2018 from a local public library. These three titles were chosen because they are the most popular women's magazines in Canada and the US. Each magazine publishes 10 issues annually, thus MB read 30 issues in total. For analysis, we included all articles focused on nutrition or fitness and excluded content that was unrelated (e.g., articles placed in a fashion or beauty section). In total, our dataset was comprised of 571 articles: 178 from Health, 181 from Women's Health, and 212 from Shape. Because we were interested in how the magazines discursively constructed health in their text-based content, we further excluded advertisements and images within the articles, though we recognize that valuable analytic insights could have been gleaned from their inclusion. In the analysis, we refer to the magazines by the first letter of their title (e.g., WH, S, H), the issue number, year, and the page number. For example, an extract from page 12 of the seventh issue of Women's Health would appear as (WH7, 2018, p. 12).

Approach to analysis

MB scanned all relevant articles and then engaged in a close reading of the texts to become familiar with the content. Using Microsoft Word, she employed inductive coding informed by Braun and Clarke (2013) to identify relevant extracts. Together, we then employed a critical discourse analysis, looking for discursive patterns that demonstrated how the content advanced portrayals about what it means to have “good health” for North American women. In our analysis, we understood discourse as actively constructing particular ways of imbuing reality with meaning. Accordingly, we undertook intentional and critical readings to identify discursive patterns of meaning, contradictions, and inconsistencies (Foucault, 1979; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Rose, 1996).

Analysis and discussion

We illustrate how a postfeminist healthism pervades the health and fitness-focused content of Women's Health, Shape, and Health, influencing readers’ understandings of what it means for women to have “good health.” We argue that the publications portray “good health” as confusing, exceptional, and purchasable. These portrayals often overlap, suggesting that they are not discrete, concretized, or neatly delimited, but are instead messy, contradictory, dynamic, and complex. Each portrayal encourages readers to take up or avoid particular practices in the pursuit of “good health”—such disciplinary work “produces subjected and practiced bodies,” while making possible specific subject positions and foreclosing others (Foucault, 1979, p. 138). Importantly, there were no instances of articles in our dataset challenging the representations we offer below.

Women's health is confusing

All three magazines position themselves as authoritative sources offering clarity on women's health and fitness; in reality, however, the articles provide vague and often contradictory information that is likely to produce uncertainty for readers (see Hinnant, 2009). This tension between claiming to offer clarity and reliable knowledge while actually sowing doubt and confusion can not only create anxiety but also contributes to constantly shifting notions of healthful practices that make readers unsure whether their knowledge is correct—defining features of postfeminist healthism. We see evidence of this in a Women's Health article entitled “Eating Made Easy”:

Vegan versus ketogenic—the trendiest diets are opposites! No wonder Mark Hyman, M.D., has named his new book Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? His ethos is simple: “If it's from nature, whether a plant or a grass-fed cow, it's good to eat,” says Hyman. “If it's made by people, proceed with caution.” Okay for dinner, but what about our favourite snacks and indulgences? Here, his top substitutions: Breakfast Cereal—mix a bowl of nuts, seeds, and fruit. You’ll get that satisfying crunch, without the long list of ingredients. Happy Hour—choose a low-sugar option like a single vodka soda over a carb-heavy (and easy to over-pour) glass of wine. Baking—nut butter and coconut milk are your friends; processed flour and sugar are out. (WH4, 2018, p. 42)

There are two noteworthy aspects of this extract. First, the article opens by acknowledging the difficulty of trying to navigate conflicting fad diets. In doing so, it establishes confusion as simply an expected and understandable aspect of women's experiences of trying to achieve “good health.” While seemingly offering guidance to address that confusion, the advice is likely to leave the reader with more questions than answers. For example, the featured physician claims that anything natural is good to eat, which might cause a reader to wonder how fruit should be approached, especially because sugar is “out.” It might raise questions regarding the value of healthy “man-made” products, as well as concerns about how to navigate Hyman's cautionary message (does proceed with caution mean some amounts are acceptable? If so, what are those amounts?). Furthermore, by acknowledging the confusion of navigating trendy diets that are opposites, the extract implicitly establishes normative practices for women who desire “good health.” Just as fashion and beauty magazines expect women to stay abreast of the minutiae of the latest trends (Gill, 2006), the extract establishes similar expectations for diet. However, there is an important distinction to note—a woman with “good health” is assumed to be so abreast of diet information and have so much knowledge about the latest fads that she struggles to make it cohere. Thus, the extract advances a cycle in which women might come to doubt their knowledge and practices, turn to the magazine for clarity, become even more confused, and are left wanting still more expert guidance.

Second, the article presents a “simple ethos” to navigate this confusion. Cairns and Johnston (2015) explain that one of the key features of being an ideal woman today is the presupposition that she will be knowledgeable about food and diet, not for its nutritional value per se, but so she can make informed choices to avoid gaining weight. Moreover, she must wield this information without having the appearance of dieting, allowing her to look as though she is eating without restriction while, in reality, making quite careful choices. The magazine's discursive framing of the physician's guidance as “a simple ethos” instead of rules or a diet program might allow readers to feel as though they are freely choosing healthful practices without necessarily feeling as though they are limited, even if they are. Such advice typifies a new kind of “having it all” messaging in which women can ostensibly indulge in the pleasures of eating and achieve “good health” without being confused by contradictory diet fads; indeed, following a simple ethos can be seen as a pleasurable and agentic antidiet act while actually being quite the opposite (Cairns & Johnston, 2015).

In a Health article entitled “It's Tank Top Season,” we see how fitness is also portrayed in uncertain terms, thus keeping understandings of what constitutes “good health” unclear.

When it comes to getting great arms, you don’t always have to work just your limbs. “Too much direct muscle training throws the body out of balance,” explains celebrity trainer Jason Walsh, who founded the L.A.-based climber studio Rise Nation and works with clients such as Alison Brie and Mandy Moore. It's also a surefire way to add bulk, which is typically not a woman's goal. That's why Walsh prefers more of an indirect approach, looking at the arms as “synergist,” or muscles that aid the movement. Don’t be fooled, though—your arms are about to get seriously sculpted. (H5, 2018, p. 35)

The extract opens by casting doubt on a commonly held understanding that if one desires toned arms, one should choose exercises that develop the arm muscles. Readers are encouraged to adapt to new information about whole-body workouts that only indirectly tone the arms, creating confusion about which practices are, indeed, the “right” ones to take up. The extract's justification for the shift from focusing on the arms to the whole body is an opportunity to place decidedly gendered restrictions on its fitness recommendations. “Great arms” are not necessarily strong arms, but sculpted arms; that is, they show evidence of being worked without being bulky. We can infer that a woman with “good health” is someone who works out with weights, but only to the point that her body remains proportionate, or in balance, and thus maintains a feminine aesthetic as exemplified by the celebrities mentioned (see also Bordo, 1993). By creating boundaries around what constitutes an appropriately healthful practice for women, the extract ensures that readers avoid “pumping iron,” which Bartky (1997) argues can be interpreted as an oppositional practice to the disciplinary project of femininity (St. Martin & Gavey, 1996, p. 46). Inevitably, such content contributes to the difficulty of distinguishing health-building practices from appearance-enhancing ones, making it hard for readers to understand what exactly “is done for the sake of physical fitness from what is done in obedience to the requirements of femininity” (Bartky, 1997, p. 132). Thus, the extract capitalizes on the confusion it creates, perpetuating the conflation between appearance and health while advancing an individualized, moralized, and deeply gendered approach to health shaped by patriarchal body politics.

The extract (and countless others like it) also establishes a tension in women's subjectivities. On one hand, women are framed as epistemically rigorous and as possessing significant information on how to achieve health; in this sense, they are portrayed as knowing subjects. On the other, women are framed as unknowing subjects because they are made to feel as though they can “never be confident that they have got it right” (Riley, Evans, Anderson, & Robson, 2019, p. 10), requiring them to consume more magazine content and accept guidance. This tension illustrates one mechanism by which power relations can both facilitate and constrain knowledge generation and transmission based solely on an aspect of a knower's identity, like gender (Mason, 2011, p. 294). It also demonstrates how women must internalize expert discourses to repair a fractured subjecthood to be conceived as someone with “good health” (see Riley et al., 2016).

Women's health is exceptional

Next, we explore the mechanisms by which “good health” is portrayed as something that is within the grasp of all women and is something they should all desire to achieve, while also being positioned as an exceptional state—a contradiction that is central to postfeminist healthism (Evans et al., 2020). The conflation of good and exceptional suggests that having “good health” now entails a willingness to commit to extraordinary and often unreasonable levels of self-surveillance and self-mastery. One discursive mechanism the magazines used to advance this idea is the use of analogy and/or metaphor. Articles draw on bellicose analogies to describe how good health is achieved. For example, fat was described as needing to be “torched” (WH4, 2018, p. 138), “tackled” (S2, 2018, p. 78), and “stave[d] off,” while bloat must be “banished” (H1, 2018, p. 18) and weight “fend[ed] off” (WH9, p. 75). Calories need to be “slashed,” “cut” (H2, 2018, p. 43), or “trapped” and “whisked out of the body before they can be stored away as fat” (WH4, 2018, p. 116), while “willpower against cravings” was described as needing to be “bulletproof” (S2, 2018, p. 78). Even drinks were expressed in threatening terms: cocktails high in calories pack “hidden punches” that might “sabotage” readers’ assumed weight-loss goals (H6, 2018, p. 50).

In some respects, combat analogies and metaphors are unsurprising—bellicose imagery is pervasive in the news as well as in health communications about serious illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and AIDS (see Hanne & Hawkin, 2007; Hauser & Schwarz, 2020). They are further used in biomedical and sociopolitical narratives about fatness (e.g., the “war on obesity”), which has facilitated “unwarranted surveillance and regulation by governments and society of people's bodies and behaviours,” especially women's (O’Hara & Taylor, 2018, p. 6). The extracts’ use of bellicose imagery in the context of providing health information implies that fat, weight, bloating, sugar, cravings, and calories are legitimate and serious health threats requiring sustained and disciplined responses to resist or evade. War analogies and metaphors are effective for advancing a postfeminist healthism because they imply that the “enemy” is obvious and that everyone should want to fight against this enemy and protect their health; however, they further suggest that achieving health through diet requires exceptional skills or superhuman abilities. Indeed, few can “bulletproof” their will against all cravings, “torch” or “tackle” fat, or discern when food or drink might be deceptively calorie-rich—such abilities are reserved for an elite few whose eating habits are not swayed by emotion or biology, who can ignite or tackle fat as if it were an object, or who possess advanced nutritional knowledge or perhaps even x-ray vision. While such imagery can influence readers’ willingness to take up the magazines’ recommended practices to neutralize the threat of fatness, it also creates the foundation for self-blame when readers’ efforts are unsuccessful and they ultimately succumb to these “enemies.” We have seen evidence of this tendency toward self-blame in other contexts, like in discourses on cancer. Scholars argue that using militaristic metaphors and analogies assigns “a moralistic and punitive value to the disease and, by extension, to the people facing it” (Harrington, 2012, p. 409). Thus, while health is something all women should aspire to, only a few can achieve the highly idealized form of “good health” the magazines perpetuate, leaving everyone else to struggle with the feelings of shame and guilt that surface when they cannot enact or embody these superhuman abilities.

Another mechanism the magazines employ to help establish “good health” as something quotidian and yet exceptional is their choice of exemplars. We see this in an article entitled “Wonder Women” in Women's Health:

The best time to workout is whenever you can do it. And for most of us with jam-packed schedules, that often means making the most of the minutes others spend Netflix-bingeing or hitting the snooze button. “The number one reason Americans say they don’t exercise is lack of time, yet we watch hours of TV daily, so something doesn’t add up,” says Stephen Ball, PhD, a professor of exercise physiology and nutrition at the University of Missouri. “Everyone is strapped for time,” he says, “but even the busiest people can exercise regularly if they’re motivated—and willing to get creative with the when and how.” Ball once saw a campaigning Barack Obama hitting the treadmill, security in tow, at a local gym before 6 a.m. “He's a pretty busy guy, but he managed to show up,” says Ball. (WH7, 2018, p. 59)

The extract portrays achieving health through exercise as something that is ostensibly within everyone's grasp because it is simply a matter of motivation and scheduling. It suggests that women who do not engage in regular exercise have freely chosen to do so, especially because it stipulates that “the best time to workout is whenever you can do it”; conceivably, everyone should be able to take control of their lives and find a time that works for them, no matter the circumstances (see Gill, 2007). This “grammar of individualism” frames the inability or unwillingness to schedule regular fitness as a matter of personal failure, obfuscating important classed and gendered elements that can make doing so quite difficult for many women (Gill, 2007, p. 153). Perhaps, for example, they are responsible for providing care to aging or ill family members or they bear the brunt of parenting duties on top of working full-time, among myriad other possibilities. By choosing Obama—a man often described as extraordinary for overcoming significant political and historic obstacles to be elected as the U.S.'s first Black president—as an exemplar, the extract implicitly connects his qualities with the kind of women able to achieve “good health” through fitness, no matter how long their days or important their jobs. Even the article's title (“Wonder Women”) connects exceptionality with women's ability to carve out time for fitness!

Health is purchasable

Lastly, we explore how the magazines establish “good health” as purchasable, encouraging women to act as economically productive subject-citizens. A Women's Health article about cauliflower entitled “The Power Plant Lives On” explains:

The low-carb shapeshifter has social-climbed its way into “rice,” pizza crust, gnocchi (bless you, Trader Joe's), and smoothies (spotted and loved at Juice Press). Which made us wonder: Can you overdo it on c-flower? Nope! “It's an anti-inflammatory veggie that's super low in calories, so it's a great carb swap,” says WH advisor, Keri Glassman, RD. “As long as you’re eating ample protein and aware of any additions (such as potato starch in your dough), feel free to embrace those mini white trees. All. Week. Long.” (WH9, 2018, p. 13)

This extract overlaps with our first argument around “good health” for women as being inherently confusing—here, readers are left unsure about what constitutes “ample protein” to offset a cauliflower-rich diet, and with uncertainties about what kinds of ingredients, other than potato starch, they need to be watchful for in cauliflower-based products. However, this extract also exemplifies how a postfeminist sensibility converges with neoliberal values such that the self requires transformation and empowerment through consumption. To be a woman with “good health,” the reader is directed toward particular stores to purchase particular items so that she can replace her less healthy foodstuffs with more acceptable substitutes. Notably, many of these substitutes are quite expensive, implying that “good health” is reserved for readers with the income to support such changes. Riley, Evans, and Robson (2019) argue that the increasingly wide array of food choices marketed for their health benefits (e.g., organic, low fat, nutrient-enriched) allows shoppers to demonstrate their health through the foods they eat. This suggests that purchasing and consuming these items might be a performative act of postfeminist healthism that allows women to do good health rather than have it per se. In the words of Guthman and Dupuis (2006), “we buy and eat to be good subjects” (p. 443). In doing so, “neoliberal governance is not externally imposed onto bodies, but operates through the embodied actions of free subjects—often by exercising choice in the market” (Cairns & Johnston, 2015, p. 155).

We see another example of how “good health” is portrayed as purchasable in a Health article entitled “Outsmart Your Cravings”:

If you want chocolate, go for a peanut butter chocolate RX bar. The chewy, fudgy texture (from a combo of dates and egg whites) makes these bars taste indulgent. “They use wholesome ingredients that curb your sweet cravings without loads of sugar,” says Asche. “They also don’t contain any artificial sweeteners, which I definitely advise against as they may actually increase appetite.” If you want ice cream, go for Breyers Delights. These new lower-calorie options (still in classic flavors, like butter pecan and cookies and cream) have between 260 and 330 calories per pint—so you won’t beat yourself up if you polish off the whole container. If you want a bag of chips, go for Kettle Chips. Health's contributing nutrition editor, Cynthia Sass, RD, recommends looking for chips cooked in healthier oils, like olive and coconut. Her pick? Kettle Brand Himalayan salt potato chips cooked in 100 percent avocado oil (only three ingredients!). A serving has just 130 calories. (H4, 2018, p. 49)

The extract highlights how contemporary food discourses for women frame “dietary restrictions as positive choices, while maintaining an emphasis on body discipline, expert knowledge, and self-control” (Cairns & Johnston, 2015, p. 154). Consuming these items gives the impression that a woman is in control of her eating without being considered a “health nut,” allowing her to navigate “the tension between expressing freedom through consumer choice, and embodying discipline through dietary control” (Cairns & Johnston, 2015, p. 155). Thus, she can indulge, but only with products that use wholesome ingredients or healthy alternatives, have little sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and contain few calories. Products are listed by their brand name presumably so that readers can ensure that when they alter their purchases, they choose snacks that align with the extract's guidance.

The extract points to a new kind of makeover, one particular to a postfeminist healthism. The makeover paradigm figures prominently in women's media shaped by a postfeminist sensibility such that the flaws of supposedly unattractive women are highlighted for voyeuristic entertainment. Through purchasing new clothing, makeup, or even having cosmetic surgery, women are portrayed as born anew and happier than before because of their now improved appearance and self-esteem (Riley et al., 2017). Riley et al. (2017) argue that the transformation is total—women's bodies and minds are supposably reformulated into a better, more optimal version. With postfeminist healthism, however, it is not fashion that is transformed, but the contents of women's pantries. Replacing flawed chocolate bars, ice cream, and chips with trendy, “healthy” alternatives allows women to experience the kind of satisfaction that accompanies makeover transformations. This approach to health and wellness suggests an ever-expanding, intensifying, and progressively granular form of governmentality that is both deeply gendered and totalizing—women's minds, bodies, and kitchen contents are remade in the name of “good health.”

Conclusion

Our analysis of diet- and fitness-focused articles in Health, Shape, and Women's Health demonstrates that Evans et al.’s (2020) notion of postfeminist healthism pervades all three publications; consequently, we argue that “good health” is portrayed as confusing, exceptional, and purchasable for women. Taken together, these portrayals leave readers in an unmanageable position. They frame the ongoing desire for (some version of) “good health” as normative and easily achievable while simultaneously portraying it as exceptional, and its necessary actions as freely chosen; they construct the pursuit of health as a moral project, while presenting its achievement as inherently confusing and only accessible to those with the right income; and they prey on and foster insecurities and anxieties by linking supposed markers of health like thinness with idealized versions of feminine beauty. In promoting unattainable actions and harmful appearance ideals, the magazines deflect readers’ attention from important information and healthful practices likely to improve women's health in meaningful ways (e.g., screening practices, reducing sun exposure, stress management, etc.); instead, that attention is directed toward the management of gendered subjectivities and participation in late-stage capitalism.

Arguably, these dominant portrayals are fueled by the profit motives of the magazines and their advertising partners. Content is designed firstly not for health promotion, but for selling copies of the magazine and encouraging related purchases from advertisers. This raises questions about the ethical standards to which we should hold these magazines. Because they belong to publicly traded companies, their obligation is to maximize profit for shareholders; accordingly, they are not required to meet the same kinds of legal or ethical requirements we expect of individuals and organizations associated with health promotion, like physicians or public health agencies. In that sense, one might compare the magazines to myriad products that are marketed as health-promoting, though sold without medical prescriptions. However, most jurisdictions abide by some restrictions regarding how such health-promoting products are marketed, especially with respect to claims about their qualities or treatments. It may therefore be time to reexamine the ethical obligations of women's health magazines (and other publications that identify themselves as health-promoting) and potentially subject them to closer regulatory scrutiny, especially because their effects are known to be pernicious and their harms substantial.